CHICAGO – The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society has acquired the Nashville-based Medical Banking Project, moving the Chicago-based healthcare IT professional society more broadly into healthcare finance and administration.

HIMSS President and CEO Stephen Lieber and Medical Banking Project founder John Casillas announced the acquisition in late October, and revealed that Casillas is joining HIMSS as a senior vice president managing the medical banking content area.

The Medical Banking Project will be called the HIMSS Medical Banking Project and will – according to Lieber – create a new HIMSS membership community in medical banking.

“The HIMSS Medical Banking Project provides a banking technology stakeholder perspective that positions HIMSS as a single industry resource with all major financial, administrative and clinical stakeholders,” he said.

HIMSS acquired the Medical Banking Project to boost “cross-industry dialogue” between the banking and healthcare IT communities, Lieber said. He said HIMSS would expand on current Medical Banking Project programs, including industry forums, work groups and an annual institute.

The Medical Banking Project was formed by Casillas in 2001 to “facilitate banking and financial service innovations in healthcare by helping government, commerce and academia to isolate and document new areas of convergence between banking and healthcare.”

Casillas said the unification of the Medical Banking Project and HIMSS would “position medical banking as one of the drivers for reduced healthcare costs and improved healthcare delivery.”

Lieber said he’s excited about the opportunity to expand HIMSS membership, and that the 42 organizational and 163 individual members of the Medical Banking Project would become HIMSS members. HIMSS currently has 380 corporate and 23,000 individual members.

Healthcare IT has traditionally been defined by HIMSS to mean clinical technologies, but Lieber said the organization has been increasingly focused on business and financial information systems, and that this move is an expansion of that trend.

He said the initiative is not intended to compete with the Healthcare Financial Management Association, the predominant membership organization for healthcare financial management executives, or its programming. Instead, he said, the HIMSS Medical Banking Project would simply focus on the information technology component of healthcare financial transactions.

“This move is intended to help improve administrative, transactional and physical efficiency and effectiveness on the financial side of healthcare,” Lieber said. “These are parallel to objectives that HIMSS has on the clinical side of healthcare information technology.”

“We’re not going to be engaged in financial management issues,” he added. “That’s HFMA. We’re focused on the technology that helps to make healthcare financial management more effective, more efficient and that leverages opportunities.”