Pre-Conference Workshops

Pre-Conference Workshops


Register now for the great workshops offered at the 2023 MUSE Inspire conference!

From report writing to revenue cycle optimization; from data repository basics to clinical quality control; it's here!

Date: Wednesday, June 7, 2023


Workshops - Morning

[9:30 am to 12:00 pm]

Price: $70    Register

701 - Quality Programs – What to Expect in 2023
Instructor: Jamie Gerardo
Organization: Acmeware, Inc

It is important for hospitals and providers to monitor the updates from CMS and always stay prepared to comply with any changes to the quality reporting programs. This education session will provide an in-depth overview of the changes that will impact the 2023 reporting year. Across the quality programs continuum, there are changes that impact the quality measures, the data collection, reporting processes and the potential for incentives or penalties associated with program participation requirements. 

To stay informed, remain compliant and ensure that patient care meets the highest quality standards, knowledge and use of reliable resources is essential. MEDITECH offers a range of resource and best practice recommendations for clinical workflows, building, mapping, and validating the data you capture. We will explore many of the available resources and demonstrate the impact they have on your final performance scores. Having confidence that the data you capture, and report is accurate, meets the requirements and paints a great picture of the safe, quality patient care that you provide.



Learning objectives:
  • Obtain a clear understanding of the 2023 regulatory reporting requirements for IPPS (Inpatient Prospective Payment System), OPPS (Outpatient Prospective Payment System) and the QPP (Quality Payment Program) quality programs.
  • Gain a better understanding of available resources and tools that align best practice guidance from MEDITECH with CMS and other regulatory bodies for these programs.
  • Become more familiar with how quality performance scores are calculated, how exclusions and exceptions affect the weighting process and how your performance scores not only identify improvement opportunities but also how they impact your financial bottom line.

Instructor: Jamie Gerardo

Jamie Gerardo joined Acmeware in 2008 and is Vice President of our Professional Services group. Jamie has been an integral part of Acmeware’s growth, including our custom reporting services and quality reporting implementation and project management. Jamie has a passion for databases and enjoys sharing information and teaching others. She has been involved with MEDITECH healthcare for the past 15 years, with a concentration on the Data Repository environment since 2005. She studied Business Administration in Management at Texas State University.

702 - Understanding HL7 From the Basics and Beyond

Instructor: Ken Hoffman
Organization: The HCI Solution

Understanding HL7 From Basics and Beyond provides basic HL7 understanding with progressively more complex topics. The sessions will demonstrate the framework for the integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information though HL7. Moving beyond the basics, we will discuss the most common HL7 messages, segments, fields, communication standards, and HL7 Version 3 (XML). 

Topics will include the following with progressive discussion leading us to more advanced topics:

  • What is HL7?
  • HL7 Message Types, Segments, & Field Formats
  • Data Exchange Standards
  • Detailed view of HL7 Messages, ORM, ORU, ADT and more
  • Discussion of Z segments
  • Communication standards, real-time vs. batch mode, web services
  • HL7 2.x vs. 3.x



Learning objectives:
  • Define HL7 and the message types allowing the learner to become familiar with terminology and determine what is needed.
  • Demonstrate segment structure, segment mapping and fields. This will provide the foundation for getting started with HL7.
  • Describe common HL7 standards. These standards define how information is packaged and communicated from one party to another, setting the language, structure, and data types.

Instructor: Ken Hoffman

Industry veteran Ken Hoffman, President/CEO, The HCISolution, has been in healthcare IT since 1990, bringing relevant industry experience and proven business success to HCI. Ken is well known for providing strategic plans for large hospital initiatives and delivering that vision by providing innovative integration and software solutions. Having developed and delivered integrated applications and interfaces for hundreds of hospitals, he is highly experienced in design, policy and procedure, and best practice strategy.

In 1997, Ken brought his integration business into Iatric Systems as one of the original three framers. From 1997 through 2012 he built the largest Integration business in the industry before stepping down as Vice President in March 2012. In April 2013, Ken started The HCISolution with a focus on customer care and affordable integrated solutions.

703 - Data Repository 101: DR Fundamentals and Writing your First Query

Instructor: Stacey Collins
Organization: The HCISolution

Data Repository 101 will cover the basics of getting started with DR. The presentation will examine the fundamentals and walk you through being able to write your first query. Topics:

  • What is Data Repository?
  • Getting started with DR
  • SQL Server Management Studio walkthrough
  • DR tools
  • SQL intro
  • Writing your first queries
  • Working with the results
  • Common mistakes and errors with queries



Learning objectives:
  • Demonstrate and navigate through SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to locate the DR data needed to get started with Data Repository.
  • Demonstrate the knowledge of the basic SQL query and write simple query to display results from the MEDITECH DR database.
  • Examine the query statements to troubleshoot issues with and determine causes for invalid results.

Instructor: Stacey Collins

Stacey Collins, Director of Data Services at The HCISolution, began her career in healthcare IT in 2001 after graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. While at MEDITECH, she worked as a Programmer/Analyst in support and development. In her desire to further improve the customer experience, Stacy worked as a Development Designer providing input toward the development and design of applications. Having fulfilled the software side of healthcare, Stacey’s passion for the industry led her to complete a Master’s degree in Bioinformatics helping her understand the science behind the medicine. Stacey is customer focused and applies her strong technical skills in a variety of ways to meet the needs of the customer.

705 - Expanse Ambulatory: Tackle Revenue Cycle Challenges with Practical Solutions

Instructor: Dawn Osborn
Organization: CereCore

  • Struggling with providers and charge capture?
  • Looking for the best way to setup employed physicians?
  • Are revenue and charges getting “stuck”?
  • Does your coding workflow come to a screeching halt when a user is on vacation?
  • Are coders bogged down with cluttered worklists?
  • How do you handle outside labs?

Let's take a deep dive into the common challenges and solutions many healthcare organizations face with revenue cycle in Expanse Ambulatory. We walk through practical examples and how-to implement solutions. Firstly, we will focus primarily on challenges related to acute charge forwarding to the Ambulatory/Revenue Cycle Group Coding Visit Worklist, CPT lookup features, and reconciliation and reports.

Then, we walk through common challenges with coding workflows and discuss possible solutions that can help your healthcare organization better manage revenue cycle in Expanse Ambulatory. We will focus on challenges related to the coding visit worklist, managing statuses, outside labs and referrals and reconciliation, and reports.




Learning Objectives:
  • How to solve revenue cycle challenges, including coding issues.
  • System setup considerations for revenue cycle and coders when implementing Expanse Ambulatory.
  • Reconciliation and reports; and third party interfaces.

Instructor:Dawn Osborn
Dawn Osborn, Sr. MEDITECH Consultant at CereCore, has more than 30 years of healthcare informatics experience, with the last 18 years dedicated solely to MEDITECH Revenue Cycle applications. She has worked as a Financial/Revenue Cycle Project Manager, Lead, Architect and Analyst. She has also held management and database admin roles in Health Information Management, Patient Accounting, Patient Access, and Management Information Systems. Dawn holds a Master Degree in Healthcare Information Administration from the Medical University of South Carolina and a Bachelor Degree in Clinical Laboratory Sciences.

704 - Report Designer 101

Instructor: Dan Collins
Organization: The HCISolution   

Learn the basics or Report Designer from terminology, helpful training information, through the process of creating your first Report Designer report. Report Designer topics included are:

  • Where to find Report Designer training information 
  • NPR R/W vs. Report Designer terminology 
  • Utilize tools to find specific data in the MEDITECH system 
  • Report naming convention 
  • Versioning
  • Determine the type of report you need 
  • Choosing the detail record 
  • Using the field lookup tool 
  • Choosing selection criteria 
  • How to choose the best index 
  • Cover all of the different screens: Fields, General, Selection, Sorting, Regions, Report Picture, Notes
  • Adding lines, boxes, and shading 
  • Adding totals and counters
  • Adding selection defaults and selection lists 
  • Print selection variables on report header 
  • View report with .pdf viewer
  • Difference between export and standard modes 
  • Learn how to use "Export" mode



Learning objectives:
  • Demonstrate the creation of a new MEDITECH Report Designer report from initial concept to completion. This will provide the foundation for getting started with writing reports in Report Designer.
  • Demonstrate the ability to add graphics, total lines, and counters to your reports. This allows the report writer to add tabulation and summary information to their reports while ensuring the reports have better readability and are more professional looking.
  • Demonstrate the ability to create a Report Designer report that generates a data file. The learner will be able to create downloadable reports in a variety of formats.

Instructor: Dan Collins
Dan Collins, Executive VP at The HCISolution, has been at the forefront of EHR development and customer care for 25 years. Dan enjoyed a successful career at MEDITECH spanning two decades of leading customer implementation and service teams that supported all MEDITECH platforms. Dan is a technically skilled leader and software developer with a career dedicated to best practices, customer care, and maintaining positive long-term customer and partner relationships.

706 - Innovate, Ignite, and Improve with Expanse Toolkits and Analytics

Instructors: Doug Aylaian, Alana Commendatore, and Janet Desroche
Organization: MEDITECH

During this workshop, we will take a deep dive into leveraging Expanse, EHR Excellence Toolkits, and Analytics to accelerate improvement within your organization. We will work on identifying improvement targets specific to your organization, current performance, and goals. From there, we will explore MEDITECH tools, best practices, and strategies to achieve and accelerate improvement. In addition to performing a review of MEDITECH’s EHR Excellence toolkits, we will provide you with guidance and insights on how to incorporate Expanse tools and analytics to achieve organizational peak performance. We will also spend some time on Health Equity and SDOH (Social Determinants of Health) assessment development, tying key SDOH factors with health outcomes and indicators..



Learning objectives:

  • At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will understand how to analyze their current hospital-based quality metrics and assess their utilization of MEDITECH Expanse to achieve improvement.
  • Participants will be able to find and utilize materials and tools needed to successfully implement MEDITECH EHR’s Excellence Toolkits.
  • Participants will be able to use the information presented on SDOH (Social Determinant/Driver of Health) assessment development to formulate a draft plan for their organization.

Instructors: Doug Aylaian, Alana Commendatore, and Janet Desroche

Doug Aylaian, AVP, MEDITECH Professional Services, has over 35 years of healthcare experience spanning a variety of roles and responsibilities across Implementation and Client Services areas. Doug is currently responsible for the Business Intelligence team and Business and Clinical Analytics within the MEDITECH Professional Services Division. Doug is committed to ensuring customers have data driven insight for informed decision making to better realize mission statements around quality, safety, and cost management.

Alana Commendatore RN, Manager, Clinical Excellence & Physician Services, MEDITECH Professional Services, has over 10 years of healthcare experience as a registered nurse, both in direct patient care across multiple healthcare settings, and as a leader in numerous quality improvement projects. In addition to leading and managing the development of MEDITECH’s evidence-based outcomes-focused toolkits, she has also designed and implemented new processes to optimize clinical content development.

Janet Desroche, AVP, MEDITECH Professional Services, is responsible for Clinical Quality Improvement Professional Services, Physician Advisory Professional Services, and EHR Excellence Toolkits. She and her team focus on leveraging the EHR to improve patient care, patient safety, population health, workflow efficiency, and operational performance. Ms. Desroche serves on several industry committees, including the AMIA Informatics Partnership Council and the CHIME Opioid Task Force.


Workshops - Afternoon

[1:00 pm to 3:30 pm]

Price: $70    Register

801 - Build a Patient Dashboard with Microsoft Power BI

Instructor: Ian Proffer
Organization: Acmeware, Inc.

Want to learn a better way to present information from MEDITECH Data Repository? Come to this Wednesday Workshop to get immediate hands-on experience with Power BI Desktop, part of the Power Platform from Microsoft. Power BI puts dynamic and interactive report design at your fingertips, making it easy to improve your business and clinical analytics with simple to use and cost-effective report design tools. 

In this workshop, we’ll introduce you to the desktop and cloud-based components of Microsoft’s business intelligence platform. Then we’ll dive in and show you how to build your own inpatient dashboard with Power BI Desktop while demonstrating some of the software’s niftier features – like slicers and drill-through capability – that will give your reports a great user experience.  

Attendees are encouraged to bring a laptop for real-time hands-on report building experience. (If you can’t, don’t worry, you can follow along as our instructors show you how.) When you’re finished, you’ll have a report you can use with your own MEDITECH Data Repository after you return home from the conference.



Power BI will impress you with its beautiful interface, instant performance, and deep ability to slice and dice your data any way you want – it’s unlike anything used until now for reporting from Data Repository. Don’t miss this fun and informative Wednesday workshop! (The workshop is not platform specific.)

Learner Outcomes:

  • An understanding of Power BI concepts and terminology.
  • Basic report design skills with Power BI Desktop.
  • • Learn about Microsoft's Power Platform tools and how they relate to efficient data use from Data Repository.

Instructor: Ian Proffer
Ian Proffer is Acmeware’s Director of Communication and Training. Before joining Acmeware in 2007, he spent seven years in healthcare IT at Jefferson Healthcare in Port Townsend, WA (a MEDITECH C/S site) and Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Ian has worked for the last 20 years as a consultant, report writer, database analyst, administrator, and architect, including four years at Microsoft Corp. His practical work experience in healthcare includes database analysis and administration, report and application authoring and development, and user education and training.

803 - Improving Billing & Account Management Functions

Instructor: Sheryl Easter
Organization: Nordic Global Consulting

Is your Patient Financial Services Team confronted with challenges including high volumes of claims requiring biller intervention, timely filing constraints, payer specific requirements, higher volumes of avoidable write-offs, or increased email communication with lack of information in patient’s account? Maybe you just want to learn to improve some of the workflows/build within your system related to Billing & Account Management functions in MEDITECH. Then this is the workshop for you!

Healthcare Leaders are faced with increasing pressures related to stringent regulations, reduced labor force, rising costs, and reduced reimbursement rates. Internally, they are challenged with revenue integrity concerns to maximize reimbursement, prevent revenue leakage, reduce avoidable write-offs, and improve clean claims rates.  Improving the foundation/build within your MEDITECH system will help align Workflows and System Processes. 

In this workshop, we’ll provide tools and guidance to assist in improving your current MEDITECH Expanse workflow/build. Although this session is geared for the Expanse user, it can easily be translated to other MEDITECH platforms. 



Learning objectives:

  • Optimize Claims & Claim Related Dictionaries: Improve claim’s processing time, reduce manual intervention, and eliminate the challenges that comes with Non-Primary Billing, Payer Specific requirements, and Alt Code Reporting.
  • Align Collection Streams & Collection Related Dictionaries: Enhance timely follow-up, establish account oversight & escalation, and minimize avoidable write-offs due to filing limits.
  • Improve Account Management & Interdepartmental Communication: Implement & organize key Account Checks, reduce emails as a method of interdepartmental communication, and improve patient account details.

Instructor: Sheryl Easter
Sheryl Easter is a Principal Consultant with Nordic Global Consulting. She has over 35 years’ experience working closely with healthcare organizations to help improve their Revenue Cycle and Financial Processes; resulting in increased revenue and decreased avoidable write-offs for the facilities. Sheryl has functioned in various roles including Managing Director-Revenue Cycle & Finance, Project Manager, Senior Management Consultant, and Senior Financial Analyst working in the areas of Patient Financial Services, Patient Access, Scheduling, Materials Management, Authorization/Referral Management, Health Information Management, Abstracting, Payroll, and General Financials. Education has been a key motivator, and after achieving a Master’s degree (MBA/HCM) with a large focus on healthcare; became and educator focusing on healthcare regulations, optimizations, changes, and revenue cycle.

805 - Ambulatory Optimization and Transformation

Instructor: Al Monteiro
Organization: Nordic Global – HealthTech  

Is your ambulatory facility losing out on potential revenue opportunities due to missing billing components in clinical documentation? Did your organization struggle to integrate clinical quality measures in documentation templates during initial build and are faced with MIPS attestation deadlines and potential penalties from Medicare?

Due to time constraints and limited resources, most organizations manage to implement only the bare basics of the Expanse Ambulatory module. Several key features of the MEDITECH Expanse Ambulatory module like Registries, Widgets, Immunization Management and Health Maintenance protocols are postponed to post-live optimization. Additionally, many facilities lack resources to train providers on advanced clinical documentation tips and techniques like Typicals, Tailored Documentation and Quick Texts. These techniques are crucial for improving provider satisfaction and clinical documentation turn-around times.



In this information-packed workshop, you will learn:

  • How to “charge from documentation” by incorporating billing components in clinical documentation to allow seamless flow of billing codes from provider documentation to the Coding Visit Worklist to boost revenue significantly
  • Harness the power of “Registries” to monitor and report on patient population health based on criteria like age, diagnosis, next immunization/mammography due dates, lab results and query responses
  • Incorporate advanced clinical documentation tips and techniques like Typicals, Tailored Documentation, Quick Texts and Widgets to improve and optimize the clinical documentation process
  • Integrate clinical quality measures in documentation templates for improved patient care outcomes and MIPS attestation
  • Get introduced to various “EHR Excellence Toolkits” provided by MEDITECH for advanced clinical decision support, real time surveillance and continued patient care

Instructor: Al Monteiro

Al Monteiro is an Associate Consultant with Nordic Global Consulting. He is a result driven healthcare IT professional with over 13 years of MEDITECH experience; the last six years being focused primarily on MEDITECH Expanse Ambulatory implementation and optimization projects at various facilities across US and Canada. Al has functioned in various roles including Project Manager, Hospital Integration Specialist, MEDITECH Expanse Ambulatory Lead Consultant, Physician Liaison and Trainer, MIPS and Meaningful Use Advisor, Team Lead for OM, REG, CWS, ARM, SCA, HIM and ABS modules.

He completed his undergraduate degree in Information Technology Engineering in Pune, India. After completing his Master’s degree in Software Engineering at Kansas State University, he started out as a Clinical Applications Specialist at Coffeyville Regional Medical Center in South-east Kansas where he developed a passion for using technology to make an impact on patient care outcomes. Al Monteiro lead the early adoption of MEDITECH’s evidence-based Depression and Suicide Prevention Toolkit at Coffeyville Medical Regional Center’s Ambulatory facility.

802 - Understanding MEDITECH NPR and M-AT Data Structures/Definitions

Instructor: Ken Hoffman
Organization: The HCISolution

This educational session is designed for beginner thru advanced MEDITECH NPR and M-AT reporting professionals and analysts with MEDITECH Magic, Client Server, M-AT 6.x, and Expanse versions. We will include introductory discussion of Data Repository using MEDITECH data definitions, NPR tables, and SQL table relationships. 

Understanding the MEDITECH data structures is key to successful discovery analytics and data mining. We will take an introductory through advanced approach to look at how data is stored, structured, and accessed in the MEDITECH NPR random access file (RAF) data structures. Along the way we will share open-source tools used to understand and access NPR prefixes, databases, nodes, subscripts, and fields.



Learning objectives:

  • Identify how the MEDITECH data is stored to provide understanding that will influence the outcomes of data accuracy.
  • Identify how to have accurate data to complete reports is key to patient safety and treatment.
  • Demonstrate database schema and structure to allow users to more efficiently extract and present clinical data.

Instructor: Ken Hoffman
Industry veteran Ken Hoffman, President/CEO, The HCISolution, has been in healthcare IT since 1990, bringing relevant industry experience and proven business success to HCI. Ken is well known for providing strategic plans for large hospital initiatives and delivering that vision by providing innovative integration and software solutions. Having developed and delivered integrated applications and interfaces for hundreds of hospitals, he is highly experienced in design, policy and procedure, and best practice strategy.

In 1997, Ken brought his integration business into Iatric Systems as one of the original three framers. From 1997 through 2012 he built the largest Integration business in the industry before stepping down as Vice President in March 2012. In April 2013, Ken started The HCISolution with a focus on customer care and affordable integrated solutions.

804 - Advanced Report Designer Topics

Instructor: Dan Collins
Organization: The HCISolution

Advanced Report Designer Topics will explore the complexities of Report Designer including examining the components for deep understanding. The topics will include:

  • Data Structures behind the MEDITECH M-AT applications
  • Writing rules using programming logic
  • Creating calculated fields using rules
  • Creating, navigating, and outputting your own lists of data




Learning Objectives:
  • Demonstrate the creation of a Report Designer rule, in order to calculate a value to be used in a report. The learner will not be limited to the MEDITECH standard fields.
  • Demonstrate the ability to create, sort, search, and traverse a list. Understanding how to work with MEDITECH lists provides the learner with an important tool in their report writing arsenal.
  • Understand how to set up "custom data" in MEDITECH and use layer rules to support creating calculated fields.

Instructor: Dan Collins
Dan Collins, Executive VP at The HCISolution, has been at the forefront of EHR development and customer care for 25 years. Dan enjoyed a successful career at MEDITECH spanning two decades of leading customer implementation and service teams that supported all MEDITECH platforms. Dan is a technically skilled leader and software developer with a career dedicated to best practices, customer care, and maintaining positive long-term customer and partner relationships.