If it really is “all about the Benjamins,” then the importance of the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s vision, “To be the indispensable resource for healthcare finance,” becomes clear. After being held in Vegas last year, HFMA’s Annual National Institute (ANI) 2013 conference returns to the Sunshine State; it will be held June 16-19 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.
One of the most important topics to be discussed at the event will certainly be the cost concerns of transitioning from ICD-9 to ICD-10, from 14,000 to 68,000 codes, which is federally mandated to be completed by October 2014. The American Medical Association estimates the administrative costs for physicians will be $87,000 to $2.7 million per practice – far higher than initially thought – plus potential losses in reimbursement due to incorrect coding.
If gleaning information about how to better cope with the logistics and costs of ICD-10 implementation is your only reason for attending HFMA’s ANI conference, it will be well worth it. And the event offers much more.
The four-day convention will comprise seminars, workshops, breakout sessions, keynote speakers, vendors in the exhibition hall, plenty of networking opportunities and even a golf outing.
Speakers include author Jim Collins on building a “truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous and fast-moving times”; coach Joe Gibbs on motivating your team through adversity; consultant Jon Kingsdale on how health insurance exchanges will affect providers; Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Robert Kolodgy on transformations in the payer-provider relationship; former CMS administrator Don Berwick on improving delivery across the industry; and Deloitte’s Paul Keckley with a preview of how payment and delivery models will change over the coming decade.
Why does this annual gathering matter? Kevin Freiberg, Ph.D., the best-selling co-author of “Nanovation,” explained why when he spoke at last year’s convention:
“What if someone in the room … figured out the model for moving from reimbursement-based medicine to values-based, evidence-based medicine?
“What if we started to say ‘What if?’ instead of ‘Yeah, but’? If you’re going to question the unquestionable, you’ve got to trade ‘yeah, but’ for ‘what if?’ and ‘why not?’ And when people push back on your crazy ideas: ‘Why not us? Why not here? Why not now?’
“What if we started to truly incentivize those health systems that linked and connected caregivers with iPhone-empowered patients who are connected via technology and the cloud in an integrated web of inclusion that ultimately ends up in a tailored plan for every patient so one size doesn’t fit all? What if we rewarded that? Are we willing to ask ‘What if?’”
For more on the conference, check out the cover story sidebar and the Industry Watch column in this issue. See you in Orlando.
