Pre-Conference Workshops

Pre Conference Workshops


Register now for the great workshops offered at the 2022 MUSE Inspire conference!

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

Date: Sunday, May 15 2022
Sunday Seminar

Workshops - Full Day

[9:30 am to 12:00 pm, 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm]

Price: $130    Register

601 - Learn A Modern Approach to Healthcare Cybersecurity Tactical Incident Response

Instructor: John Gomez
Organization: Sensato Cybersecurity Solutions
Duration: Full day

Modern cyber-attacks are fast moving and patient safety impacting. Yet, classic incident response strategies are based on a hierarchal playbook, don’t allow for rapid response, and are not designed to protect human life.

In this session, we will introduce a new approach to cybersecurity incident response designed specifically for healthcare organizations. This workshop delivers a fast-paced cybersecurity tactical incident response program and incorporates the concept of "immediate action drills" (IAD) to build incident response muscle memory, which leads to a reduction in damages during those critical moments after a cyber-attack when minutes count. You will learn how to establish customized protocols and drills for your hospital.

Topics covered include:
  • Measuring defensibility, durability, and reducing liability
  • Understanding high-velocity and violent attacks
  • Establish the golden hour
  • Threat centric incident response policies and procedures
  • Rapid response methodology
  • Implement protocol driven response


Learning objectiives:
  • Define protocol driven responses specific to your healthcare organization that will empower your incident response teams to be able to respond to an incident within 14 minutes.
  • Understand how to recognize a high velocity or violent attack on your organization and be able to act immediately to stop the attack before it can overtake your network by using the rapid response methodology.
  • Increase your organizations defensibility and reduce your liability in the event of a cyber-attack by showing that you have the appropriate processes and procedures in place.
Instructor: John Gomez
John Gomez is the founder and CEO of Sensato, a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions for healthcare. John has a strong background in NIST, critical infrastructure and has been involved in cybersecurity and high technology for more than three decades. John has lectured and trained on cybersecurity and advanced technology topics worldwide. Before founding Sensato, John held executive roles at Allscripts, WebMD, and Microsoft.

Workshops - Half Day - Morning

[9:30 am to 12:00 pm]

Price: $70    Register

701 - Microsoft Power BI Fundamentals
Instructor: Ian Proffer
Organization: Acmeware, Inc
Duration: Half day

What is Microsoft Power BI? In part 1 of our 2-part Sunday Seminar on Microsoft Power BI, we’ll introduce the latest data visualization and reporting services and applications from Microsoft, which are ideally suited to sharing information from your MEDITECH Data Repository and across your organization’s suite of other systems and applications.

You’ll learn about the different desktop, server, and cloud-based components of this business intelligence platform and see a demonstration of Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service. Then we’ll take a detailed look at how to build reports using Power BI Desktop – attendees are encouraged to bring a laptop for real-time hands-on report building experience. If you don’t have a laptop, 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 Sunday seminar!

Suggested prerequisite knowledge:
  • Familiarity with MEDITECH Data Repository
  • Beginning to intermediate skills with report design applications

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.

702 - Report Designer 101

Instructor: Daniel Collins
Organization: The HCI Solution
Duration: Half day

Learn how to write your first report and other basic Report Designer topics, including:

  • 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 Pictures
  • Adding lines, boxes, and shading
  • Adding totals
  • Adding counters
  • Adding selection defaults and selection lists
  • Print selection variables on report header
  • View report with .pdf viewer


Learning objectives:
  • Demonstrate the ability to add graphics to a Report Designer report; this skill will make reports more readable and more professional looking
  • Demonstrate the ability to add total lines and counters to your reports, allowing the report writer to add tabulation and summary information to their reports
  • Describe how to add defaults to the report selection screen and selection fields to the report output; these skills improve the user experience of reports the learner will be able to create

Instructor: Dan Collins

Dan Collins, Vice President of The HCI Solution, has been at the forefront of EHR development and customer care for over 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.

703 - MIPS: Don’t Let It Sink Your Ship

Instructors: Alexis O’Grady, MPH and Sherri Pierce, RN, BSN
Organization: Acmeware, Inc.
Duration: Half day

With the ever-changing quality reporting and regulatory landscape, it is essential that eligible clinicians and provider organizations not only understand the basics of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) program, but also understand the scoring details of each MIPS category and how it relates to their overall MIPS score to optimize performance and maximize the payment adjustment.

Over the years CMS has focused on improving patient care by tying provider reimbursement to performance in quality programs. As a result, the Quality Payment Program (QPP) began January 1, 2017, requiring eligible clinicians to participate in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) if they were not part of an Advanced Alternative Payment Model.

This workshop will explore the MIPS program structure and provider eligibility, as well as dive into each category’s requirements and key components associated with scoring. We’ll review real-world examples to tie all the presented information together. We’ll also review other reporting options under QPP and the future of MIPS.



Learning objectives:
  • Understand the structure of the MIPS program
  • Identify MIPS changes for 2022 reporting year
  • Explain the scoring for each MIPS category

Instructors: Alexis O'Grady and Sherri Pierce

Alexis O’Grady is the Quality Reporting Specialist at Acmeware. Before joining Acmeware in 2016, she worked at Partners HealthCare in its Quality, Safety and Value Department on the Policy and Incentive team. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology and Community Health from Tufts University and her Master of Public Health with a concentration in Health Services Management and Policy from Tufts University School of Medicine. Alexis has several years of experience in the healthcare quality space from reviewing regulations to educate clients and inform quality report development, to optimizing measure selection for reporting, and managing electronic quality reporting submissions.

Sherri Pierce is Acmeware’s Quality Reporting Manager and a US Army veteran with 27 years of experience as a Registered Nurse working primarily in leadership positions within hospital settings. Regardless of her position or title, her focus has always been on improving patient care. Her commitment to patient safety has followed her through her efforts and involvement with infection control initiatives, disaster planning and emergency preparedness, community needs assessments, clinical process improvements and staff development. Serving as the Chief Nursing Officer for nearly 12 years at a Critical Access Hospital in south Texas, she has first-hand experience with hospital operations, finance, and regulations. As the lead clinician through two hospital-wide EHR conversions, her clinical knowledge in create improvements with data collection, analysis and reporting and is what led to her current position at Acmeware.

705 - Opening the Digital Front Door with Pre-Registration and Self Check-In

Instructor: Jessica Haller
Organization: MEDITECH
Duration: Half day

MEDITECH’s Patient and Consumer Health Portal offers consumers the ability to pre-register for their appointment; submit questionnaires, update and/or confirm demographics, PFSH, medications, allergies, as well as scan new photo IDs and insurance cards, pay expected co-pays; and electronically sign any necessary consent forms. Self Check-In offers a completely automated pre-registration and check-in process, all from the consumer’s own device, providing a quicker, more streamlined arrival experience, thus increasing patient satisfaction and throughput at the organization. The data captured during pre-registration can be reconciled by the appropriate users in the clinic/hospital setting. Once the data is consumed, clinicians will have the most up to date information that can be used in their documentation, assessment, notes, and letters, thus removing the need for manual entry of this data.



Learning objectives:

  • Understand how a patient can seamlessly complete pre-registration/check-in via the Patient Portal.
  • Learn the MEDITECH integration points and end user workflows needed to facilitate the pre-registration and check-in process.
  • Discuss ideas to help develop or broaden your organization’s patient engagement strategy by utilizing the fully integrated features available within MEDITECH’s Patient and Consumer Health Portal.

Instructor: Jessica Haller
Jessica Haller, Senior Supervisor, oversees both the implementation and ongoing support of MEDITECH’s Patient Engagement tools focusing on the Patient and Consumer Health Portal and features that optimize and promote patient engagement such as self scheduling, pre-registration/self check in, remote patient monitoring, and virtual care. Jessica has 11 years of experience showcasing skills as an applications specialist, project manager, and supervisor working with all of MEDITECH’s platforms and understanding how they integrate with MEDITECH’s Patient and Consumer Health Portal.

Workshops - Half Day - Afternoon

[1:00 pm to 3:30 pm]

Price: $70    Register

801 - Developing for Data Repository with Microsoft Power BI

Instructor: Ian Proffer
Organization: Acmeware, Inc.
Duration: Half day

In part 2 of our two-part Sunday Seminar on Microsoft Power BI, we’ll take in in-depth look at the ins and outs of using Microsoft Power BI Desktop with the MEDITECH Data Repository. The atypical database schema of the DR isn’t quite what Power BI expects when connecting to a data source, so we’ll look at different connectivity options and different ways you can use SQL code to efficiently present data to Power BI. We’ll talk about data models, the heart of any Power BI-based report, and demonstrate how to build them effectively in Data Repository.

If you can bring a laptop, we’ll guide you through building a real BAR-based data model and report 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. If you don’t have a laptop, 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.

We’ll walk through the Power BI service options after your report is published, showing how you can use workspaces, apps, and dashboards to make reporting easy for your users while managing security and permissions securely. Finally, we’ll look at how you can keep your datasets current, connect to your on-premises servers using a gateway, and optionally manage report delivery using deployment pipelines.

If you’re considering using Microsoft Power BI with MEDITECH, this is the session for you!




Learner Outcomes:

Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of Power BI Desktop and service (online) tools and applications. Optionally, if they bring a laptop, attendees will gain first-hand knowledge of Power BI Desktop while they design their own report during the seminar.

Suggested prerequisite knowledge:

  • Familiarity with MEDITECH Data Repository
  • Beginning to intermediate skills with report design applications

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 - Expanse Clinical Charge Capture and Automation

Instructor: Chad Turner
Organization: HealthNET Systems Consulting, Inc.
Duration: Half day

MEDITECH’s Expanse platform brings to organizations many advanced features and functionality. Navigating the array of options available is key to a successful implementation. Come and hear firsthand about the exciting options available to automate and maximize charges in the Expanse platform.

Topics of conversations will include:

  • Charge Capture Overview (charge types, nomenclature, flows, considerations, dictionary overview)
  • Planning & Prep (current state assessment, optimizing workflows)
  • Web Acute, Web ED, and Web Ambulatory considerations
  • Ambulatory (use in outpatient departments, ambulatory/acute integration, charge forwarding include professional, facility, and practice)
  • PCS (charge methods and automation, blood product admin charges and considerations, etc.)
  • EDM (Web and non-Web ED automation, facility E&M calculation methodologies, options, Standard Register review and use)
  • Materials Management (supply charging options)
  • Injections & Infusions (MEDITECH options, reports, hierarchy, coding, training, and education)
  • Provider on-line documentation (professional charge capture and billing options, RVUs, tips & tricks, MPM coding options and impacts, education methodologies and recommendations)
  • Keeping Track and Moving the Project (tracking development opportunities and issues, pros and cons assessment, process improvement, SBAR)
  • Medical Necessity
  • Open Discussion/Question & Answer


Learning objectives:

  • Describe how MEDITECH Expanse can help the attendee's health system improve Charge Capture
  • Demonstrate understanding of charge types, nomenclature, flows, and dictionaries
  • Implement at least one type of Charge Capture improvement at the attendee's health system after the 2022 MUSE Inspire Conference

Instructor: Chad Turner
Chad Turner, Director, is a senior level informatics consultant who has deep expertise in implementation and optimization of clinical systems, financial services, professional/clinical charge capture and billing optimization, as well as E&M development and optimization. Over the course of 25+ years, he has a demonstrated success record of implementing provider applications, CPOE, clinical and ancillary documentation systems, MEDITECH rules, attributes, and advanced report writing skills to enhance application usage/optimization. He has also led and managed application support teams for most MEDITECH applications and has been able to integrate other niche systems. Chad has an extraordinary talent in leading and facilitating physician, clinical, and financial work groups.

805 - Understanding MEDITECH NPR and M-AT Data Object Structures

Instructor: Ken Hoffman
Organization: The HCI Solution
Duration: Half day

This workshop is designed for intermediate and 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.




Instructor: Ken Hoffman
Healthcare IT industry veteran Ken Hoffman, President, The HCI Solution, 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.

802 - Report Designer Tips, Tricks, and Gotchas

Instructor: Daniel Collins
Organization: The HCI Solution
Duration: Half Day

Learn from our Report Designing experience as we discuss some of the Report Designing "gotcha's" and tips and tricks. Topics to be discussed:

  • Working with draft versions of reports
  • Basic vs. Advanced
  • Field Lookups
  • Proper index selection
  • Do loops within Do loops
  • Extraction report records
  • Deleting blank lines
  • Aligning fields and graphics
  • Rules with incorrect record selection
  • Watch out for unexpected nil value variables
  • MEDITECH expression logic (left-hand-side of expression is always returned for expressions that evaluate to true)

Write several calculated fields for a Report Designer report using rules:

  • Write rules to generate output for calculated fields
  • Write rules to output customer defined query responses
  • Layer rules - output for one rule fed into next rule

Write a report that will output data from multiple M-AT applications:

  • Using Object Explorer to understand inter-application relationships
  • Choosing the correct detail record
  • Choosing the correct index
  • Defining data links between applications

LIVE demonstration



Learning objectives:

  • Define versioning and how it can be useful to the report writing workflow; understanding versioning allows the learner to efficiently test changes and revert to historical versions, as needed
  • Describe several useful Report Designer tips that will help with your report writing workflow; the learner will develop a more dynamic strategy for solving Report Designer challenges
  • Describe some common Report Designer issues to watch out for. This topic ensures that the learner knows how to avoid these report writing pitfalls

Instructor: Dan Collins
Dan Collins, Vice President of The HCI Solution, has been at the forefront of EHR development and customer care for over 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.

806 - MEDITECH’s EHR Excellence Toolkit Program Workshop - Obstetric Hemorrhage and Antimicrobial Stewardship

Instructor: Alana Commendatore
Organization: MEDITECH
Duration: Half day

This workshop will help you understand the fundamentals of the Obstetric Hemorrhage and Antimicrobial Stewardship EHR Excellence Toolkits. You will also learn how our new and existing EHR Toolkit topics provide your organizations with evidence-based guidance and embedded clinical decision support (CDS) to accelerate quality improvement efforts at your organization. Details on the recommended implementation process for the Antimicrobial Stewardship and Obstetric Hemorrhage toolkits will be covered, walking you through the steps your organization can follow to integrate these toolkits into your quality initiatives.

Learning objectives:
  • Understand the supporting evidence and components associated with MEDITECH’s Obstetric Hemorrhage and Antimicrobial Stewardship EHR Excellence Toolkits
  • Learn how to access and utilize the toolkit program materials and resources
  • Understand the content, clinical decision support and best practice workflows for the Antimicrobial Stewardship and Obstetric Hemorrhage Management Toolkits, along with how to tailor to your individual organization’s needs
  • Leave equipped with key concepts and tools to help your organization get started on your own eCQI project




Instructor: Alana Commendatore
Alana Commendatore RN, MEDITECH Lead, EHR Excellence Toolkit and Quality Projects, 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.