“SHIFTing” Messages as Medical Banking Accelerates – A New Summit for CFOs

Digital technology is the future of hospital financial management, and everyone – from Finance to Treasury Services, and from Patient Accounting to Revenue Cycle, should be involved. The Summit for Healthcare Information and Financial Technology, HIMSS’ newest educational program that is a revamp of the former “Medical Banking Institute,” offers those involved in the business of healthcare an opportunity to discuss powerful and innovative business practices with their peers who are successfully using technology to get in front of the curve. HIMSS is partnering with Healthcare Finance News, a publication with a broad healthcare financial management readership base, to let the marketplace know about this new event.

Targeting hospital CFOs and their revenue cycle staff, the event offers practical tips for accessing and using a powerful new wave of electronic business information that has been unleashed from its paper and manual processes as banks and healthcare financial technology firms align business processes to create a powerful new information architecture for healthcare.

For starters, knowing the foundational points of electronic business transformation – including new technologies that move remittance information into the active decision-making channels and kiosks and other point of service technologies that provide payment assurance, is critical. Cleveland Clinic CIO and chairman of the IT Division, C. Martin Harris, MD, MBA, FHIMSS, will provide an important keynote on day two that describes how a single card swipe could dramatically simplify the paper chase in healthcare while offering critical business intelligence for the C-suite.

A Keynote CFO panel will feature Kathy Lancaster from Kaiser Permanente, Keith Campanelli from Austintown Pediatrics Inc. and another for profit CFO yet to be announced, who will discuss “pain points” CFOs are experiencing as they engage multiple and competing priorities around the business of healthcare – 5010/ICD-10, Meaningful Use impacts on the enterprise and practices, Operating Rules and Health Insurance Exchanges (HIX). Their discussion provides the pretext for a “reactor panel” of leading technology and banking firms, and focuses dialogue on how technology can be optimized to cure these “pain points” and deliver powerful new business value.

A key session, “Meaningful Use for CFOs,” will provide a one-stop talk for CFOs who need guidance on getting started or moving onto the stage 1 or 2 of the Meaningful Use regulatory scheme, including the criticality of aligning operating units to achieve common goals. Another session will focus on “revenue neutrality” moving from ICD-9-CM to ICD-10, a critical issue that every CFO and revenue cycle expert must be preparing for today.

Among other notable speakers, the last session will provide a political parody with key insights from long time political consultant Jeanne Scott Matthews, whose newsletter chronicling healthcare reform is routinely read by healthcare financial managers and health-oriented politicos alike. Jeanne will bring perspective, humor and keen insight around Medicare reforms and how CFOs should consider engaging the inevitable downward pressure on overall reimbursement as HIX are implemented in 2014.

Click here to learn more about the Summit. High visibility sponsorship opportunities are available by contacting me at jcasillas@himss.org or Becky Washler at bwashler@himss.org. Don’t miss an opportunity to participate in this ground-breaking and pioneering event that brings together best practices in healthcare information and financial technology.