Healthcare at a Crossroads What Do ZDogg and Networking Have to Teach Us

1. Healthcare at a Crossroads: What Do ZDogg & Networking Have to Teach Us? Triyam was beyond thrilled to be present at this year’s Midwest Fall Technology Conference along with ZDogg and other great healthcare influencers! The venue was wonderful, the connections were endless, and the lessons we learned will stay with us for a long while. This year’s theme was “Healthcare at a Crossroads,” which is very appropriate given the current changes and opportunities happening throughout the healthcare space. A few elements that come together to create those crossroads and were discussed in depth in the conference include: Security Privacy Quality Value Population Health Mobile Health Integration and Governance • • • • • • • These are all important factors on their own, but together they spin an essential web of information and performance that keeps the healthcare industry running day in and day out. So pull up a chair and let us tell you what we learned!

2. There’s More Than One Way to Educate Zubin Damania, MD aka ZDoggMD has no doubt established himself as one of our industry’s leading educators, thought leaders, and entertainers, but his story doesn’t start – or stop – there. During a decade-long hospitalist career at Stanford, he experienced our dysfunctional healthcare system firsthand. Burned out and depressed, he started to create videos under the pseudonym ZDoggMD as an outlet, which resulted in a quarter billion views and a passionate tribe dedicated to improving healthcare for everyone. He has used YouTube to educate millions of people and is just getting started! He also founded Turntable Health, an innovative healthcare startup that’s provided the downtown Las Vegas community with a level of compassionate medical care that many viewed as impossible. By putting human relationships at the center, he and his team have helped countless patients while serving as an internationally recognized model of holistic medicine. While we listened to him rap and entertain at his Sunday night concert with his award- winning medical parody videos we realized that there are so many ways we can learn and grow as healthcare professionals that don’t revolve around a book. In the next day’s keynote he addressed some of the important issues in healthcare and current day EHR challenges and we walked away feeling re-energized and fueled with knowledge. Thanks for all you’ve brought to the healthcare community ZDogg! EHR Change Management While talking with experienced and knowledgeable representatives of various integrated delivery networks (IDNs) and health systems, we learned how acquiring hospitals and practices poses a big challenge in managing the legacy systems that come along with them. Even when the providers are retiring from their practice and merging their patient data into a larger group, the historical medical records need to be archived for state mandated retention periods. It’s easy to see how this could be a very stressful process for medical leaders and their staff. Not only are they getting used to new ownership and the terms and conditions that follow, but now they’re learning an EHR as well. As a leader you don’t have time to worry about where all the “old” data goes – you just know you need to keep it. Triyam helps hospitals, health systems and integrated delivery networks consolidate their clinical and financial data from multiple EHRs into a common vendor neutral archive. Doing this not only saves the health system a lot of money, but goes a long way in helping ensure patient satisfaction as well. There’s Always More to Learn We covered quite a few other great topics at the conference, including clinical communication & collaboration, clinical data in continuum of care, and integration of physical and behavioral health just to name a few. This led us to a conclusion we feel is critical within the healthcare industry; there’s always more to learn!

3. What would you like to learn that would contribute to your professional development? Thanks so much to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), the University of Southern Indiana (USI), the American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA), and all the other wonderful sponsors that made this event possible!