Did your team attend #WHCC15? Let me know what you thought @aweixler!
Last week, over a thousand healthcare leaders passionate about the rapid changes occurring in the industry converged on our nation’s capital to attend the 12th Annual World Health Care Congress & Exhibition. The four day event, held at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel in northwest Washington, DC, featured compelling keynote sessions from visionaries, innovators, and administrators as well as numerous breakout sessions where industry experts addressed areas of interest to the attendees including the long overdue shift of healthcare to a more consumer-centric focus.
Event attendees from across the country had several different tracks they could follow: Health System & Hospital, Health IT, and Health Plan & Payer. One of the most commonly espoused themes from the speakers was that while there are mountains of data all across healthcare, leaders are realizing that in the data there are powerful insights for improving many aspects of the industry, and simply knowing where to focus is only the first part of the solution.
“Big data challenges can be solved. The more important problem is what you are going to do with the data to improve healthcare,” stated distinguished speaker Dr. Victor Dzau, President of the Institute of Medicine and former CEO of Duke University Health System.
hc1.com CEO Brad Bostic (@bradbostic) and St. Vincent Seton Specialty Hospital CEO Troy Reiff (@ttreiff) co-pressented one of the hottest session's of the event, entitled “Bringing the Amazon Experience to Healthcare.” The session drew the most attention of the event with a standing room only audience packed into the overflowing room. Bostic and Reiff discussed how hc1.com sees Healthcare Relationship Management as the solution to delivering on a promise of personalizing the healthcare experience for providers and patients. hc1.com also was an exhbitor at the event and attracted a steady stream of interested attendees looking for ways to improve their organizations.
In the final keynote address of the conference, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, discussed his thoughts on the change needed in healthcare, how technology can help assist these changes, and how to avoid obstacles that could slow or prevent real change from occurring. One quote that really stuck was “Don’t let the prison guards of the past keep you from change” which refers to those legacy people, systems, and entities that are holding on so tightly to the past that they prevent organizations from transforming. Mr. Gingrich also discussed the need for technology to help solve the challenge of maintaining continuity of care for patients as the delivery channels shift from traditional medicine to retail stores, medical clinics, telemedicine, and other more consumer-friendly points.
Overall, WHCC 2015 was highly informative and inspirational. Did your team attend WHCC? Let me know what you thought @aweixler!
