LibreHealth Symposium Florida

I am reaching out by email to local folks to put together a little symposium and workshop at a local university venue.

I had planned to start this during the summer, but a certain level of desperation has reached a sweat-point in this area. Folks need solutions, and apparently they have waited long enough. I am personally getting contacted by at least one clinic a week asking for help or information. I see no connection by the ways and means they get my email or phone number, save that they see me on some ancient post somewhere talking about Behavioral Health or Physical Therapy, or some other downtrodden element of the healthcare system.

So, I took unilateral action (by way of an email to a dozen or so folks) to start organizing a conference here in Florida. While I intend to point the organization effort communications here, most of the involved parties, by the very nature of their need, may have limited capability to interact here, so a lot of solicitation will be by direct communication.

The agenda I am proposing:

A proposed conference agenda:

  1. Keynote on using open-source (meaning free and adaptable) systems in a practice setting, case study of how it is done, and the support and feedback loops this enables.

  2. Workshops:

  • clinical documentation and reporting.
    
  • billing and practice management.
    
  • patient communication/scheduling.
    
  • regulatory and reporting compliance.
    
  • information security, HITEC/HIPAA.
    
  • system installation and configuration.
    
  • community support/participation.
    
  1. Professional Organization meetings.

  2. Closing address.

3 Likes

I’d love to be there (and help). I’ll have to figure out how to pay for the travel, but it would definitely be worth it.

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@aethelwulffe @tony

Can you be a little more specific? Lisa’s title suggests she heads up Florida Infant Mental Health (never heard of that specialty). Does she want a specific module in LibreHealth for this?? Does someone in the Physical Therapy world want one for outpatient PT? I live in Florida and would like to help but I don’t know that I am a subject matter expert on any of the workshops

I would like this to be an introductory conference. I want the primary utility to be putting out the word “Hey, there is this free stuff you can use, and you can help make it better suit your needs”. This puts out the corollary of “You can have an EHR without hocking your mom’s house and destroying your cash flow”. I also want to make the point of “Hey Professional Organization! There are things you could be helping your people with other than printing a semi-annual newsletter.”

Lisa is USF infant mental health. It is a thing. It isn’t so specialized that they can’t use related tools, but frankly we need to get real users interacting with this community so that noise like “Dude, you guys have like no good clinical forms!” gets turned into one of our priorities.

-product distribution ain’t so hot either.

Dr. Bob,

If nothing else, cheerleaders could be very effective when talking up professional orgs.

@aethelwulffe

Keep me posted. If my schedule is open and I can make a meaningful contribution, I’ll definitely consider it. My message has consistently been “let’s use the EHR for more than just EHR training”. Let’s use it for health sciences education, basic analytics, etc.

Folks, if meeting space for 80 with abundant free parking will help, I believe the MSIS department at South University, near the Tampa Airport will provide that for free. Same with professional group breakout meeting space afterwards. I can reach out to HIMSS, ACHE, ANIA, ISACA, and PMI professional groups in this region, though I’m not sure if the last two have large healthcare footprint regionally. Optionally, HIMSS has a half-dozen student chapters we also can contact in Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville areas (They do not like to travel far from campus, though.) Art, I probably do not have much LibreHealth content to provide for the meeting, but I do have prior relevant academic experience to share if it is useful. In theory, too, if we set this up on a Saturday, South University could potentially conference in attendees at one or more of its other campuses in Orlando, West Palm Beach, Montgomery AL, Atlanta, or elsewhere. The key for other locations is having sufficient Conference attendees to make it worthwhile to open those other facilities AND having at least SOMEBODY representing the LibreHealth community in each locale to orchestrate the activities in each city. FWIW, the challenge HIMSS has run into at many of the larger Universities in Central/North Florida is parking space for visitors. Bob and I have also worked successfully with Lake Sumter College, which is closer to Orlando, but it can be a bit challenging to get there. I’ll be glad to work with you and others to discuss and organize logistics, such as obtaining registration payments and arranging local food and refreshments. BTW, since HIMSS is returning to Orlando next February, they might be open to having a FHIR-based education session there, too. Now’s the time to get that tee’d up, and I’l be glad to help if you wish.

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Elliot,

You rock.

This is going to take an enormous amount of work, and I am ready to take it on. That probably means an equally large amount of communication. I think me coming to meet with you in person might be the best way to start. I think the timing of this conference (meaning pretty soon) has a lot of relevance, and you partnering up with these solid management and infrastructure possibilities is…well, beyond hope.

I will try to PM you here with my contact information. I suppose a meet and greet, and then probably a concurrent or future video conference for community input might help sort the resources and action plan out. Personally, while I have run conferences and work seminars from the training side, I have not every had to deal with promotion or infrastructure other than where to unload stuff out of trucks; and certainly not in an academic setting.

@aethelwulffe @ebsloane

I’m definitely willing to help but I have three conferences I will be attending: AMIA Clinical Informatics May 8-11, Academic Medicine Conference June 5-9 and AMIA Informatics Educators June 18-22.

It is a day’s drive to the Tampa area but willing to do it if I can make a difference. Alternatively, I could remote in. Please keep me posted