The 2007 Illinois/Missouri Health Information Management Collaborative Annual Meeting was a huge success! This year’s meeting was held at the St. Charles Convention Center in St. Charles, MO. April 19th – 20th, 2007. Attendance included 162 participants from Illinois, 192 from Missouri and an additional 16 from surrounding states for a grand total of 370 attendees. The meeting also included 62 vendors who offered the most current technology, HIM products, and other related services in the Exhibit Hall. The program included topics of special interest such as compliance, eHIM, documentation improvement and refined DRGs. In between sessions, members enjoyed a 50/50 Raffle, Duck for a Buck and Silent Auction activities. Once again this year, a Live Webinar was available to those who could not attend. Some comments from those who attended include: • Topics were all relevant for current HIM environment. • Entire meeting set up was perfect. Both states represented awesome. • The speakers and topics were great this year! Very relevant to today’s issues and upcoming issues. • Enjoyed having both IL and MO dual meeting. Please continue for future meetings. • Annual meeting team worked hard on this great meeting. Also at the Annual Meeting, awards were given to the following individuals who have made significant contributions to the HIM profession. Distinguished Member Award Our distinguished member for 2007 is Karen Patena, MBA, RHIA. Karen is currently serving as the clinical assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical and Health Information Services at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Karen has worked at the University since 1996 in various roles such as clinical assistant professor, research assistant professor and clinical instructor. Her past HIM career also includes working at AHIMA as Director of the Independent Study Division, Manager of Medical Record Services at Olympia Fields Osteopathic Medical Center, Assistant Director at Evanston Hospital and an instructor at Prairie State College and Indiana University. Over the years, Karen has shared, and continues to share, her enthusiasm and passion for the HIM profession by serving as a volunteer on numerous ILHIMA, Chicago Area HIM, and AHIMA committees and board positions. She is the recipient of the AHIMA Triumph Educator Award in 2004, the ILHIMA Professional Achievement Award also in 2004, and the 1998 CAHIMA Distinguished Member Award. Karen is also a member of the Greater Chicago Chapter of HIMSS and has served on the program committee twice. Additionally, Karen serves on numerous committees at the University. As an educator of HIM, Karen has been honored for her teaching from the University of Illinois in Chicago by receiving the Excalibur Award for Teaching Excellence many times (1995, 2002 – 2004 and 2006); the Amoco Silver Circle Award for Teaching Excellence in 2004 and the Teaching Recognition Program Award in 2005. Karen shares her HIM expertise with others in our profession by giving presentations related to Health Information, has served on Doody’s Health Sciences Book review editorial board, and has published numerous articles for the Journal of AHIMA, Student Services Handbook, Medical Record News, Topics in Health Record Management and many more. Karen received her Bachelor of Science in Medical Record Administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago, her MBA from DePaul University and is currently pursuing her PhD in Health Policy Analysis/Health Information Management at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ambassador to Education Award We honor Gerri Smothers, MPA, RHIA, CSL, CPHQ as the Ambassador of the Year! Gerri has served as clinical supervisor for over 20 years. She shares her HIM knowledge and experience with students by lecturing to HIM classes, has given department tours and donating materials to the schools. Her nominator states, “[Gerri] has a passion to help students make the connection from the classroom to actual practice. Students…are exposed to every level of the company: project management, hiring, discipline problem resolution and management.” Being an entrepreneur, students get to see Gerri as an HIM business as opposed to a traditional HIM department. With Gerri’s wealth of experience in human resource management and hiring, she is an annual speaker for an HR management course taught to senior students (at the nominator’s school). Gerri has designed real-life hiring scenarios where she will have the students do role-playing. This is a great opportunity for the students and one of the highlights of the course. Additionally, students are exposed to the training school also founded by Gerri (The Jordan Evans Institute) where students experience the entire spectrum of HIM: pre-professional development, HIM management, consultant, and as a HIM vendor Outstanding New Professional Award Angela Espinosa, RHIA is the recipient of the ILHIMA 2007 Outstanding New Professional Award. Since graduating from Chicago State University in 2005 with her Bachelor’s in HIM, Angela has been employed at St. Bernard Hospital and Health Care Center as Assistant Director where she oversees the release of information staff and functions, trains employees on the computer system, and monitors compliance of hospital and regulator agencies amongst many other daily management tasks. Angela’s past experience includes working at the Joint Commission for 11 years when she knew she wanted to go back to school to accomplish more! She enrolled in Chicago State University and immersed herself in the profession. Angela volunteered with ILHIMA and CAHIMA on project teams. In addition, she filled in as Central Office manager for ILHIMA when there was a vacancy and did a tremendous job of organizing the office and kept it running when the association was in need of help. She was also the 2005 Huffman Award winner. Being the highly motivated adult learner that she is, Angela has proceeded to apply and was accepted into the Loyola School of Law—Health Law Master’s Program. Angela’s nominator states: “She truly exemplifies the kind of New Professional who will take the HIM profession by storm.” Angela is a true role model for our profession. Congratulations, Angela!!! HUFFMAN AWARDS This award recognizes an outstanding senior student from each Illinois accredited program. The recipient will receive a monetary award of $100 (given upon receipt of exam registration confirmation) to go towards the RHIA/RHIT registry exam application fee. To be eligible the student must be a student member of ILHIMA, graduating this spring/summer and be a resident of Illinois. The student must have demonstrated one or more of the following characteristics; • Leadership — college and professional potential • Academic achievement — maintained a high grade point average • Personal achievement — ability to surmount obstacles to achieve education as well as commendations or other recognition • Personal qualities — ambition, integrity, honesty, and enthusiasm Huffman Award Recipients Melissa Markham - Southern Illinois Collegiate Common Market – John A. Logan College Shelley M. Greenwood - Southwestern Illinois College Nancy Spirek - Moraine Valley Community College Perry Balacuit - Oakton Community College Edyta Mazur - University of Illinois at Chicago Karen Mihevc - College of Lake County Linda Barba - College of DuPage Anita Powell - Chicago State University Elizabeth Fruhauff - Illinois State University Save the Date!!! The 2008 ILHIMA 55th Annual Meeting will be held at the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort – Thursday through Saturday – April 10-12, 2008. The Annual Meeting Planning Committee is already preparing for an exciting and successful 2008 conference. For information regarding volunteer opportunities visit www.ilhima.org. Thank you to the Illinois and Missouri Annual Meeting Planning Committee Members for all your hard work and dedication to the Health Information Management Profession. Sincerely, Krista Curley, RHIA ILHIMA Co-Chair Susan Oh, RHIA ILHIMA Co-Chair Carrie Compton-Ogle, RHIA MHIMA Co-Chair Acrobat Reader is required to read some pages on this site.