Dateline: Chicago -- HIMSS
Well I had tried to post a blog entry on Tuesday, but didn't have a chance.
A couple of things to note was an interesting presentation on Wednesday morning by Alan Greespan. Greenspan noted the huge increases in medical expenses, 20 percent faster than the Gross Domestic Product.
Greenspan that earlier "high-tech" in health care was a doctor prescribing two aspirins and calling him in the morning. Greenspan noted a proliferation of problems in the United States economy, culminating with subprime mortgage crisis and a changing demographic of the baby boomer generation. With more people heading into retirement there is now actually less labor growth, coupled with further reductions in the workforce.
HIMSS President/CEO H. Stephen Lieber asked Greenspan about the impact of the demographic shift, alternative energy, education -- a strong social agenda, and its impact on government spending and Social Security. Greenspan noted that health care reform will not be solved without overall funding, recognizing the unprecedented shift.
He said to avoid future difficulties is almost impossible, without "extreme clamps." He said that it's human nature to go between the feelings of fear when the markets fall and euphorea when they are doing well.
Other ways to avoid the crisis, Greenspan said, is to set collatoral standards. "You can't put a regulator in who knows when a crisis will occur. Sure, he or she will be right 55-60 percent of the time, but wrong 40 percent of time. In regulation you can't do that," he said.
I also attended an informative educational session by Christopher Paidhrin, security compliance officer, HIPAA and IT Security Officer at Southwest Washington Medical Center in Vancouver, Wash. Paidhrin, who may be familar to regular readers of our magazine, and most recently was a source for a blog I wrote on cloud computing in health care. Paidhrin discussed what hospitals and health systems need to do to pass a HIPAA Audit.
I hope you found the information that I reported on from HIMSS useful. Check my blog regularly for further stories that will be coming from my meetings at HIMSS. Feel free to contact me at RMitchell@advanceweb.com