HIMSS Day 1 Clinical & Business Intelligence Symposium

Well, HIMSS13 has started off…..interesting in both good and bad ways.  After having some hiccups getting my morning caffeine fix (thank you to the HIMSS staff that helped me find the Starbucks at the Marriott) I headed to the Clinical & Business Intelligence Symposium.  Then at some point twitter began to show signs of a problem....water....the symposium leaders announced that we could not  drink the water.  This wasn't too bothersome until they announced that they were manually going to be flushing toilets with buckets of water ....I suddenly wished I wasn’t so hydrated……some tweets made me laugh (especially @SteveHuffmanCIO) but I must admit the people running everything didn't miss a beat and handled everything very well.

 

For me the water issue - while concerning - didn't deter from the Symposium - more gave a room full of geeks something to talk about other than the weather.   The Clinical & Business Intelligence Symposium was a not focused on a specific “type” of data – it was a well-built process that took us from defining to analyzing to improvement.

 

Each presenter took a different segment of the process of defining, analyzing, and improving using data in a meaningful way.  They gave applicable advice that any hospital could use if they were planning to head down the business intelligence route. Brian Jacobs, Children's National, (and others used the same definition) gave the following definition.

 Workflow‐integrated information which enables healthcare providers to drill from reports into detailed analyses of quality, safety, efficiency, effectiveness, regulatory and financial aspects of care practice to identify poor quality, waste, non‐standard practices, under or over‐utilized services, & opportunitiesfor improvement.

The most surprising thing for me - all of the presenters recommended that the BI group of the hospital NOT be under IT.   That while there are governance's and processes that are IT enabled it should be reporting directly to the Executive Team.  (Namely the COO)  Also that the area seemed so nebulous and undefined - I appreciated John Glasers statement that we had a lot to learn and will continue to learn and adjust the field because it's just that new.

The room was pretty mild - except for one woman who decided to soap box about how far behind the US was from other developed nations.  The presenters handled it well and while I am not ethnocentric and understand we have a long way to go - it struck me wrong that someone would sign up for a course that was to introduce hospitals to the "how to's" of doing business intelligence.  The presenters handled it well and we were able to move on after her dissertation.

Like usual I met some great people –  and even have a devoted KC Chiefs fan talked into joining me for a Sporting KC game.  (BTW – SKC won on Saturday!) 

 Today, I am going to meet with some good friends and check out several vendors and give some thoughts on the blog – if you want me to pop by send me a Twitter message @Sphere3CEO

Also will be at the Histalkapalooza tonight!  So excited.