Building Unity Farm - Creating a Brand

As we move from the farm building stage to the farm operations stage, Kathy and I are turning our attention to the basics of running our farming business.   We've filed articles of incorporation (Unity Farm LLC), created a formal land management plan for review by the town of Sherborn, built basic processes for recording income/expenses, documented options for selling our products and formulated a multi-year strategic plan leading to full...[Readmore]

Affiliation Planning

Many healthcare organizations  are discovering that accountable care reimbursed via global captitated risk contracts requires more primary care physicians and a more tightly coupled delivery network including suburban hospitals, home care, and long term care.   Affiliations, mergers, and acquisitions are accelerating to meet these needs.From an IT perspective how are to respond to this organizational change with agility and efficacy?We...[Readmore]

Connecting the Meditech Hospitals in Massachusetts

Yesterday I joined several Massachusetts CIOs at a Meditech healthcare information exchange kickoff meeting.   Here are the slides we used.Meditech has chosen to do the right thing - support the Direct protocol without requiring a vendor specific HISP, an interoperability "subscription" or transaction fees.    Nationwide, any of Meditech's Meaningful Use Stage 2 certified platforms - Magic 5.66, Client/Server 5.66, or  6.07  can...[Readmore]

Building Unity Farm - Emergency Preparedness

In the month of June, we've had 10 inches of rain at Unity Farm (to view our weather station data click here).Although our paddocks, pastures, and trails are normally dry, we've accumulated water in ways that impacts our ability to care for the animals.  The picture above shows one of our paddocks after a deluge of rain.   A manure pile that is under water is a bad thing.What did we do?   I purchased a 1/2 horsepower submersible sump...[Readmore]

The June HIT Standards Committee

The June HIT Standards Committee focused on novel transport standards for patient mediated exchange, an overview of patient/family engagement tools, updates on formulary downloads, use cases for image sharing, and lab ordering standards.Dixie Baker and David McCallie presented the NWHIN Power Team review of the emerging transport standards for consumer exchanges that I believe will accelerate all types of interoperability in the next few years -...[Readmore]

Making a Difference

Although I usually reserve Thursday for personal blogs, Father's Day was a time for reflection that enabled me to put aside the endless emails, operational tribulations, and budget season stresses to think about what really matters.In my 51 years, 2013 marked the first time I've had no father with me on Father's Day.  For the first time, I've taken on the mantle of "alpha" father for the family.I celebrated Father's day with my wife, daughter...[Readmore]

Building Unity Farm - Little Glamour, Lots of Laundry

My wife and I owned and operated a small winery on the Marin/Sonoma border in Northern California when we were in our 20's - from 1986-1991.   When I told my colleagues at the time that I ran a winery, they commented on the romance, art, and elegant lifestyle it implied.   It was agriculture.  It was hot, sweaty, and dusty.   You could make a small fortune in the wine business - as long as you started with a large fortune....[Readmore]

The Healthcare Information Technology Maturity Model

Previously I wrote about Frameworks for IT Management, including the Capability Maturity Model.Recently, I collaborated with Intel Corporation, HIMSS Analytics and Innovation Value Institute to evaluate the BIDMC IS organization and better understand our strengths and weaknesses. Here's an overview of the processThe report evaluated our ability to manage IT like business, manage the budget, manage our capabilities, and manage our portfolio of projects...[Readmore]

A Social Security Interoperability Update

A few years ago, I wrote about the groundbreaking Social Security Administration automated disability adjudication system, Megahit.Patient sign a consent in their local social security office and that consent is digitally sent to BIDMC.   The appropriate medical information needed to support disability claims is automatically assembled and cryptographically transmitted to SSA.Here are a few stats on the SSA/BIDMC partnership.  Since our...[Readmore]

Building Unity Farm - A Day in June

And what is so rare as a day in June?   Then, if ever, come perfect days;Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,   And over it softly her warm ear laysJAMES RUSSELL LOWELLUnity Farm is at the peak of growth now, fueled by warm days, cool nights, and Spring rains.The Bluebird Meadow, pictured above, is filled with tall grasses and wildflowers.   The three bluebird nest boxes I built are filled with growing chicks.The...[Readmore]

Presenting the Security Plan to the Board

Today I presented our multi-year information security plan to the BIDMC Board Committee on Compliance, Audit and Risk. Here is the presentation I used.Following our February external review of security policies and technologies, we developed a planning process, and a complete multi-year plan with timelines, budgets, and staffing requirements.The plan contains 14 work streams, each of which has several components.   Here's a sample work stream...[Readmore]

Massachusetts HIE Update

Yesterday, the HIT Council met to review Massachusetts Healthcare IT progress.Here is the presentation we used.The meeting began with a presentation from Holyoke Medical Center, describing an ideal subnetwork - a local HIE that meets the needs of local stakeholders while also connecting to the state HIE, enabling any authorized stakeholder in the Commonwealth to send and receive summaries to/from the Holyoke medical community.Next, I gave an update...[Readmore]