NHIA 2024: Tuesday, March 26 Recap

Tuesday morning at NHIA 2024 featured breakfast symposia, a special breakfast session with the DME MACs and our innovative 30-30-30 sessions that cover a central topic from 3 angles with unique perspectives.

After, the final day in the #NHIA24 Expo Hall was busy with attendees engaging with exhibitors at booths and the Learning Lab as well as networking throughout the hall and at lunch.

The Power of Each Moment and Every Individual

At the DEIA & Leadership General Session, we recognized Nancy Kramer, RN BSN CRNI FNHIA with the Lynn Giglione Women in Leadership Award. In her acceptance speech she hearkened back to a concept Opening Keynote Speaker Kevin Brown introduced of being able to look in the mirror and see all the people who have helped you make you who you are and supported your journey to being extraordinary. She said there were many people in her mirror including one mentor who taught her to “make every moment count.”

We were reminded of the value of home infusion and how little things to honor individuals can make all the difference in Dr. Lauran Star’s Keynote. She shared how her home infusion nurse during a dark time, was able to connect with her in an ultimately life-saving way because she took the time to speak with Dr. Star’s sergeant and family prior to even meeting her as a patient. In her first moments with her, she said, “Soldier… enough,” and reminded her she is lucky to be alive. This reminder of her passion for duty and the blessing of life literally gave new life to Dr. Star and helped her recover and rise to where she is today. Taking a little extra time getting to know the patient as an individual made all the difference.

Dr. Star defined health equity by stating, “everyone is entitled to be as healthy as possible.” Sometimes, particularly when we start to look at the whole person beyond just their medical issues as Former VA Secretary David Shulkin encouraged and consider their psychological, spiritual, economic and social wellbeing as well—this requires us to take extraordinary care in our approach and make the most of each moment in our interactions with our patients and with our colleagues. Dr. Star was entitled to recover and get her life back, but this may not have happened without one special nurse understanding that her needs transcended her medical condition.

In applying individualistic approaches to what she has reframed as inclusion, accessibility, diversity and equity Star says, “we should appreciate and accept the differences of those around us and treat them with dignity and respect.” This transcends labels and acknowledges the intersectionality of traits that make each individual unique. Dr. Star establishes that, “if you want to improve diversity in your organization and your patient population, you must have inclusion first.”

Interactive Workshops

Brand new interactive workshops on Tuesday afternoon provided more engaging learning opportunities at the end of several full days of education. One session provided compounding scenarios and asked attendees to assign Beyond Use Dates via an online polling platform. This was followed by lessons in procedures for environmental monitoring and examples of how to count CFUs. Attendees were provided sample plates and markers and were able to practice counting using different examples and confirm the actual results.

Another session ran through billing case studies and asked groups to identify what decisions they would make at various steps through the process, such as when to file for reconsideration and why and then learning how this compared to the real-life outcomes, with NHIA’s resident judge issuing the verdicts.

Conference Standouts

The NHIA Innovation Award highlights the role ground-breaking products and services play in improving home infusion patient care and/or advancing operations. The 2024 Innovation Award recipient was announced as Eitan Medical for Eitan Insights®, a cloud-based digital health software suite that captures and analyzes pump data. Insights can receive data remotely from the Avoset pump as previously described or with the Sapphire Infusion pump through Sapphire Connect®, a plug-and-play universal cellular communication accessory.

The 2024 winner of the NHIF Outstanding Abstract Achievement Award is Yoselin Flores, a PGY-1 Resident at Option Care Health for “Use of a Lipid Screening Tool to Identify Patients at Greater Risk of Infusion Reactions to Lipids in the Home Setting.” Honorable mention was awarded to Katherine Yang, PharmD, BCPS from Kaiser Permanente for “Daptomycin vs. Vancomycin: A Cost Comparison in a Regional Home Infusion Pharmacy.”

Closing The Day with a Bang

NHIA’s Signature Networking event at Banger’s on historic Rainey Street in downtown Austin celebrated the NHIA community and the work our incredible industry does every day to serve patients in the setting they most prefer. We are so inspired by this community and are proud to be able to serve the incredible companies and individuals that are making such a difference.