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Dear WEDI Members,

When we gather this May in beautiful San Diego, it will be the 28 th time the healthcare industry has come together for WEDI’s annual Spring Conference. So much has changed in that time, but one thing has remained constant – WEDI’s drive to better efficiency and quality through healthcare technology.

I hope you all take the opportunity to join some of the working meetings from some of our Workgroups and Subworkgroups that are taking place onsite on Monday, May 20. This is a prime opportunity to get a taste for what’s happening “behind the scenes” at WEDI. Each of our Workgroups is incredibly welcoming for anyone to sit in these sessions, so please make plans to join one or more. We’d love to have you!

Also happening on Day 1, we have a special “FHIR 411: Zero to 60 in Three Months” session. This will be an insightful session with actionable information for anyone looking for best practices on getting your organization up and running with the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Standard in 90 days or less. You can expect more from this new WEDI education offering. More information. More valuable experience. More acceleration for your organization’s capabilities as you consider using FHIR APIs to change the way information is exchanged between payers and providers.

And as you’ll see in the agenda below, we have sessions covering a broad range of topics, but that all are critical issues in health IT today. Our membership is a compilation of a cross-section of the healthcare industry – doctors, hospitals, health plans, laboratories, pharmacies, clearinghouses, dentists, vendors, government regulators and other industry stakeholders. And as such, we pride ourselves on bringing these entities together to collaboratively address the issues impacting health IT. Our Spring Conference will do just that – I hope you all can join us!

Additionally, go ahead and mark your calendars now for our Summer Forum happening July 30-31, 2019 at the ADA Conference Center in Chicago and the Winter National Conference happening December 2-4, 2019 in Washington, D.C. There are lots of great educational and networking opportunities ahead in 2019 for our WEDI membership! 

Best regards,
Charles Stellar
WEDI President & CEO
Have you seen the latest speakers added for WEDI’s Spring Conference? Check out the agenda at a glance below and register early for your seat in these incredible sessions!
Last month, at the HIMSS Global Conference and Exhibition, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) announced the Interoperability and Patient Access, and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology announced the proposed rules on Interoperability, Information Blocking, and the ONC Health IT Certification Program.  

Since this announcement, WEDI offered several webinars so that members could have a deeper dive into the proposed rules and are underway in the assessment process and preparing for the WEDI response to the NPRM to meet the early May deadline. Members have devoted a great deal of time and expertise in crafting WEDI’s response, led by WEDI’s Chair Jay Eisenstock and the team of board members representing providers, payers and vendors, using the valuable input from committees and workgroups.  

We look forward to working closely with Administrator Verma and Dr. Rucker in providing our comments and recommendations for improvement in the proposed rules considering our stakeholders comments.  
A Conversation with Women Leaders in HIT
Monday, April 22, 2019 (2:00-3:00pm ET)
Webinar

Have you ever seen a woman in a leadership role and wondered how they got to their position? What inspired them in their career? Wouldn’t it be great to ask them their opinion on important issues? 

WEDI is giving you the opportunity to meet and hear the stories of various women leaders in HIT. Alexandra (Alix) Goss is vice president and senior consultant at Imprado/DynaVet Solutions. She is also a member of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and co-chairs the Subcommittee on Standards. 

Robin Thomashauer is president of CAQH and has overseen their work with the Committee on Operating Rules for Information Exchange (CAQH CORE), CAQH ProView, EnrollHub, and the CAQH Index. 

Join us for a conversation with Alix and Robin as we talk about their careers, what motivates them, and their perspectives on HIT’s progress. 
Acknowledgements 101 Webinar
Tuesday, May 7, 2019 (3:00-4:00 p.m. ET)

Join us as we work through the history, regulations, purpose, scope, work flow, and transaction functions. A certificate of education is available for this webinar. WEDI is hosting this webinar FREE for members , and non-members are also welcome to
attend for a cost of $199.
Care Delivery Redesign Using Health IT
Wednesday, May 8, 2019 (3:00-4:00 p.m. ET)


The changing economics of healthcare is altering the traditional payer-provider business model. Provider consolidation, team-oriented and accountable care delivery, and emerging alternative payment models (APMs) are requiring all stakeholders to redefine and redesign. Quality, value and payment have begun to intersect. Using technology as a change agent, plans must now shift from long-established practices of managing healthcare – resource-focused – to managing health through member-focused and payer-provider aligned processes. This session will introduce and investigate shared and owned technologies and processes that align with industry mega-trends emerging from consumer expected value-based care.
 
Join Adele Allison, a leading policy expert, to gain insight into growing trends, technical needs and administrative challenges under emerging economic models, which are transforming plan roles from simple cost containment to health-value management.
 
By the end of the presentation, attendees will be able to:
1.   Lead the discussion with others as to the value-proposition established through management of health value.
2.   Articulate the role of technology and related processes to achieve health value management.
3.   Formulate strategies in that align with mega-trends for health outcomes, quality and value measurement to drive healthcare economics.
 
A certificate of education is available for this webinar. WEDI is hosting this webinar
FREE for members , and non-members are also welcome to attend for a cost of $199. 
All of our workgroups have special projects and activities underway, here’s just a brief highlight of a few:

  • The Remittance Advice and Payment SWG has completed the first draft of the Provider Adjustments in the Electronic Remittance Advice paper, which is now going through the formatting and approval process. Our SWG will be meeting face to face at the Spring Conference, and will be presenting two sessions at the conference. We hope to see you there!
  • The Eligibility & Benefits SWG had an EDI101 E&B webinar that was successful. We are currently working on the Issue Brief content for the “Did ya know you could that!? (with the 270/271)”
  • The Provider Information subworkgroup is creating two surveys, one to be sent to the providers and one to the payers both seeking information on what current provider data is being requested and supplied and what additional provider data do each feel should be requested.
  • The Privacy and Security Workgroup is preparing a survey for members of the workgroup to assess our priorities for the next year. We are also reviewing the ONC and CMS regulations to determine the next steps for the workgroup on engaging in privacy and security policy developments. 
  • The Telehealth Workgroup hosted an interactive webinar on March 28 to review the findings of their survey of providers, payers, and patients on their perceptions and use of telehealth and barriers to the broader adoption of telehealth. The workgroup will begin drafting their next work product at the April meeting and will be hosting a breakout session at the spring WEDI conference to explore the values of telehealth and considerations for implementation and return on investment in telehealth programs.
WEDI has an incredible group of member organizations that recognize the value our organization brings to them professionally, as a company and as an industry advocate.
Here are some of our newest members. Please join us in welcoming them!
Interested in finding out which other organizations value WEDI membership just as much as you do? View our full listing of WEDI Members here.
At the HIMSS 2019 Annual Conference, Roberta Mullin of HealthcareNOW Radio talked to newly appointed Board Chair of WEDI, Jay Eisenstock about the organization’s current priorities. To listen to the HIMSS19 highlight visit,  HealthcareNOW Radio.
In one of our latest videos taken at the WEDI National Conference, Dr. Jack Lewin, Board of Directors of National Coalition on Healthcare puts value-based care into the spotlight.
Visit the WEDI Vimeo Channel to view our entire video library!
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If you are a WEDI Corporate Member organization and would like to have your press releases included in a future edition of the WEDI Monthly Newsletter, please email with a link to your press release to [email protected].
The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) is the leading authority on the use of health IT to improve healthcare information exchange in order to enhance the quality of care, improve efficiency and to reduce costs of the American healthcare system. Formed in 1991 by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), WEDI was named in the 1996 HIPAA legislation as an advisor to HHS and continues to fulfill that role today.
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