What I Saw at the Show: HIMSS 2016

The annual HIMSS Conference – – held last week in Las Vegas – – gathered over 40,000 health IT professionals, clinicians, executives, and vendors from around the world to share knowledge and catch up with everything new in the field. It’s an amazing opportunity to connect with thousands of vendors and a full spectrum of pros in the industry.

This year was certainly no exception. While putting serious step-count mileage on my FitBit, I saw and heard things that make me confident that 2016 is going to be yet another year of startling growth in the healthcare payments space.

Primary observations:

1. Patient collections was a major focus for many vendors — everything from texting to mobile payments to various billing options and portals — with integration of patient payment tools in many workflows and touchpoints. Payment processing on the back-end is super critical too.
2. Electronic transactions continue to grow, but, alas, paper is still a problem, including EOBs. See our cool paper conversion technology called Opti-Lift™ Technology.
3. Data Collection and Collaboration is getting pretty spectacular. I saw more than a couple demonstrations of visual data generators that made short work pf determining, for instance, which claims are likely to be denied, and which denied claims have the best chance of being overturned. If you’re a fan of Star Trek, you’ll love the newest visual interfaces being developed.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course. The industry is trying to find a balance between new, exciting technologies, practical collections, and revenue generation!