UI Research Park, The Bioventure Center

I recently started a new business, officially on May 1, 2011, called Angel eCare.  I hope to provide IT services to senior care providers in Iowa, by connecting small providers to the Iowa Health Information Exchange (HIE).  I'm targeting senior care providers such as assisted living, skilled nursing and home health care providers who cannot afford their own IT department and therefore cannot provide our Iowa seniors access to EMRs.

My new office is at the Technology Innovation Center, and the Bioventure Center at the University of Iowa Research Park.  It is a beautiful facility.  I'm hoping we can host one of the Iowa Healthcare Informatics and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) next May.  Here are some photos of the facility so the Iowa Chapter of HIMSS can decide if they'd like to hold their meeting here at the Bioventure Center.

Multi-Purpose Room - seats 60

Multipurpose Room, setup with 30 chairs in roundtable format

Lobby Area

Conference Room #1

Conference Room #2

View of the Lobby, from 2nd Conference Room

The Bioventure Center at UI Research Park has a large parking area in the rear with free parking and is located very close to the Coralridge Mall:

UI Bioventure Center

2500 Crosspark Road

Coralville, IA  52241

The URL for the Bioventure Center, along with my company, and other incubator companies, is here:

http://enterprise.uiowa.edu/researchpark/

GO HAWKS!

Exciting Times for Health Care Business Analytics

There really isn’t any better time to be a ‘health care business analytic’ major than right now.  There are exciting times ahead for those of us interested in health care business analytics.  It's the foundation that  fuels Accountable Care Organizations and the opportunities for business process improvement. 

This week’s essay question is:  Should we be excited about the prospects of creating multiple accountable care organizations in the health care delivery system?”  Whether we are excited about accountable care organizations depends on if we

• ·      are health care service consumers
• ·      are health care providers (primary care Dr., specialists, payers)
• ·      even understand what the term means

The term Accountable care organization (ACO) has come about due to recent health reform legislation to address the current issues of our US health care system : the current health care system is not effective, efficient, nor sustainable.  Today’s US health care system overtly rewards overuse and fragmentation of services. (Mark McClellan, 2010)

ACOs are comprised of groups of health care providers who together are held accountable for achieving measurable quality improvements in the health care services that they provide.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid believe that these quality improvements, in turn, will reduce the rate of spending growth.

What is an Accountable Care Organization?

According to the authors of this Health Affairs report (Mark McClellan, 2010), in most cases, the public and even the providers do not know what an ACO is. By definition, an accountable care organization is a set of providers, and the types of providers in that organization comprising that ACO is flexible.  But, if any given ACO can demonstrate and show verifiable evidence that their group of health care providers improved the care they provided (through better care coordination and delivery) – that ACO group shall receive a “bonus” from Medicare and Medicaid.  This process improvement initiative in the health care system overall will in turn will slow spending growth and improve the health care process for their patients.

Gathering performance improvement metrics on daily tasks, process improvement,  lowering costs which in turn possibly means working harder for less money.  That is not a happy story for a health care provider.

For the general public, this Accountable Care Organization trend is certainly something to be excited about.  Better care, provided more efficiently, and at a lower cost.  It really cannot get any better than that. 

So, in response to the question “should we be excited about the prospects of creating multiple Accountable Care Organizations in the delivery system?”  The answer is:  It depends on who you are.  For me, the “Health Care Business Analytic” Graduate Student, truly exciting times lay ahead.

Works Cited

Mark McClellan, A. N. (2010). A National Strategy To Put Accountable Care Into Practice. Health Affairs. Health Affairs.

 Health Affairs "A National Strategy To Put Accountable Care Into Practice"

Alumni Band - GO HAWKS!

I'm a Hawkeye Marching Band fanatic!  I was a member of the Hawkeye Marching Band from 1984 to 1988.  I participated in bowl games in San Diego and Anaheim California, and the grand daddy of them all the Rose Bowl in 1986.  During my band career, we travelled to Michigan, Ohio State, Indiana and Northwestern.  We travelled to a pre-season game as well, at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, man what a bus ride....  It was an awesome experience, back in the day of Hayden Fry, Chuck Long and the like.

Anyway, I'm a proud Mom of one of the newest band members, my daughter Liz, and looking forward to 8 years of cheering first Liz, then my youngest daughter Tori with the band.  Liz plays the trumpet, Tori plays the mellophone.

Liz brought home a recording of this seasons' marching band performances.  Those of you who are my 'friend' on facebook have seen these already, but for those of you who aren't my facebook friend, i'll post the links here for you to enjoy.

My Alumni Band performance, Homecoming Oct 2010, Iowa vs. Penn State

Liz and the junior band at the Insight Bowl, doing pre-game, but never as good as the old fossil version!

And highlights of the season, the Insight Bowl performance, and the corresponding performances from the regular season at Kinnick Stadium.

GO HAWKS!


Erin

Old People Humor

As most of you know, my Dad is old.  He's 86, I'm his only daughter, and he dumps it all on me.  I love him.  I found this today on You Tube, appropriate for me for this week.  Enjoy!

You Tube - 72 Year Old Comedien

Top 10 Things That Have Changed Since The Last Time I was at Iowa

10.  20 pounds
 9. My classmates aren't old enough to drink with me at the Airliner
 8. Nobody shouted Tastes Great - Less Filling at kinnick Stadium
 7. I think my grey hair looks great!
 6. My professors don't look that old 
 5. cellphones
 4. nobody will sit next to me in the student section, so I have plenty of room
 3. I listen in lecture, and I seem to get it the first time through
 2. pulling an 'all nighter" means I got up twice to use the bathroom



And the #1 thing that has changed since I was an undergrad in 1986


 1. I could be arrested for stalking the freshmen!

Did You Know....

Did you know that only 1 of every 4 IBM employees live in the United States now? the rest are off shore.

Did you know that the off shore rates for software engineering is as low as $15 an hour? That means that the engineer doing the programming takes home $8 or less.

Enough said, it's just a sad thing for companies to be off shoring so much of the technology, hurts everyone in the long run.




Erin

EHRs and RAVEN

I've spent a small portion of my weekend learning about RAVEN and the HL7 Connect programs.  RAVEN is from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and HL7 Connect is a software package from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

RAVEN

RAVEN  (or the Java version jRAVEN) is The Resident Assessment Validation and Entry that provides an option for Nursing Homes to collect and maintain facility, resident and MDS 3.0 Assessment information for subsequent submission to the appropriate state and/or national data repository.  MDS stands for Minimum Data Set, and is data required by CMS to be uploaded by all Nursing Homes.  RAVEN and jRAVEN run on the Windows operating system.

HL7 Connect

HL7 Connect is an open source software package, and was written for the HITECH Act, to enable all health organizations to electronically transmit and share electronic health records.  Due to the recent Meaningful Use legislation, that requires all physicians to populate and upload electronic health records. Meaningful Use is through CMS - The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  Three main components of Meaningful Use are specified:

1. The use of a certified EHR in a meaningful manner, such as e-prescribing.
2. The use of certified EHR technology for electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of health care.
3. The use of certified EHR technology to submit clinical quality and other measures.

"Meaningful Use" means providers need to show they're using certified EHR technology in ways that can be measured significantly in quality and in quantity.


I'm finding it interesting that the RAVEN software and the Minimum Data Set and the HL7 Connect software run on different platforms....   and notice that I didn't say that RAVEN created an EHR, RAVEN creates and MDS report for upload.  I'm on my own mission right now to understand why and understand the differences between the MDS record and the EHR.

I setup RAVEN today here on my laptop, and I'm in the processes of installing HL7 Connect on my server here at home (yes, what a nerd, I do have a unix server at home....)

All this geeking around keeps my mind off my Dad, he's 86 years old, and his health is failing. His brain is fully intact, but his body is giving out on him.  I'm not sure which is worse, as if you're body goes, your mind is fully aware of it.   I'm hoping to keep him comfortable and have a few more weekends of movies, steaks and martini's this spring while I build my servers for this project I'm working on.

Holden Cancer Research Center at the University of Iowa

During a break from my Health Economics class last night, I read the plaque for the dedication of the Holden Cancer Research Center.  It's an amazing building and an amazing gift and I wanted to share it.  If you have ever been to Williamsburg, Iowa, just passing through the town you wouldn't expect there to be a family with $25 million dollars, let along such a generous and giving family at that.



Here's some text from the website:

A landmark $25 million gift from four generations of the Holden family of Williamsburg, Iowa, will provide unprecedented support for cancer research, education and treatment at the University of Iowa. In recognition of this gift, UI officials will request approval from the Board of Regents, State of Iowa, at their September meeting for the naming of the Holden Cancer Center at the UI.

The family's gift, through the UI Foundation, also supports the Roland and Ruby Holden Cancer Research Laboratories in the UI's new Medical Education and Biomedical Research Facility, now under construction on the UI health sciences campus.

The Holden family gift honors the late Roland W. Holden, who died in 1995. Holden founded Holden Foundation Seeds Inc., a corn seed research and genetics company based in Williamsburg, Iowa, 30 miles west of Iowa City, in 1937. His family chose to celebrate his legacy by supporting research and treatment that may eventually cure the disease that took his life.

To the Holden family, I'm sorry for your loss, and thank you for your contribution to science.

Holden Cancer Research Center


Erin

Informatics Program at Iowa

 

I haven't posted in a few days, I have been so busy with my Informatics program homework!  I wanted to share the program for you, because somebody asked me "what the heck is informatics?".

Informatics is the study of computers, people, and data, and how to search for and interpret the data. There is clinical data, obviously, like electronic health records, and business data, like billing records sent back and forth to health insurance companies or medicare and medicaid using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).   My focus is on health care business intelligence, or data searching and interpretation of health business data to facilitate actionable business decisions. I'm focusing on how the new business insights that can be generated from the new EHRs from the recent health care reform laws.  My that does sound academic!

Here is a link to Iowa's Informatics program, it's a short video on the program:

Iowa's Graduate Program in Informatics

Erin

Major Fitzsimmons, My Hero, and the HBO Special

My Dad, Major HT Fitzsimmons, is retired from the Davenport Police Department, and is a real hero of our eastern Iowa community, and not just because he's my Dad. My Dad had one of the toughest jobs in the world, running part of the Davenport Police Department, especially the Detective Bureau, which was responsible for investigating murder cases.

I remember my Dad's face and name in the newspaper quite a bit during my school years for cases under investigation.  I really wasn't too popular in school, but I know it's because I was the cop's  daughter from the newspaper articles, so my Dad tried to keep his name and not make statements to the press.  Even today, he's modest and likes to remain behind the scenes.

The most notable murder case, and the one I recall most vividly growing up, was the Klindt case.  In this case, Joyce Klindt was reported missing in 1983 (I was a High School Junior at the time).  A month later, a torso was found in the Mississippi  river, a torso that had the limbs cut off by a chainsaw (arms, legs, head were missing).

This is one of the most gruesome stories anybody will ever hear of, and it was the first time DNA was used to solve a murder case in Iowa.  William Davis, Scott County prosecutor at the time, calls the case “the grandfather of all DNA cases.”

My Dad was in charge of the Detective Bureau at the time and his team conducted the investigation.  I recall my Mom and Dad talking about events in the community at that time.  I remember my Dad talking about buying a freezer to store remains.   I recall sitting with William Davis at Mac's tavern with my parents, and I recall Mr. Davis attending my wedding years later.  Most of all,  I remember how stressful it was on all of us.   I was in high school in 1983-1984 and the story was in the newpapers and on TV .

In 1995, HBO made a documentary of this murder, and how it was solved.  The episode from HBO and is available for purchase from MedLibrary.org  and is called: The Case of the Unidentified Torso: The murder of Joyce Klindt, identified by just her pelvic bones.

James Klindt, was convicted of murder and spent 20 years in prison for murdering his wife.  James Klindt died just this past November 2010.

You can read more about this Klindt case, how it was  “the grandfather of all DNA cases” at these links:

Case Defines Prosecutor's Career

Klindt Released

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To Blog or Not to Blog

Thank you to those who have given me feedback on my blogging.  I've never done this blogging stuff before, but I decided to give it a try because I'd like to

• keep in touch with my good friends from the past
• keep in touch with my professional colleagues too
• entice everyone to go and take a class in something they truly enjoy
• provide an outlet for my new friends and colleagues to learn more about me
• keep my own log of my adventures into college in my 40s

I had the opportunity to take a couple classes in blogging and social networking, believe it or not, there are some do's and don'ts to this.  The most important take-aways from my study on social networking and blogging are

• social networking is really a required part of your professional life now, get used to it.
• be yourself, both on your personal and professional social networking.
• don't say anything negative, just don't.  Nobody really wants to hear it anyway.
• successful bloggers provide anecdotes on both their personal and professional lives, after all, we're all human; and it makes the blog more interesting

Some of the most successful and interesting blogs I've noted are by

• my friend Paula
• the Lotus Notes design blog
• the Geek Dr.

My friend Paula has been blogging for quite some time, even before there she had a blogging website. She moved to and lived in Slovakia  and emailed me each and every day, her form of blogging at the time.  I found her ordinary life in Slovakia quite fascinating, and Paula is a good writer.  She is one of my inspiration for getting into this blogging activity. I met Paula while I lived in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area.  You can find her blog here:

http://paula-livingontheedge.blogspot.com/

Another good blog is by Mary Beth Raven at IBM, she blogs on Lotus Notes Design.  I'll confess I went to one of her presentations on 'how to blog successfully', and you can find her blog here:


http://www.notesdesignblog.com/


A blog I read regularly is "Life as a Healthcare CIO" by John Halamka, MD, it is very interesting to me, as the content typically relates to healthcare and informatics, you can find his blog here:

http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/

Enjoy your blogs,

Erin

The Clicker; Another Mom on Campus

The Clicker

I had my first experience today with college of the new millenium; as we used what I'd call a TV remote control to answer quiz questions today in class, kinda like a gameshow.  I purchased a $42.95 remote control type device at the Iowa Book Store, then registered the device online with it's serial number and my student id.  Next, at class, we all had to program our clicker to use the same channel to participate in the quiz.  Then, the leader presented quiz questions, and we pressed numbers 1-9 to respond to the quiz question, and our responses were registered at the front laptop.  The screen displayed when we had all responded to each individual question before we moved onto the next.  Just like a gameshow!  Kinda neat.  My Medicare & Medicaid prof (he calls him self Dr. X) gets points this week for being the most ontop of the technology curve, Go Dr. X! :-)

Another Mom on Campus

In my program, I'm taking courses in public health, or the business of health care.  Many of the students are either MHA or MPH graduate students, or Master's of Health Administration, or Master's of Public Health.

Today, I was thrilled to meet another Mom-student in my Medicare & Medicaid course, I'll call her P.  P is the Mom of 4 children, I lost track as she went through them so quickly, but it sounded like 5 year old up to a teenager.

She's in the PhD program in the College of Public Health.  Her background is the same as mine, started her career at a tech company, raised her kids, and now changing careers. She had similar stories on how she had worked for a large technology company, traveled around a lot and built systems for various clients, somehow the business climate shifted, and she moved onto motherhood and other challenges.  She is further along in the program than I am, so now I have someone to go to with questions on how to succeed in academia this semester!  We seemed to be like two peas-n-a-pod and had a nice lunch hour.

We are both on the same team, along with 2 other interesting students.  Our other teammates are unique too, as one is a Pharmacology Economics grad student from China, and the other is a social work undergrad student.


Today's topic in Medicaid and Medicare was 'how Medicare all began' back in 1965.  We talked about the driving forces at Medicare's inception, where the key stakeholders were Unions, the Aged (who were obviously in favor of government backed health insurance for 65+ Americans);  the physician lobbyists of the American Medical Association , and other interest groups, who opposed what they called 'nationalized health insurance' at the time.

We are Spending More and Dying Faster

In my studies this week for my Medicare and Medicaid course, I surfed around and found an article that was not an assigned reading, but very interesting anyway.  The article is called "What Changes In Survival Rates Tell Us About US Health Care", by Peter Muennig and Sherry Glied.

The article is from HealthAffairs.org, which is a blog about Health, Healthcare and Policy.  I have provided the link below.  Essentially this study says that health care reform is desperately needed, because U.S. citizens in comparison to other nations, spend more on health care and yet we live shorter lives.  Muennig and Glied's argument is that the current U.S. health care system is indeed inefficient and not providing good value for our money, and therefore, health care reform is long overdue obviously.

I know I don't like the idea that I spend more $ to live less, when comparing people of my own age in other countries, but that is what Muennig and Glied find in their study.

This article is available for only 2 more weeks 'for free' it says, so read it quick and enjoy.

link ->  What Changes In Survival Rates Tell Us About US Health Care

Erin

Medical Imaging? who Me?

I have had several of my recent friends give me the skeptical eye and ask me "why are you taking that Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging course?"

The answer lies in my background (before I met most of you!), so let me tell you.

When I graduated from the University of Iowa, with a BS degree in computer science, Hewlett-Packard hired me right out of school, and I moved to the Bay Area.  I was an engineer, on embedded systems, making patches, analyzing system core dumps, organizing trade show exhibits, and teaching courses in operating system internals and driver writing. I was an operating system engineer, which included unix.  So in short terms, I programmed devices, including medical devices, and I understand at the root level how the MRI system is controlling all of the devices that capture the MRI image.  I have been involved with unix systems since 1989. Man, that makes me sound OLD! :-)

While in California, my Mom became chronically ill with a disease called COPD, and during that time I also had a child; my Mom was too sick to travel to California to visit us.  That, along with sitting in my car for 2 hours 1 way to work with an infant.... incented me to move back to Iowa and take a position as an engineer at MCI.

While at MCI, I programmed a network controller, an IVR, which provided phone services which included  1-800-Collect. I'm sure you have heard of that.  I was one of the lead architects of that system, which carried other traffic as well, 7 million calls per day in fact.  During my time at MCI, I had the opportunity to work on video compression and encoding technologies called H.323 and H.324, and working with IBM Research, built a prototype of a service very similar to what we now know as Skype.

I credit my Mom for all she did to help me in these endeavors, as I travelled ALOT back then, and my 2 girls loved to go to Gramma's house while I was away for work.  My Mom survived over 10 years with her COPD, and I think she did because she knew how important it was for her to take care of her favorite grandgirls.  My Mom died in 2006 at the age of 79 of COPD and lung cancer, and I really miss her.

My Mom, Liz and Tori, in 2005 before she died.

So, The fMRI course is particularly interesting to me, because I used to program devices, including medical devices, and work on video encoding and compression.   Reminds me of being 20 again I guess, and I think it's alot of fun!  :-)

MERF - Medical Education and Research Facility

The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is one of the largest state teaching hospitals in the US.  I am taking Health Economics, and I feel really lucky to have class at the MERF, or the Medical Education and Research Facility:

UI Healthcare Fast Facts

It's probably one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen.

In Health Economics this week (if I may overly paraphrase and still get this right!) we talked about how the increasing cost of health care is outpacing the annual domestic gross national product (GDP).  Health care costs are increasing to such an extent, that if the economy and the health care system were to continue to run at this same pace, that Americans would spend more $ on health care, and discontinue buying other goods (like housing, food, cars, etc).

That is quite an interesting forecast, as I'll be 85 years old in the year 2040.

"Hollowing Out the Middle"

This fall, my daughter Liz took a Social Psych course at the U of Iowa, and brought home the book "Hollowing Out the Middle, The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America" by Patrick J Carr and Maria J Kefalas.

I was deeply moved by reading this book, and since I've been on campus for just a week, nearly all of my professors have mentioned this at the first class (I'll paraphrase...) "we're going to educate all of you highly intelligent folks in (pick a subject) so you can leave and make lots and lots of money!" 

"Hollowing Out The Middle" is an excellent book, if you're from Iowa or have roots in Iowa.  In 2001, the MacArthur Foundation funded the 2 sociologists/authors of this book to travel to and live in Iowa to gain understanding of exodus of young people from rural America, like Iowa.

The authors make up town names to protect the innocent, but at some points in the book, I'd guess that the sociologists picked a small town somewhere between Manchester and Dubuque.

The sociologist segment the citizens of the Iowa community that they meet into these groups:

• The Stayers - the working class
• The Seekers - Kids that join the military and then come home
• The Returners - Those of us who left Iowa, and then came back (like me)

It's a good book, and a quick read.  The sociologist's findings are that the culture of Iowa is to send our kids to the state universities (Iowa or Iowa State), educate them well, and encourage them to leave Iowa and pursue fabulous lucrative careers.  After all, any Iowa parent is so proud to have their son or daughter at Iowa or Iowa State. Once our best and brightest leave Iowa, they raise families away from Iowa, enjoy the amenities of life that the extra cash provides, and never want to return. Nobody wants to uproot a child from school or leave their friends behind, moving is hard.  That's the obvious and right thing for the best and the brightest people to do, move away and find a great job.  There's nothing wrong with that, and that's ok.  Iowa will never have the great weather, beautiful mountains, or the fabulous beach amenities which draw both young and old people away.

The findings of the sociologists also say that Iowa should invest in the people who want to stay: the working class.  Economic development in Iowa should focus on businesses where employees have either a high school education or a community college education, as those are the folks who will stay here in this state. Makes sense.

I found the book very interesting;  this was something I already knew as I live it every day.  I am grateful I have had the career opportunities here in this state that I have had, but I have found it quite a struggle many times as companies come and go from Iowa and a regular pace, and will most likely continue to do so.  As an MBA, I found it easy to start and run a business here, and I enjoyed having my own business most of my career.  But, I am sure I am not the average Mom you would find walking the streets of these small towns, as  I'm a single mom with a master's degree in business administration. I often feel like a fish out of water.  But, I do love it here in Iowa.

If you'd like to read "Hollowing Out the Middle" you can learn more about the book at this website and purchase it online:  

Hollowing Out the Middle, The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America"

Functional Magentic Resonance Imaging for Dummies

My first week of class has been really cool, I think I appreciate these unique opportunities more now that I'm an old fart than when I was a teenager.

Today's campus highlight for me was the 1st functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) course at the U of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.  Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging is used in cognitive neuroscience research, meaning, research of your brains functioning when stimulated by different things (sight, smell, hearing, touch, etc).  Researchers will come up with studies like "what does your brain do when you listen to music?" and then a subject will lie on the table, listen to music, and an MRI will measure the the increased blood flow to different parts of the brain stimulated by the music. U of I researchers will then conduct their research studies using the images. It sounds just that simple, but I'm sure it is not.

A current research project that was recently publicized is one by a U of I researcher on alcoholism:
MRI Research on Alcoholism

Here is a photo of the Siemen's MRI at the Magnetic Resonance Imaging lab that we toured today:

I won't try to go review all of the physics equations on magnetism and aligning protons to measure RF energy to generate images  .... as I'm sure I did not grasp all of it either.  But, some of the light and fun things we learned today was that the big donut contains the magnet that is always 'on'.  The magnet is so powerful, it can suck something as big as a chair or a floor buffer inside of it (as shown below when a custodian left the floor buffer in a similar lab), so please use caution when in the lab was the message.  Here's a photo of such a phenomenon that Dr. Magnotta showed us today:

 

Here is a video on what happens if something like an oxygen bottle is brought into the MRI scanning area:

Oxygen Bottle in the MRI Video

We also covered how the MRI works on the inside, as shown in this diagram:

Essentially, the subject is positioned between the magnets, and because human's are predominately made up of water, the magnets cause the protons in your hydrogen molecules to align, the aligned molecules are generating RF (radio frequency) energy, and this RF energy is picked up by the RF detector of the MRI, and these signals are digitized into the MRI image file and stored on the computer.  

Frequency of various types of waves (from strongest to weakest, the ^ means 10 to the power of X...)

• X-rays ≈ 10^19,
• Ultra-violet ≈ 10^16
• Radio ≈ 10^7 (MRI)
• Visible Light ≈ 5x10^4

X-ray energy is a trillion times more energetic, and thus is more damaging to your body. Radio waves are not ionizing (cancer causing), the strength of signal in MR comes from the number of protons and not the high energy.

If you'd like to learn more about the MR Research Facility at the University of Iowa, you can go to this link:

University of Iowa MR Research Facility

Thursday January 20th

Not much has changed since I was last in college, which I believe the last time I was on campus for a course was 1991 in downtown San Jose, at San Jose State University.  I recall college being a lot warmer than this, as today in Iowa City, it's about 14 degrees, and walking everywhere, while tremendous exercise, is colder than hell, and there is something to be said for working in an office :-)

I've met with my advisor at the College of Public Health, and everything is a green light 'go'.  I've already completely enjoyed my first week of academia, away from the office drill, so there's no looking back.  If everyone thinks they're going to be working at a job every single day of their life between age 22 and age 70, your nuts.  Give yourself a break, breathe the fresh air and live a little!  For me, this is going to be a great semester!

For my degree, the plan is to be totally on campus this semester and take all the courses I can that are only offered on campus for this program, and then because of the curriculum for this particular program, I can complete the degree off campus with online courses that are left if I wish and go back to work this summer.  What a deal, back to work....  :-(

So, today's most interesting factoid for me came from my Medicare and Medicaid homework readings, most notably, from an article 
Rowe & Kahn (1998) " Breaking down the myths of aging  "

Where Rowe & Kahn say there are 6 Myths to aging:
1. To be old is to be sick
2. You can't teach an old dog new tricks
3. The horse is out of the barn
4. The secret to successful aging is to choose your parents wisely
5. The lights may be on, but the voltage is low
6. The elderly don't pull their own weight

And in summary, they say that even though we're all getting older, we're not getting sicker, dumber, less productive, and nor are we giving up sex! That is good news, isn't it?   - lol

Day #2 of Student Life

Day #2 as a college student was quite boring actually....  as it was spent doing mother duties rather than student activities.  First and foremost on the agenda was to get Tori enrolled at Prairie Point 9th Grade Academy.  We made it to south Cedar Rapids in spite of the blizzard, and Tori took her placement exams and she was able to get her course schedule in place.

While Tori was placement testing, Liz (my daughter and fellow college student ) and I went to the University Book store and purchased our books!  Liz bought Biology and so forth, and I purchased my book for one of my other courses "The US Health care System", which is an overview, soup to nuts, of our healthcare system. This course is one of the first courses of the College of Public Health at Iowa that covers the basic structure and operations of our US Health care System, just like the course title says.

I am also taking a SAS course, which is a statistical package used for data analysis, but was unable to ascertain if a book was available for this class or not, as the instructor had not yet posted anything on ICON, ICON stands for Iowa's Course Online system for students, and is the portal for professor/student communications at Iowa.

I meet with my advisor on Wednesday morning, as it appears I'm charting new territories with 'Health Management Analytics' as a major at Iowa, and I need to understand the prerequisites for a course I'd really like to take which is "Health Insurance and Managed Care".  And, I could not find any courses with the topic of 'marketing' for health care in the college of Public Health, as marketing is offered by the Tippie College of Business; (and I already have a master's degree in business.....) so we need to chat about that too.

In The Beginning....

This is my first post of my first day as a on campus graduate student of the Health Informatics Interdisciplinary program at the University of Iowa.  I'm 45 years old, and the mother of 2 beautiful and talented daughters.  One is a freshman at Iowa studying Chemistry, and the other is a freshman at Prairie Point 9th Grade Academy studying teenager mahem.  As I see it, this is the first day of the 2nd half of my life (assuming I'm heading on to age 90 or so), and there is no time like the present to get started.

My focus in my studies has several names in the industry depending on who you ask:

• Health Care Business Intelligence (BI)

• Health Care Administration Analytics or Informatics

and specifically, I'd like to focus on sales and marketing (customer relationship management) and financial performance (managed care, medicare/medicaid), so the business side of health care.  


I'm really excited to say, I have a a lot of homework already assigned!  Woo hoo! I will not bore you with all my homework, but I hope to pick a focus area each week and blog about it.   Today, I'll tell you about my Medicare and Medicaid course (as he's the first professor to post the syllabus).
I hope to blog these experiences regularly to inspire those of you to follow your dreams and embark on an adventure such as this on your own.

This week, the learning objective in the Medicare and Medicaid course is to

Characterize the aging population and review patterns of health service use

some of the readings are 'surfing' assignments (my hasn't school changed!) and are focused on statistics involving  'old people'

http://www.agingstats.gov/

http://www.aoa.gov

            http://www.healthyagingprograms.com/index.asp

Next week for this course, we have a field trip to Chicago to visit the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association.

http://www.aha.org/aha/about/index.html

            http://www.ama-assn.org/