Hello again from Baltimore. I can't decide whether to be excited or freaked out about everything that has been discussed so far. I guess I'll choose excited... the changes that are coming will be affecting us all, and I think that events like this put us in a much better place so that we can survive, or maybe even thrive, from it.
I just finished Rosemarie Nelson's presentation, "Positively Transform the practice with Web-based technology". If you missed it, I encourage you to pull up the presentation notes online and check out some of the links. There is a plethora of great "bolt-on" tools available to help with revenue cycle, patient flow, and other physician practice issues... the cool part is that many of them are now free or at a very low cost thanks to the evolution of "the cloud" and devices like smart phones and tablets.
My other favorite presentation so far was Dave Gans' "Assess your practice's readiness for healthcare reform and a transformed health system". This was another one of those "treasure chest" sessions where you simply have to go back and reread your notes and the slides. There were so many great tips on ways that savvy practices can leverage reform changes to their maximum benefit (or minimum pain)! Dave has a lot of his materials up online at mgma.com for free or at a very low cost (sound familiar?), so if you missed the presentation or couldn't come out to the conference, his stuff is still quite accessible to MGMA members.
OK, time to talk to some vendors and turn in my bingo card. Hope you are all having fun and learning a lot!
-Greg