HFMA forums creating community one peer at a time

Healthcare Financial Management, Annual, 2006

HFMA offers four professional communities for members who are looking for an HFMA experience tailored to their interests: the Patient Financial Services Forum, the Chief Financial Officers Forum, the Managed Care Forum, and the Healthcare Compliance Forum.

HFMA established the forums to create opportunities for in-depth, job specific information derived from peer-to-peer interaction. Tailored to specific segments of the healthcare industry, each forum delivers peer created solutions and best practices discovered through communication and collaboration with like-minded professionals.

Shared Community Experiences and Expanded Contacts

Webster's defines "forum" as "'a public meeting place for open discussion." The most exciting feature of a forum subscription is the immediate access it grants you to peers who are facing similar workplace and career challenges. Networking opportunities offer people the chance to meet face-to-face or on line with two primary goals: building community and sharing knowledge. Because there are four different forums, participants can connect with peers in the same professional function or similar type of facility.

HFMA's forum participants are invited to collaborate on projects to help their respective communities. Whether it is a shared sample job description for a front-line staff member or a joint effort to demonstrate value that hospitals provide to the communities they serve, the willingness of forum participants to share resources with their peers is a substantial value to all community members.

Through forum members only networking activities at major HFMA conferences, peers gather and learn side-by-side at community members-only events and roundtables. By participating in community members-only electronic networking, forum participants can offer their expertise to colleagues to answer questions, exchange ideas, or share strategies. Communities also have access to a directory of their peers so they can find their colleagues all over the country.

Stay Informed

Custom-tailored communications is another key benefit of forum participation. What sets forum community members apart from others is that they can add their voice to the hot topics of the day through members-only Forum Quarterly Insights publications. The publication is designed as an open forum for participants, asking them to share their opinions and comments on recent events with the rest of the forum community. Recent publications have tackled issues such as:

* The most important skill a CFO needs that he or she cannot learn from a book or classroom

* The most significant benefits and challenges for providers arising from consumer- directed health plans

* The pros and cons of incentive programs to reward staff for their point- of- service collections

* How to keep senior management aware of and engaged in compliance activities.

In addition, every forum has its own web site, with archives of all forum publications and access to libraries of information, presentations, checklists, and job descriptions. There are also countless articles and resources targeted to specific forum participant needs.

Build Your Knowledge

Forum community members who join or renew their Forum subscription by September 1 of each year are entitled to two coupons for discounted HFMA education, including audio webcasts and select HFMA seminars and conferences. In addition, all Forum community members have free access to special members-only audio webcasts, with no coupon required. This benefit alone more than pays for the cost of subscribing to any given forum, and the education gleaned is invaluable.

Be a Part of Your HFMA Professional Community

Forum community members are people who have taken an additional step beyond basic HFMA membership to increase their knowledge and contacts. If you have any questions about HFMA's specialty forums, contact Anne Paul, specialty forums manager, at apaul@hfma.org.

Forum Publications Tackle Topics HFMA Members Need to Know About

* Skills a healthcare CFO requires that can't be learned in a classroom

* The benefits and challenges that consumer-directed health plans present to healthcare providers

* Pros and cons of offering collections staff incentives to step up their collections activities

* How to ensure the organization's leaders remain apprised of and engaged in critical compliance activities