SAN DIEGO – The members of America’s Health Insurance Plans assemble June 3-5 for their annual meeting – Institute 2009 – with health reform center stage.

 If health reform is at the center, information technology surely has a star role.

“What’s different this time is health reform,” said Robert Zirkelbach, AHIP’s director of strategic communications. “It’s right in the middle of the healthcare reform debate in Washington.”

He noted that information technology will be a key part of the conference and that it also has played a critical role in recent weeks as AHIP participated in discussions on the topic, including two meetings at the White House.
“Healthcare IT continues to be a large part of healthcare reform,” Zirkelbach said. “It impacts every aspect – quality improvement, payment, diagnosis and coordination of care.”

As AHIP joined other industry groups – such as the American Hospitals Association and the American Medical Association – to talk about how best to achieve savings, they set forth proposals that include administrative simplification, standardization, transparency, aligning quality and efficiency incentives among providers, evidence-based best practices and therapies and chronic disease management – all of which are helped by the use of information technology.

“Health plans have long advocated for nationwide adoption of electronic health records,” said Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of AHIP. She said widespread efforts are necessary to encourage the adoption of electronic personal health records as well.

There won’t be a shortage of topics to talk about at Institute 2009, or speakers to stir the conversation.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Former Senate Majority and Minority Leader Tom Daschle and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean are among the star-studded list of speakers.
“We’ve invited a cross-section of speakers, a cross section of opinions and beliefs,” Zirkelbach said.
There are also several IT topics on tap:

• Examining the external forces of change: realigning your IT strategy to do more with less,
• Upgrading your systems to meet the new HIPAA standards

• Ensuring security: standardized communications to improve healthcare interoperability; and
• Health data privacy and security: protecting consumer health information.

Attendance at last year’s annual meeting was about 4,000, Zirkelbach said. He said in mid May it was too early to estimate the numbers for 2009.