As I have mentioned before, healthcare providers have it tough from an IT perspective. At an organizational level, most of these organizations are running in the red, and servicing a constituent base that consists of doctors and stressed out patients is not easy.

But in spite of these challenges, folks like Will Weider (blogger at "The Candid CIO" and CIO of Affinity Health Systems) are figuring out best practices in customer service and customer support. Will has a recent post that defines a new term for the healthcare sector:

At Affinity we have coined a new term: Patomer. We use this when we are speaking of the patient in a customer service context. For example, we might say "allowing the patomer to pre-register online will eliminate wait times at the registration points."

I wish I could take credit for this, but it was the brainchild of Paul Veregge, MD. He is the brainchild of a number of new concepts that help us communicate better.

Will's blog is one of the few CIO blogs I know of in the blogosphere (I was recently interviewed about this phenomena).

Where else can one find peer support and practitioner-level information in the healthcare space? It turns out that HDI, the world's largest membership association for the service and support industry, is conducting quarterly Healthcare Forums. The next Forum is in Baltimore, MD from September 14-16.

Healthcare Forum events are limited 15-20 senior support executives within the healthcare sector. Topics at each Forum are decided by Forum participants.

Example benefits of the forums include:

• World-class presenters
• Focused and in-depth coverage of topics
• Motivation and challenge from peers
• Benchmark and best practice ideas
• Year-round personal executive advisory board and networking

Consider joining HDI today!

Steve Shu