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