CHIME Advocacy Summit Positions Members to Drive Change

6.07.2018
Liz Johnson – MS, FAAN, FCHIME, FHIMSS, CHCIO, RN-BC, CHIME Public Policy Steering Committee Chair, Chief Information Officer, Acute Hospitals and Applied Clinical Informatics, Tenet Healthcare

If there is one certainty in Washington today it is that legislative and regulatory change to healthcare will happen, and when it does, it will have an impact on what we do and how we do it. CHIME isn’t passively waiting for new marching orders, though. We are using our expertise to help guide decision makers to choose options that support our healthcare organizations and our patients.

Traditionally, those campaigns have been carried out by the CHIME Public Policy Steering Committee and our policy team in D.C. This year we are giving you an opportunity to help lead the charge for positive change, too.

This October, CHIME will hold its first-ever educational program dedicated to public policy and our roles as healthcare IT leaders. The CHIME Advocacy Summit, scheduled for Oct 3-5 in Washington, D.C., will offer the same high-quality sessions and networking opportunities as our forums, but over a shorter timeframe and to a wider audience. The program reflects several of the public policy priority topics that CHIME members named in a recent survey: cybersecurity, interoperability, telemedicine and opioid issues.

Speakers will include members of the Policy Steering Committee, leaders in CHIME’s three affiliate associations and top officials in Washington, D.C. The sessions are designed to give participants the knowledge and tools to make a difference at the local, state and federal levels of government.

Although the program details are still being finalized, we expect to highlight many issues that challenge us as CIOs and senior healthcare IT executives. We know that the changes being proposed to Meaningful Use – recently renamed as Promoting Interoperability under the Inpatient Prospective Payment System draft rule – weigh heavily on many members’ minds. The rule is expected to be finalized in August and we plan to provide an in-depth review of what that will mean for you and your hospitals. We also will explore ways to resolve seemingly conflicting policy priorities, including an increasing emphasis on patient access to data at a time of heightened cyber threats, and aligning disclosure and privacy needs to combat the opioid epidemic.

The CHIME Advocacy Summit will be open to members of CHIME, the Association for Executives in Healthcare Information Security (AEHIS), the Association for Executives in Healthcare Information Technology (AEHIT), the Association for Executives in Healthcare Information Applications (AEHIA), CHIME Foundation firms and the associations’ Foundation firms. We also will encourage government staff to attend as well as others not associated with CHIME or our affiliate groups.

CHIME has reserved a block of hotel rooms at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill, which is also the site for the summit. You can register here. The location is three blocks from Union Station, near Congressional and the Senate offices and convenient for air travelers using Reagan Airport. We have left ample time on the last day for you to schedule visits to the Hill as well.

We will provide more details as they become available. In the meantime, please consider joining us or sending your government relations team to hear from healthcare IT policy thought leaders and network with peers.

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