HIMSS11 Sessions – Where to Start?

Last week, I discussed the importance of the educational sessions at the annual HIMSS11 conference. But where to start when there are some 300 to choose from over the five days of HIMSS?

There are three ways to tackle this. You could, like me, wade through the entire list to find individual sessions of interest. But I have multiple assignments on many topics and need to get an overall sense of the themes emerging at each year’s HIMSS conference. You likely have specific needs, so you may want to stick to certain tracks, such as meaningful use, healthcare reform, health information exchange, clinical decision support or workforce development. You can search the online directory by topic or keyword to find the right topics for you. Though the PDF version of the conference brochure is a 49.9 MB download, it may be worth looking through because it also lists sessions sorted by broad topic.

A third strategy is just to hit the “Views from the Top,” kind of mini-plenary sessions from interesting speakers, including a couple of high-ranking federal officials: U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, MD, speaks at 9:45 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 23, and CMS Administrator Don Berwick, MD, addresses HIMSS Thursday, Feb. 24, at 10 a.m.

Also of note, Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief of policy journal Health Affairs, will address physician resistance to EHRs on Monday, Feb. 21 at 9:45 a.m., and Ralph Bernstein, senior VP of healthcare payment solutions at U.S. Bank, will speak about how banks are using IT to support accountable care organizations in healthcare. That session is set for Tuesday, Feb. 22 at 2:15 p.m.

All the Views from the Top sessions take place in the auditorium in Room 320.

If you happen to work in the life sciences or for a payer, HIMSS11 has special tracks just for you. The HIMSS Life Sciences Roundtable is hosting an invitation-only networking lunch on Monday and an open dialogue on Tuesday at 1 p.m., plus there are several regular sessions dedicated to improving medication safety, genomics and data mining for clinical research. For those associated with health plans, check out the HIMSS Patient-Centered Payer Roundtable’s sixth annual networking breakfast on Tuesday (also by invitation only), an open roundtable on Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. and numerous sessions on ACOs and the patient-centered medical home.

If you want to go a little more in-depth about various topics, try one of the pre-conference symposia or workshops on Sunday, Feb. 19. (The two-day Nursing Informatics Symposium starts Saturday, Feb. 18.) There’s also a daylong CIO Forum on Sunday, organized by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME). Note that there are additional registration fees for these meetings.

During the actual conference, HIMSS is holding a series of hour-long, interactive roundtables on subjects ranging from meeting Joint Commission national patient safety goals to ICD-10 vendor readiness to e-prescribing of controlled substances. For newbies, there’s a half-day roundtable on health IT career planning, Tuesday from 1 to 5 p.m., hosted by online jobs giant Monster Worldwide.

There is no extra charge for the roundtable sessions.

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