Merritt Wins Book Award from HIMSS
Monday, February 25, 2008
Michelle Stein
Communications Director
(202) 375-2063
mstein@gingrichgroup.com
The Center for Health Transformation’s David Merritt received the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) “Book of the Year Award” for outstanding practical guidance and strategic insight for healthcare information and management systems professionals. Merritt, a project director for The Center, received the award as editor for Paper Kills: Transforming Health and Healthcare with Information Technology, published by CHT Press.
The “Book of the Year Award” is given every year at the HIMSS’ Annual Awards Dinner at the Annual Conference and Exhibition, held this year in Orlando, Florida. HIMSS’ vision is to lead change in the healthcare information and management systems field through knowledge sharing, advocacy, collaboration, innovation, and community affiliations.
David Merritt edited the publication with an introduction by The Center founder Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Speaker Gingrich had this to say about the publication: “We are in need of a fundamental shift in how we approach healthcare in this country. Mr. Merritt’s book gives the full scope of information, motivation and determination required by all stakeholders to embrace healthcare technology which takes us from a system that is broken to one that works.”
Paper Kills addresses the most pressing issues in the drive to modernize and improve healthcare through health information technology. This unique book guides the reader on a tour of the evolving health information technology and health policy landscape, covering topics from protecting privacy and advancing research to building health information exchanges and achieving interoperability.
Other chapters explore the role of state governments, health plans, and hospitals in implementing health information technology, as well as the potential of health IT to promote the adoption of best practices in ambulatory care and focus on prevention, wellness, and early detection.
Paper Kills features contributions from the leading minds in healthcare, such as Brandon Savage of GE Healthcare; Scott Serota of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association; Richard Umbdenstock of the American Hospital Association; Glen Tullman of Allscripts; Ed Hammond of Duke University; Tom Fritz and Jac Davies of Inland Northwest Health Services; Ed Fotsch of Medem; Mark Frisse of Vanderbilt University; Richard Bankowitz, Eugene Kroch, and Meg Horgan of CareScience; Beryl Vallejo of BJV Consulting; Mark Rothstein of the University of Louisville; and Michael Heekin, former chair of the Governor’s Health Information Infrastructure Advisory Board for the State of Florida.
“David’s insight into the logical need for health IT and his grasp of the resources needed to accomplish this feat made him an excellent editor,” said The Center’s CEO Nancy Desmond. “While the book has garnered many accolades and has even been adopted as a text book for classes at Princeton, the HIMSS book of the year award truly shows that health IT experts validate its accuracy.”
The book sold out on the first day of the conference and reorders have been sent.
About The Center
The Center for Health Transformation is a high-impact collaboration of private and public sector leaders committed to creating a 21st Century Intelligent Health System that saves lives and saves money for all Americans. The Center is a for-profit, bi-partisan membership-based organization with over 100 members who find solutions to healthcare’s most pressing problems through participating in member meetings, collaborative workshops, training sessions and workgroups, and projects such as the Healthy Georgia Project, Ending Cancer as a Cause of Death, Developing a Roadmap to Cure Alzheimer’s, and etc. CHT Press has recently published The Art of Transformation and its practical workbook by Newt Gingrich and Nancy Desmond. To view a video clip of CHT Founder Newt Gingrich discussing Paper Kills, click here to watch the video. For more information, visit www.healthtransformation.net.
