Women In Health IT

The findings of the HIMSS Longitudinal Gender Compensation Assessment report take direct aim at the claim that, in health IT, "You've come a long way." In truth, we need to take a systems view of how we've gotten to where we are today, and how to mitigate increasing inequities in compensation and recognition for women. As leaders, it is essential that we develop a top-down and bottom-up approach to challenge institutional biases inside our organizations and create new partnerships outside them.  We can do this if we offer practical advice, provide executable steps and the conceptual framework from which to advance women's rolesi in our communities and workplaces. Here's how: First, establish strategic priorities that are actionable at all levels of the organization. Next, define short term and long term goals. Design and sustain specific programs to improve women's skills and visibility. Always measure progress at regular intervals along defined timetables. Remember the adage, "Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” To significantly improve quality and outcomes in healthcare, we must eliminate gender-based disparities. A hospital executive for the past 25 years, Diane serves on the HIMSS North America Board of Directors and is chair of the Finance Committee. This blog first appeared on HIMSS Blog.

"You want the strongest, happiest, smartest people in your corner," according to Dana Alexander, former board chair, HIMSS North America.

I was fortunate to work with an excellent executive coach several years ago. He helped me gain new insight into who I am and how I lead. I am a much better leader as a result of our year-long work together. And I periodically reconnect with him now to bounce around ideas when going through major transitions. Deciding to work with a coach can be unsettling. I told myself, “sure there are things on my performance evaluation I could work on but mostly I’m fine and don’t need any help; after all no one is perfect”. And I also told myself, “ok, I admit I could use some help but how much do I really have to expose and what will people think if they know I’m using a coach”. So yes, I had those kinds of thoughts when I started and expect you might as well. But my coach put me at ease. He got to know me and started helping me look critically at my leadership style and areas I needed to improve. He was not there to judge me or make me feel inadequate. He took me where I was at. A good coach doesn’t have all the answers but knows how to ask the right questions. A good coach helps you look critically at yourself, your relationships and how you come across to others. A good coach walks the fine balance of challenging you and encouraging you. I have provided professional coaching services to a number of people in the past year and plan to do more in the future. While I have been both a formal and informal mentor to many people over the years and will continue to do that, coaching is different. “Mentoring involves a developmental relationship between a more experienced mentor and a less experienced partner, and typically involves sharing of advice. Coaching is assisting leaders to perform, learn, stay healthy and balanced, and effectively guide their teams to successfully reach desired goals and exceed individual and organizational expectations. Coaching leaders enables them to close the gap between who they are and who they want to be.” — from Linkage on Coaching Leaders I encourage people to find a mentor – look for someone who you consider a role model in your field or in your organization. Ask them if they would be willing to spend some time periodically talking with you and providing guidance and encouragement. Working with a professional coach needs to be considered as an investment in you. Some large organizations develop an internal cohort of coaches to work with others in their organization. They train the cohort and then make assignments or provide them as resources when employees request a coach. These coaching services may be tied into overall leadership development programs. If you have such a program at your organization, consider talking to your boss about whether you can use it. If you don’t have this option at your organization but you are ready and willing to engage in a deeper, focused coaching relationship then consider finding a coach to work with. Depending on your level in an organization and if your management is willing to invest in you, they may cover the cost. Or you might consider sharing the cost – this could send a strong signal to your boss that you are serious about your professional development and willing to invest not just your time but some of your own money. Or you may decide it’s something you can and will pay for on your own as part of your long term investment in you. Just like your gym membership and the time you spend working out is an investment in you, so too is your professional development. Working with a coach is an investment in you. Blog originally posted on www.sueschade.com.

Some 18 percent of U.S. consumers use a wearable device, according to the 2016 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper survey. UPS researched tech-savvy shoppers with an eye to understanding where and how people buy stuff – and of course, how they ship it given the company’s core logistics business. (“Tech-savvy” in this study means consumers had purchased at least two items online in a typical 3-month period). Overall, Millennials adopt devices and do more tech-shopping compared with other generations, but UPS notes that other groups are indeed shopping for tech and shipping it, too. Millennials are leading the way, but even older generations can “look” Millennial in their shopping behaviors. The 2015-2016 comparison of wearable device adoption shows growth from 13% in 2015 to 18% in 2016, heavily driven by Millennials’ interest. 1 in 6 people who did not currently own a wearable device are interested in acquiring one in the next year, UPS found. Current wearable users do the following activities: 76% monitor fitness (with more Non-Millennials doing so at 82%, and more women than men) 60% use smartwatches, led by Millennials 38% use GPS functions 30% monitor “health” (as opposed to fitness), 2x the number of Millennials (39% vs. 20% Non-Millennials) 23% use eyewear, again double the number of Millennials (31%) vs. Non-Millennials (15%). The only other device categories showing growth were connected TVs, increasing from 28% in 2015 to 32%, and smartphones growing from 74% of adoption in 2015 to 77% of adoption in 2016, PC purchases and tablets showed flat adoption (95% and 57%, respectively). The most important factors consumers consider when purchasing a wearable device are led by health reasons: 62% say the goal is to establish better fitness and health habits, compared with 47% who are tech-loving (“I like to have the most up-to-date technology”) and convenience-appreciating (47% liking convenient access compared with other devices), with another 47% wanting to listen to music via the device. UPS surveyed 5,330 consumers in January and February 2016 who had purchased at least 2 items online in a typical 3-month period. Health Populi’s Hot Points: UPS has a vested interested in people shopping online, but they also benefit from people shopping in retail stores because they ship “everywhere.” Increasingly, the company finds that consumers want their stuff shipped “everywhere,” too — people in urban areas often find it difficult to receive their goods securely; people in rural areas can also have challenges in getting their stuff to their homes. So shoppers are asking UPS to deliver stuff to retailers’ stores, friends’ and families’ homes, a UPS location, to the workplace, or other location. Increasingly, shopping is being done via smartphones — 25% expecting to do so more frequently going forward; and, 24% of tablet-using shoppers expect to shop more via mobile tablet as well. The bottom-line: consumers shop and live omni-channel, multi-channel, 24×7, in “I-want-it-now” mode. (Thank Amazon Prime, in part, for priming consumers in this regard). 3 in 4 people are looking for a peer-review or recommendation. 70% of people are looking for easy access to information on a retailer’s site, including real-time inventory. And, 59% of shoppers would like product recommendations based on past browsing and buying behavior — that is, personalization. This is the new retail, and a challenge for incumbent retailers. That’s the prime (pardon the pun) reason Walmart purchased Jet.com earlier this month, for the behemoth retailer’s ability to grow omni-channel capabilities. Consumers’ expectation in their retail shopping lives are bleeding over into their health-lives, too. Health/care is expected everywhere, and should be as people take on more health financial responsibility….they’ll exercise more clout and vote with their out-of-pocket spending.   This blog first appeared at Health Populi.

Listen to HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith talk about what led to the launch of HIMSS and Healthcare IT News initiative for Women in Health IT. Smith also talks about plans going forward for this newly minted community.     Listen to more STEPS to Value interviews here.  STEPS to Value is the exclusive podcast for the HIMSS Health IT Value Suite.  The HIMSS Health IT Value Suite provides both a structure and vocabulary with which your enterprise can organize its value strategy. The suite highlights hundreds of examples of hospitals, physician practices, communities and accountable care organizations that have realized the full value of Health IT. Resources include many detailed case studies that reveal strategy, tactics and the measures used to document value.  

There are many pointed reasons why pay equity matters to Adam Bazer, a senior manager of health information systems at HIMSS.

Since HIMSS’s July 27 2016 release of the longitudinal gender compensation study in which we reported on a widening pay gap between men and women health IT workers, I’ve published a blog on what these facts tell us, and an overview of why pay gaps exist. If knowledge truly precedes improvement, then it’s time to apply this knowledge on what we can do now to improve the situation.  To that end, here are some actions we invite you to engage in. Women in Health IT Initiative  - HIMSS launched its Women in Health IT initiative in February, 2016.  Our initiative welcomes all genders in addressing the gender gap in health IT and the need to more effectively equip, empower, and recognize women sector-wide.   Healthcare IT News – Part of the HIMSS family, Healthcare IT News recently launched a site and bi-weekly eNewsletter focused on this issue so that readers can get the latest news and developments across the sector. Most Influential Women in Health IT Award - Now through Oct.  3, we’re accepting nominations for the Most Influential Women in Health IT.  You’ll note the word “influential.”  The criteria for this Award embraces women who are making positive change happen at all stages of their careers in health IT – from students to women running major health IT-related organizations.  Our judges represent leaders from across the health sector with a passion for the best use of IT to improve health and healthcare  Women in Health IT Roundtable - At 2 p.m. ET on Aug. 25, our Women in Health IT Roundtable launches; we welcome all to register and join us.  Taking an inclusionary approach, for the first year our Roundtable will be open to HIMSS members and non-members alike.  We plan to host Roundtable webinars at least bi-monthly.  We’ll keep you posted on topics, dates and times, so you can join in. STEPS to Value’s Women in Health IT Podcast Series: Starting in late August, the HIMSS’s hit podcast, STEPS to Value, will launch a monthly podcast series focused on Women in Health IT. These 15-minute interviews with women who lead healthcare and health IT at their respective organizations will bring to the programs interesting and valuable insights on their careers and focus on health IT.  Watch for this series, and in the meantime, listen to STEPS to Value’s season 2 opening episode "The Value of “People” vs. “Patients”: Understanding Long-Term, Post-Acute Care (LTPAC)”.   #healthITchicks – I want to highlight the excellent work that Jennifer Dennard is doing with #healthITchicks.  The #healthITchicks community has grown exponentially with the increasing attention to gender equality issues in the workplace. From politicians to mainstream media, gender-related workplace issues like equal pay and parental leave appear in an increasingly bright spotlight.  Jennifer’s been excited to see participation in #healthITchicks’ LinkedIn group, tweet chats, and more recently, Blabs, increase month over month. Jennifer began organizing meetups at the HIMSS Annual Conference in 2013.  Every year, they’ve grown in attendance starting with 30 women and men. At the HIMSS16 meetup, at least 100 attendees brought a palpable energy and engaged in a very lively conversation. As Jennifer explained, “I thought it so gratifying the several folks (most of them men) that came up to me afterwards to tell me how surprised they were by the buzz in the room, and how much they appreciated the event. It's important that we continue to create opportunities for our industry to discuss these issues.” Let me close by saying how fortunate I am to work in what I believe to be one of the greatest sectors of the U.S. economy. Health IT experienced an explosive growth during one of the toughest economic periods in recent U.S. history and the attractiveness of our sector grew as IT workers from other industries sought employment in health and healthcare organizations. The point is, now more than ever we in health IT need to live out the promise our field holds for all IT workers regardless of their gender, age, race, etc. It’s too important to do otherwise. An economy and society that actively equips, empowers, compensates, and advances all peoples has a much higher potential to achieve prosperity.  Join Us. Knowledge precedes improvement.  It’s time to make positive change happen.  Please join us.  This blog was first posted on the HIMSS site.

On August 10, I was so excited to share that we had reached another milestone in the Walking Gallery. Five years into our patient rights movement we had reached 400 members!  I even shared the post that lists where everyone lives. I loved the picture blogger chose for the post. It was me and Jess assembling the Walking Gallery in its lego form. A lot of people read that post and reminded me they had moved to a new state or country. I dutifully changed the post for each request. Today I added a new country to the post. I called it Heaven. I placed Jess Jacobs there and cried. Isaac saw me crying and asked me why. I told him Jess Jacobs died. Our friend from D.C. we played legos with and visited in the hospital.   Jess had been fighting for her life for years. You would have never known that from looking at her. She was a statuesque beauty who understood health policy. She was gracious and kind and great at Twitter.      Jess Joined the Walking Gallery in 2012 and her jacket is number 211. "Is she okay?" Her patient story told about her POTS condition.       When I painted her jacket, I depicted one of the times she fell faint to the pavement. She woke to find strangers looking down upon her. She would laugh off such medical adventures and do her job and help her friends. She helped build the lego Walking Gallery and helped prepare for the 2012 gathering in D.C.         In the summer of 2013, I moved to Grantsville and did not get to see Jess as much in person. She began to have more problems with her care and we created a secret group on facebook to help Jess. I recruited lovely friends who live in DC and who had never met Jess before but would come over to check on her and make sure she was okay. Jess reached out to many other close friends and added them to the group so she could have advocates and people to help.         For the past two years I have had to watch from afar as this wonderful woman grew sicker. I watched her fight to keep working, fight to be admitted to hospitals, and fight to be believed.     I watched as so many people fell away from her life as it became clear that she was not getting better.   I asked her to join us at Cinderblocks 2 in May. She said she would love to go but she thought she was probably too sick.    This is the way I would like to remember Jess. I see her at my dining room table building lego mini figures with Isaac.    But I will always see another Jess, as I advocate for better healthcare around the world. I will see her as a patient that the system failed to care for. I will see her struggle and I will fight for change.   I will never forget she was the first to fall. We will miss her always.    This post originally appeared on Regina Holliday's Medical Advocacy blog.

People often ask me how I find time to write a weekly blog with a big, busy CIO job. I tell them all the same thing – it’s a discipline. I try to start early in the week with an idea, draft it one night, come back to it the next night to finalize and then post it on Thursday or Friday morning. Topics are often timely; something strikes me and I tell myself “that will blog”. I add the idea to my running list. This week it included tips on doing presentations for executive groups, personal organization challenges and tips, and what’s possible to accomplish as an interim leader in just 6 months. But this week I had as many as five new ideas but no time to start writing any of them. By Thursday night if I haven’t settled on a topic and started, I’m in trouble. Taking time to write may compete with critical work I need to finish up by the end of the week. This week was one of those weeks. This week started out with a bang.  By 9AM Monday, I was juggling 4 different issues. A system issue after a scheduled weekend service pack upgrade caused problems in our revenue cycle systems. There was an escalated physician report of an access problem over the weekend. Working with my team we could move all but one to closure by the end of the day. It was a week full of meetings and follow-ups squeezed in between. And managing the endless stream of emails. But it was an atypical week with late afternoon/evening meetings and dinners with colleagues every night. This kind of evening schedule impacts one of my other disciplines – nightly exercise. I just have to find the time when I can. We dealt with dissatisfied and frustrated physicians over EMR issues – some that we thought were behind us. We finished prep for our monthly executive IT Steering Committee which included some critical infrastructure presentations on a significant data center investment and disaster recovery planning. This is what a week looks like for CIOs and their leadership team. So the most recent blog topics I have added to my running list will have to wait for future weeks. My blog writing discipline continues. I probably need to go back to my original approach when I started blogging over 2 years ago – decide the topic on the weekend and start the draft on Sunday night before the week kicks into high gear. But this week was one of “those weeks.” Blog originally posted on www.sueschade.com.  

Large employers are taking more control over health care costs and quality by pressuring changes to how care is actually delivered, based on the results from the 2017 Health Plan Design Survey sponsored by the National Business Group on Health (NBGH). Health care cost increases will average 5% in 2017 based on planned design changes, according to the top-line of the study. The major cost drivers, illustrated in the wordle, will be specialty pharmacy (discussed in yesterday’s Health Populi), high cost patient claims, specific conditions (such as musculoskeletal/back pain), medical inflation, and inpatient care. To temper these medical trend increases, large employers are looking to change the way health care is accessed and delivered through funding telehealth (for 90% of companies), providing price transparency tools (among 85% of companies), building and referring workers to Centers of Excellence (in 85% of firms, focused most on transplants, bariatric surgery, joint surgery, heart care, and cancers), and to a lesser extent, promoting accountable care organizations (among about one-fourth of employers). Consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs) will be a universal health insurance plan design by 2020, shown in the second chart. At least 84% of large employers will offer a CDHP option in 2017, and one-third will offer only a CDHP. Most high-deductible health plans in 2017 (92%) will be accompanied by a health savings account (HSA) The median employee cost-sharing amount this year was a $1,600 deductible for employee (single) coverage in a CDHP, and in-network out-of-pocket maximum payments were $4,000. For families, the out-of-pocket max was $7,200 with a $3,200 deductible. Telehealth is expected to be a universally-sponsored service among large employers by 2019, and most companies already use virtual care. One-third of large employers directly contract with telehealth vendors, according to NBGH’s survey. While most employers are offering telehealth services, in the first half of 2016, only 3% of employees had utilized this benefit. Looking to the future, employers are bolstering investments in mental and behavioral health, and in the financial wellbeing of their workforce. Influence physical well-being is a top-three priority among 85% of employers, followed by improvement employee engagement in healthcare decision making (that is, consumerism) for 65% of companies, emotional/mental wellbeing among 59%, and financial security and wellbeing for 58% of employers. Health Populi’s Hot Points:  Large employers are emboldened to drive changes in health care delivery — especially for virtual care via telehealth channels and narrowing networks for high-cost specialty care like transplantation and bariatric surgery via Centers of Excellence. Most employers are also deploying at least one cost transparency tool to support employees’ healthcare consumerism and decision-making chops. However, only 3% of employees have used telehealth services that have been available in the first half of 2016; this is an important proxy for understanding just how “consumerist” employees are with respect to saving money in deductible spending. The consumer-patient’s cost difference  between a virtual vs. in-person visit is significant: a telehealth visit with American Well is currently priced at a low of $49 compared with a face-to-face primary care visit for $95, urgent care for $140, or emergency department admission for $750. NBGH identifies employer tools and programs more companies are offering in 2017, including nurse coaching for care condition management, disease management, lifestyle management, self-service decision support tools, price transparency tools (fast-growing in 2017), and medical decision support/second opinion services. Large employers clearly understand the importance of these tools to support their mass adoption of high-deductible health plans. There’s no consumer-direction without such programs, and less optimal ROI on employers’ significant investments in health insurance without them. This week’s announcement of Accolade receiving a $70 million investment to further scale the company’s healthcare concierge services is an example of the market’s recognition of the importance of these employer-sponsored programs. This is health reform, playing out in the private sector. This blog first appeared at Health Populi.