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March 2013

HIMSS Convention 2013 in New Orleans

 I was fortunate to have been asked to attend the 2013 HIMSS Convention and represent Quality IT Partners. There were close to 40,000 attendees this year, with 1245 vendors. The convention center is one mile long, and invariably, I would choose sessions back to back one end of the hall from another. They allowed 15 minutes between sessions, so perhaps I walked off some of the good New Orleans food I sampled. The majority of the Sessions centered on Meaningful Use. I obtained good information and have shared with Carol Wheeler, our Cerner team lead. There was a wonderful exhibit, Interoperability Showcase.  This exhibit had quite a few vendors within, demonstrating the “sharing of a patient’s electronic health record”. This was my first HIMSS, as being an NICU nurse, I would attend the AWHONN conventions, when time permitted. It was a great experience, and I am very thankful to Quality Leadership, to allow me to attend.

The biggest news at HIMSS, was when five of the large players in Electronic Health Records announced that there has been a creation of a “Commonwell Alliance”. The founders are Cerner, Athenahealth, RelayHealth, AllScripts, Greenway and McKesson. In the news, Epic states they were not asked to participate. Below are the principles, as stated on the CommonWell web page.

Vision

 The CommonWell Health Alliance will be designed to be an independent not-for-profit trade association organization open to all health information technology vendors devoted to the simple vision that a patient’s data should be available to patients and providers regardless of where care occurs. Additionally, provider access to this data must be built-in to EHR technologies at a reasonable cost for use by a broad range of healthcare providers and the patients they serve.

 Mission - What the CommonWell Health Alliance Plans to Deliver

The CommonWell Health Alliance plans to promote and certify a national infrastructure with common standards and policies and will ensure that products that display the CommonWell Health Alliance seal have been certified to work on the national infrastructure. Among the early core components of the national infrastructure, CommonWell Health Alliance will define and promote the following core services and standards:

• Patient Linking and Matching - Provide a way for vendors to identify patients as they move from setting to setting, in a robust and seamless industry-wide data environment.
• Patient Access and Consent Management - Foster a HIPAA-compliant, patient-controlled means to simplify the management of consents and authorizations for data sharing.
• Record Locator Service and Directed Query - Enable providers to match the locations of a patient’s previous health care encounters, no matter where the encounter occurred, and gain access to that data in an industry standard way

 Purpose - Why Build a National Infrastructure and Services?

CommonWell’s purpose will be to solve the longstanding industry problem of interoperability.

Together with other industry members, we will pursue the simple vision that a patient’s data should be available in a secure, trusted manner to the patient and the patient’s care providers regardless of where care occurs. We will seek to improve care quality and foster innovation by creating an open, vendor-neutral platform to break down the technological and process barriers that currently inhibit effective health care data exchange.

Our current health care delivery system lacks an easy, affordable way to allow the frictionless movement of patient-centered data across all settings of care and among all health care IT systems. The technology landscape is fragmented and builds significant barriers to creating a single, unified view of the patient for the entire healthcare team and managing patient consent at scale.

We believe that this problem of interoperability is best solved by forming an industry consortium to adopt common standards and protocols to provide sustainable, cost-effective, trusted access to patient data. We further believe this capability should be available across vendors and delivered “out of the box” to our clients and end users, relying on a national infrastructure to implement the services in a consistent and reliable way to ensure their ubiquity.

January 2013

Winston Churchill once said, "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."  At Quality the spirit of giving and corporate philanthropy is part of our DNA.  This type of generosity promotes a sense of pride in our workplace.  Not only during the holidays, but throughout the year we are committed to community outreach initiatives, supporting medical research foundations and touching the lives of healthcare patients. 

December 2012

What an awesome way to end the year…… 

Who says you can't have fun at work?  We wouldn't have it any other way here at Quality IT Partners!   Our team just returned from our annual offsite that was held in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.  We enjoyed some sunshine, bonding, rest and relaxation with our team members and their families.  

November 2012

On November 3, Quality IT Partners, Inc. (Quality) was honored to be a sponsor at the 13th Annual Scott Hamilton and Friends Ice Show and Gala. 

This year Quality invited quests to be seated at a table that featured representatives from both the Cleveland Clinic and executives from the Quality team.  Quality's guest of honor was a cancer patient at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, along with her husband.  Many gala attendees inspired by her courageous story and journey, met with her - including gala host Scott Hamilton.  This years gala also included special guests such as Wynonna Judd and all 12 US Olympic Figure Skating Gold Medalists.

Quality considers this patient and her family as members of its extended company family and plans to continue to expand its outreach initiatives to further embrace the patient community for which it cares so deeply.

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September 2012

On September 14, Quality IT Partners, Inc. (Quality) was honored to be a sponsor at the 2012 Hillman Cancer Center Gala - Faces of Hope:  A Future Without Cancer -  Quality’s guest of honor was a cancer patient currently receiving treatment at the Hillman Cancer Center. Joining this patient was his wife.   

The Annual Hillman Cancer Center Gala supports research and the next phase of growth and discovery at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center (UPCI).  In addition, sponsored partnerships help support outstanding scientists and clinicians housed at the Hillman Cancer Center who stand on the front lines as we continue to battle this disease.  This annual event serves as the cornerstone of the new advances in cancer research at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.  

August 2012

We are honored to announce that Quality has been named a 2012  Inc. 5000 honoree.  We are so proud of everyone at Quality for contributing to this great achievement to be named as one of the fastest growing private companies in America.

June 2012

Who says you can't have fun at work?

We wouldn't have it any other way here at Quality IT Partners! This year, we are taking our team and their families to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic for some bonding, rest and relaxation. Paradise in December... here we come!

April 2012

Quality IT Partners, Inc. is a proud sponsor of the Toni Turchi Foundation. We welcome you to visit Toni's new website and join her in support of finding a prevention for breast cancer.
www.toniturchifoundation.org

February 2012

HIMSS 12 Conference

Donna Eversole represented Quality at the annual HIMSS 2012 Conference this year   from February 20-24 in Las Vegas.

This year’s conference offered an abundance of options to everyone in attendance.  Some attended for education sessions, networking, job hunting, business-to-business meetings, updates on new, policies, products and services, vendor meetings and demonstrations, interoperability advances, or finding resources for employment openings.

Keynote speakers offered policy updates, stories of innovation, and interesting research on centurions and a cross-cultural longevity formula.

There were special sessions for Healthcare Systems Improvement, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and RTLS (Real Time Location Systems), CIO's, Federal Healthcare IT, Health IT Ventures and Strategic Partners, Ambulatory professionals, HIT X.0 with glimpses of the future, Leaders and Innovators, Physician executives, HIT and Financial Technologies, Global Executives, Leadership and Development.

Regional networking meetings and special interest group meetings allowed folks time to share information and contacts for common interests and regional areas.

There were over 300 vendors with exhibits, including the largest interoperability demonstration ever.  Many new vendors and new product exhibitions were present  to promote and demonstrate their products.

The Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements were released for review and comments during the conference.

There were multiple sessions on ICD-10 implementation.  HIMSS has an ICD-10 Playbook to help guide hospitals with implementation projects; it can be found at:
http://www.himss.org/asp/topics_ICD10Playbook.asp

HIMSS offered a prep course for CPHIMS Certification and offered the certification exam twice during the conference.

I strongly recommend attendance at the conference for  personal growth, networking, and business development.
 

 January 2012

Cleveland Clinic Ecatalyst Newsletter - "Celebrating Life"   -  http://my.clevelandclinic.org/giving/news-events/publications/catalyst_e_news/archive/7-12/celebrating-life.aspx 

December 2011

Quality is committed to community outreach initiatives and touching the lives of healthcare patients.  Throughout 2011, Quality has provided significant financial and participative support for such organizations as The Habitat for Humanity, The American Heart Association, Special Olympics, The Scott Hamilton CARES Initiative, The American Cancer Society, The American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, and local schools and food banks.

To read more: 

 November 2011

On November 5, Quality IT Partners, Inc. (Quality) was honored to be a sponsor at the 12th Annual Scott Hamilton & Friends Ice Show and Gala

This year Quality invited guests to be seated at a table that featured representatives from both the Cleveland Clinic and executives from the Quality team. Quality’s guest of honor was a cancer patient currently receiving treatment at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute. Joining this patient was her husband and 10 year old son. Many gala attendees inspired by her courageous story and journey, met with her - including gala host and cancer survivor Scott Hamilton. This year’s gala also included special musical guest Sheryl Crow.

Quality considers this patient and her family as members of its extended company family and plans to expand its outreach initiatives to further embrace the patient community for which it cares so deeply.

The Scott Hamilton CARES Initiative (CARES) was founded in 1999 as a partnership between Scott Hamilton, Olympic ice-skating champion and cancer survivor, and the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute where Scott was treated. It was created to promote cancer awareness while raising significant funds for cancer research.

July 2011
 
HIStalk Interview With Mark Debnam, Founder and CEO, Quality IT Partners

Give me a brief overview of yourself and the company

I founded the company in 2000. My first partner, Marty Zola,— he'’s our Chief Technology Officer,– joined about three months later, followed in 2001 and in 2003 by our final two partners, who are with us still today — Carol Wheeler and Donna Eversole.

We are very family-oriented company here. We’re a small company, about 20-25 folks, and we specialize in healthcare IT. We cover just about everything out there. We have seven different application practice areas. We have eight management consulting-focused areas as well. We also do a lot of work in the hospital and medical office building architecture and construction work, in addition to infrastructure.

Read More

 August 2010

Quality IT Partners (Quality) is pleased to announce that it is leading the Meaningful Use analysis efforts for one of the largest multi-facility health systems in the country. While in the process of performing a detailed review of the Meaningful Use Final Rule and analysis of each of the Core, Menu Set and Clinical Measures, Quality is also assisting with identifying vendor gaps and standards needed for terminology. Meaningful Use attainment takes into account not only the ability to capture data, but submitting, organizing and monitoring data within the EHR. A few of the key areas of initial focus surround Problem List functionality, Emergency Department analysis and Quality Reporting tools.

 May 2010

Quality is pleased to announce the release of the White Paper “What Every Healthcare Organization Should Know about Deploying IT When Planning and Designing a New Healthcare Facility”. The paper is intended for healthcare organizations that are embarking on a major construction project and would like advice from senior managers who have worked through construction projects. The advice in this paper should help you to get your construction project off to a good start and to avoid the problems that are common to new healthcare facilities.

 February 2010

Quality IT Partners (Quality) recently won another IT Infrastructure new construction project with a major health system in the West. Quality’s IT Infrastructure Practice assists clients with deployment and configurations of IT infrastructure during healthcare facility construction. Quality applies a unique blend of clinical, healthcare operations, and technical infrastructure knowledge from planning to project completion. During the past year alone, Quality has managed or assisted eight deployment projects ranging from supporting community hospitals, specialty hospitals, medical office buildings, behavioral health facilities, and large academic medical centers. Quality implements key leading technologies to the success of new facilities including RFID, real-time tracking, wireless phones/badges, teleconferencing, wireless networks, distributed antenna systems, lights out data center operations, disaster recovery planning, green technologies, and security.

Says Mark Debnam, President and CEO of Quality IT Partners, “We are very pleased with the success and rapid growth of our healthcare IT facilities construction offering. Often during facility construction, key emerging technologies along with attention to clinical and administrative workflow are overlooked. Our IT Infrastructure Practice focuses on these critical elements and ensures a successful outcome with each engagement. We are enjoying its growth, and how well the Practice complements our highly successful Cerner, Epic and QuadraMed systems practices.”

November 2009

Quality announces the addition of Midas+ and McKesson Paragon to its applications consulting services offerings which currently include Cerner, Epic, Siemens, QuadraMed, Eclipsys, and GE Centricity.

Visit HIStalk

Quality announces that it has recently become a Gold Sponsor of HIStalk. Keeping up to date on healthcare news is key for all of us here at Quality, and we are very impressed with the content, contributions, and delivery of the information HIStalk provides. It is clear that a lot of time and effort is given to each HIStalk publication.