Recap of MEDITECH Live 2023 from John Haffty
Haffty Consulting is excited to provide our audience with a very special “guest” blogger today! The one and only John Haffty recently attended the MEDITECH Live event in Foxboro last week as a “friend of MEDITECH”, and he graciously agreed to share his thoughts and recap of the event highlights for Haffty Consulting and the MEDITECH community. Here are John’s thoughts around last week’s meetings….
Remember the Navin, Haffty newsletter for the MEDITECH community? I miss sharing some observations and insights that over the years, many of you found useful. For those who are new to this, welcome and hope you find this useful as well. I had the privilege of attending the recent MEDITECH Live event and wanted to share some thoughts, particularly for those unable to attend:
It is clear that MEDITECH and Epic remain as the only viable choices for hospitals for an EHR. When MEDITECH posts presentations from this event, check out the opening address and view the slides from Cathy Turner, MEDITECH's Chief Executive for Marketing and Nursing, showing KLAS scores and MEDITECH's success in the marketplace. In addition, there was a slide showing where MEDITECH has released some advances ahead of Epic in some significant areas of development and collaboration with industry partners. You might consider using these for internal presentations to your executives or board of directors to reinforce the wisdom of their MEDITECH decision.
One of the benefits of attending these events in person is the chance to speak with colleagues and friends. One of my former Navin, Haffty clients, a site where we partnered on the implementation of Expanse a few years ago, shared a discussion on cost of ownership of MEDITECH vs. Epic. As part of this hospital's decision making, their board of directors insisted on a 10 year cost of ownership study and brought in one of the “Big Four” consulting companies to conduct this. The results he shared with me were that over a 10 year period, MEDITECH costs were 60% lower than they would have been had they selected Epic! Not only is this hospital happy with MEDITECH (as well as with Navin, Haffty as its partner) but found themselves doing so for significantly less cost.
One of the major development directions for MEDITECH involves AI. As you are all aware, AI is dominating much of the technology news across all industries. There were multiple presentations on this topic but check out the section of the opening address by Rachel Wilkes, MEDITECH's Director of Marketing as well as the joint presentation with Google on “Advancing AI in Healthcare: The Power of Collaboration. MEDITECH is field testing its first application of generative AI at a hospital in the next few weeks. Your hospital leadership will be comforted knowing that MEDITECH is in the forefront of practical and safe application of this new technology in partnership with Google!
One final thought: Thursday's keynote speaker was Amer Kaissi, a professor at Trinity College in San Antonio and author of Humbitious. Please check out his presentation as it was one of the few you see at any event where there are many recommendations you can use immediately to become a more effective leader. More than 100 attendees lined up afterwards to get a copy of his book. I can't recall seeing such a reaction to any presentation.
Finally, Haffty Consulting has recently been formed by three of the most important and capable former members of Navin, Haffty and Associates (NHA). Let me be clear that I have retired and am not involved with them other than as a friend who is available for occasional advice. The company includes my son, David Haffty, (founder of Haffty Consulting and where the name of the company comes from) along with David LaFontaine and Shelly Noyes, two of my most valued executives. NHA had a reputation for integrity, quality and responsiveness and an exclusive focus on the MEDITECH market. Since I sold NHA over 3 years ago, many have commented that the MEDITECH market has had a noticeable void. I encourage you to check out Haffty Consulting as they are recreating the culture and rebuilding the team that made NHA so highly regarded in the MEDITECH community.