Doc IT specialists get their own boot camp

Physician information-technology specialists, whose numbers are growing, will be attending a boot camp this week at the Physician-Computer Connection Symposium, the annual convention of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems in Ojai, Calif.

The new three-day training program for physicians hoping to become chief medical information officers or healthcare chief information officers started Sunday. It is a joint project of AMDIS and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.

“You would have been strung up just a couple of years ago saying the CMIO is going to take the CIO's job,” said Dr. William Bria, AMDIS' president. “The reality is that a number of our colleagues are now moving into these positions.”

The training program faculty includes Bria and Russell Branzell, CEO of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.

On the opening day of the AMDIS regular conference Wednesday, KLAS Enterprises, a health IT market research firm, will release the results of its survey with AMDIS on the impact of electronic health records on patient care. Other presentations during the symposium, which runs through Friday, will include an update on federal health IT policy from Dr. Jacob Reider, deputy national coordinator in HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. There also will be sessions by AMDIS members on leveraging federal meaningful-use requirements for quality-of-care improvement, data analytics, patient engagement in informatics, and computerized clinical-decision support.

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