• We entered all of our visitors into Interbit Data’s drawing for an Apple iPAD. We are pleased to announce the winner of the iPAD was Donna Martin from Southcoast Health Systems in Massachusetts.
• We also gave away the flatscreen TV that we used in the booth to one lucky winner who attended one of our presentations. The winner of the TV was Bob Close from Washington County Health System, Hagerstown, MD.

We also want to share the following pictures from the show. Who says manning a tradeshow booth isn’t fun?

We hope everyone got the information they stopped by the booth for but if you still need more information, please contact us about your needs.

Normally we would see 1200 – 1500 registrants, but as of right now, it looks like about 600. In reality, that number is about 300 because that is the actual number of users registered, including vendors. We are cutting back a little, but it becomes a visious circle. Attendence is down so the vendor cuts back, so the number and selection of offerings decreases, so the usefulness decreases, so fewer people attend …… Not a great scenario.

What would make you or help you to justify attendance at MUSE? 

I think MUSE is a great organization and offers the opportunity to learn from other users how to get more from the systems. I think we all understand that, for many reasons, MEDITECH systems go in relatively quickly and are typically tweaked to replace existing systems and alleviate identified issues. What frequently happens is features and functions can be ignored, with the idea that someone can come back to it later. This frequently does not happen.

Later on, you are on support and you want to know how to do something, you can ask MEDITECH, but, honestly, the experts on using MEDITECH are the other customers.  MEDITECH know how the program works, but customers know how to make the program work. So time spent with peers is worthwhile.

One of the many benefits of MUSE is the ability to look at the marketplace for complementary systems and products to address requirements not met by MEDITECH. I hope you have experienced that in the past and believe this as well.

However, I also think that MUSE should also allow vendors to provide education about their systems, training and education for those of you who use Array or our products — there is an opportunity to learn more and get more out of what you have.

If attending MUSE this year might cost an individual $2,000, I would hope it would be easy for someone to come back with ideas and capabilities to save $10,000 or more, not counting the intrinsic value derived from collaborating with your peers.

Tell me, tell MUSE what you want and what you think.  I believe it is without question that the value is there. We need to make sure we get others to understand.