“HIMSS10 is over. The blogs have been written, the pundits have spoken, but at the end, my original observation prevails: People are working.
I talked to a lot of attendees on the floor, in sessions and waiting in line for anything. And while, yes, overwhelmingly, their first sentences were often about meaningful use, if you took the moment to pause and get past those few sentences with them (I did) there is something else going on entirely. It’s called “business as usual.” It’s the same reason clinicians, administrators, legislators, and everyone else in the healthcare space come to HIMSS every year — to see what’s new, look for IT tools that can help them with planned projects, and most of all to be educated by their peers. If HITECH and ARRA weren’t happening, there would still be a HIMSS. Vendors would still be selling, and education sessions would still be happening. You wouldn’t know that to listen to the vendors out there, and I know I am not alone in feeling that the hysteria around MU was overkill at the conference.”
Article
Daphne Lawrence, Healthcare Informatics, 4 March 2010
