Health Equity (190)

Continued funding from the federal Rural Health Transformation Program requires integrated data across providers. Making it easy for them to connect virtually to state systems is vital, says Dr. Tim Ferris, InterSystems' VP of healthcare practice.

Before jumping into interventions, the first step is quantifying the risk that's impacting the population and driving costs, says Saleem Tahir, COO of MedeAnalytics.

MedeAnalytics, Socially Determined and Mathematica collaborated to give a Southern health plan of 1 million members the data to save $25 million through SDOH interventions, says Saleem Tahir, COO of MedeAnalytics.

Robert Coffey, clinical director of the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma Perkins Family Clinic, discusses his tribal healthcare background, his HIMSS board leadership and how he helped organize the first HIMSS Native American Symposium.

Data shows that 700 of 1,800 rural U.S. hospitals are at financial risk, with 300 facing possible closure within three years, according to Belina Sapkota and Sarah Zak, NHIT INSPIRED interns.

Josh Wilda, University of Iowa Health Care's AVP for information systems and CIDO, says that healthcare organizations can maximize TEFCA access to streamline and improve data exchange costs.

GDIT's Donnie Parish and Oracle's Mik Patel discuss Native communities' complex healthcare challenges and how a strong digital front door can help improve care access and engagement.

Cambridge Health Alliance's Dr. Hannah Galvin, Health Equity Changemaker Award recipient, talks about her work in advancing standards that would allow patients to selectively share health data to protect sensitive information.

Farhana Alarakhiya of Aga Khan University talks about how she's turning her decades of data expertise towards creating data-driven insights that can solve population health challenges in low- and middle-income countries.

The federal program could be a short-term patch for struggling rural hospitals or the last chance to move rural healthcare onto a model that works at scale. Michael Dalton of non-profit virtual care provider Ovatient explains.

Hospitals can increase health literacy by having instructions in multiple languages and tailoring conversations at discharge, says Greg O'Neill, director, Patient and Family Health Education at ChristianaCare, who will be speaking at HIMSS26.

Rural IT experts will share cost effective strategies for handling limited resources, staffing and infrastructure needs and discuss regional collaboration at HIMSS26, says Jim Roeder, CIO and VP of IT for Lakewood Health in Staples, Minn.