The 2021 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition is officially moving to August 9-13 in Las Vegas, making it about 29 months between the usual annual event, HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf said during a press call Friday afternoon.
HIMSS20, at which President Donald Trump was to speak, was cancelled on March 5, days before the start of the March 9 global conference, as the pandemic began to infect large numbers of people in the United States.
“Our entire ecosystem has been turned upside down,” Wolf said, calling the time around the cancellation of HIMSS20, “the most challenging and stressful time of my career.” And at that moment, HIMSS immediately developed a HIMSS20 digital platform.
“The remedies with the exhibitors has been a tough story,” Wolf acknowledged. “When the cancellation took place for HIMSS20, the contractual environment limited us to how we could respond because of two fundamental things.” One was the tremendous cost the company absorbed in cancelling the conference days before it was to begin. The other was over the insurance process. Those negotiations are ongoing.
“Our intent, once we are resolved on our claim …. it is absolutely our intent to come forward with additional remedies at that time,” Wolf said.
Anyone who registered for the cancelled HIMSS20 conference has access to HIMSS20 Digital and is automatically registered for HIMSS21 in Las Vegas.
The odds of moving forward with an in-person conference are dramatically improved with moving HIMSS21 from March to August next year.
“We felt March was too much of a risk,” Wolf said.
The company looked to infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been guardedly optimistic about a vaccine by this winter, and other epidemiologists, in making the decision, while still looking at what safety protocols need to be in place.
Wolf did not release expected registration numbers but said, so far, the response has been better than expected.
Details on the registration process are expected later.
Source: https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/himss-announces-august-date-2021-annual-global-conference
