Russell Branzell, FACHE, FCHIME, FHIMSS, CHCIO
Vice President and CIO
Poudre Valley Health System (PVHS)
Prior to joining PVHS, Mr. Branzell was the Regional Deputy Chief Information Officer and Executive Director of Information Services for Sisters of Mercy Health System in St. Louis, MO. Before his time in St. Louis, Mr. Branzell served on active duty in the US Air Force and retired from the Air Force Reserves in 2008. While on active duty, he served in numerous healthcare administration positions, including being selected for the Air Force Medical Service Fellowship program and completed a Chief Information Officer Internship at the Unity Health System in St. Louis, MO.
William F. Bria
CMIO
Shriners Hospitals for Children
Shriners Hospitals for Children is a network of 22 pediatric hospitals in the U.S., Canada and Mexicoproviding specialized care for orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries and cleft lip and palate. All services are provided at no charge. Eligibility for careis not based on financial need or relationship to a Shriner.
As Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO), he directs the medical informatics plan for the 22 hospital system. This includes the implementation of an integrated EHR system in each hospital as well as formulating and implementing the clinical decision support and business intelligence components for the system. Dr. William F. Bria is a Pulmonary/Critical Care physician and Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan and University of South Florida. He is the President of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS) and co-founder. Dr. Bria has been a leader in Applied Medical Informatics for over 25 years. He has authored numerous articles and books on informatics, most recently, The CMIO Survival Guide: A Handbook for Chief Information Officers and Those Who Hire Them.
Dr. Bria is past president of the Medical Information Systems Physicians Association,and the review board of the Journal of Healthcare Information Management Healthcare Informatics and Healthcare Informatics.
Tina Buop
CIO
Muir Medical Group IPA, Inc.
Tina Buop is Chief Information Officer for Muir Medical Group IPA, a multi-specialty IPA of over 600 physicians. She is responsible for the clinical, business and technical integration of independent physician practices and internal IPA IT operations. Tina champions the business planning, development, implementation, training, adoption and support of electronic health records, practice management solutions and health information exchange. In addition, she fosters interfaces with hospitals, labs, imaging, payers, and related patient base applications such as PHRs and websites.
Tina has business and technical teams for over 18 years for Fortune 100 & 500 Companies (Robert Half International, DHL Worldwide Express), as well as Blue Shield of California.
Bobbie Byrne, MD MBA FAAP
Vice President and CIO
Edward Health Services Corporation (EHSC)
Bobbie Byrne is responsible for all information technology and applications, and biomedical engineering. She also serves as a member of the organization’s senior executive team. Dr. Byrne serves as a Commissioner for the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT). The Board of Commissioners guides and approves the work of the voluntary work groups, the inspection processes and policy. Previously, Bobbie served as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Clinical Solutions for Eclipsys Corporation.
Devore S. Culver
Executive Director and CEO
HealthInfoNet
Dev Culver is the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of HealthInfoNet, a public-private partnership of providers, employers, consumers, payers and state government tasked with building the Maine’s statewide health information exchange (HIE) and also managing the federal Regional Extension Center grant for the State of Maine . In providing overall leadership for these initiatives, Mr. Culver is responsible for strategic planning, business planning, system design, government relations, vendor negotiations and fund raising.
Prior to HealthInfoNet, Mr. Culver served as CIO for Eastern Maine Healthcare, a seven-hospital integrated delivery network (IDN) located in eastern and northern Maine. During his 16-year tenure, he implemented new technologies to enhance access to clinical data and medical records across the region, and to reduce medication errors and associated costs through the development of clinical decision-support, medication management and cost accounting systems. In 2004, Mr. Culver joined Eclipsys Corporation and then later Cerner Corporation in senior management positions responsible for the installation of advanced clinical information systems and the delivery of consulting services to healthcare clients in a multi-state region.
Daniel T Garrett
Partner and Leader of the Health Industry IT (HIT) Practice
Health Industry Advisory Group
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Mr. Garrett is part of the Health Industries Advisory Practice Senior Leadership team and brings to PwC his track record and experience in successfully leading large industry transformation initiatives across health care. Dan leads the HIT practice for PwC. Dan has worked with industry executives across leading Provider, Health Plan, Pharmaceutical/Medical Device manufactures/distributors, and Life Sciences organizations. Dan has also served as an advisor and board level executive to key industry associations, and Federal Health care agencies. Engagements have ranged from strategic planning, designing and then building out new business models leveraging HIT to specific Operations and IT initiatives to improve performance, effectiveness and quality at the payer, provider, and community, state and country level. Dan has participated in some of the largest deployments of EHR technologies in the US, and abroad and he has been invited to work with the leading Industry, Commercial, Global, and Federal groups in implementing the HIT part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Mr. Garrett previously held the position of Vice President and Managing Partner of CSC’s Global Health Solutions (GHS) practice where he was responsible for leading all health care activities across CSC worldwide.
Mark Hagland
Editor-in-Chief
Healthcare Informatics
Mark Hagland was named Editor-in-Chief of Healthcare Informatics in January 2010. Prior to that, he had spent more than ten years as a Contributing Editor, then Senior Contributing Editor, to the magazine. He has spent over two decades in healthcare publishing, and in the course of his healthcare publishing career, has won numerous national and regional journalism awards, and is the author of two published books on quality and efficiency in healthcare. He is responsible for the overall strategic direction of the magazine. He has a B.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin, and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Christopher Henkenius
President of the Healthcare Technology Center
Bass & Associates
Program Director
NeHII, Inc.
Mr. Henkenius led a dynamic, multi-disciplinary team through a rapid HIE (Health Information Exchange) implementation in Nebraska, and was instrumental in quickly pulling together a highly effective public/private partnership to govern the effort. As the Program Director for NeHII (the Nebraska Health Information Initiative), Mr. Henkenius established and maintains a fully virtual staffing model to implement what is arguably the most quickly executed and cost efficient HIE in the nation. Through his leadership, NeHII quickly established a sustainable revenue stream, has developed new models for revenue sharing with businesses in Nebraska and beyond, expanded the HIE throughout the state of Nebraska, and is in detailed discussions with a border state that will be sharing the NeHII technical infrastructure. This innovative model was developed by a group of leaders, including Mr. Henkenius and will allow states to establish autonomous HIEs quickly and cheaply.
Linda Hodges
Senior Vice President and Leader of the IT Executive Search Practice
Witt/Kieffer
Linda Hodges, senior vice president and leader of Witt/Kieffer's IT executive search practice, is a leading expert in health industry IT trends, regulatory and compliance issues and best practices in IT executive recruitment. With more than 20 years of healthcare IT executive search and consulting experience, Linda identifies leaders on behalf of hospitals, integrated delivery networks, academic medical centers, managed care companies, associations and universities. Prior to Witt/Kieffer, Linda was executive vice president with Hersher Associates, Ltd., a healthcare and higher education executive search firm.
Kim Hollingsworth, MBA
Partner
IMA Consulting
Kim has more than 25 years of experience exclusively in the healthcare field, and she leads IMA Consulting’s Revenue Management practice. Her expertise in the revenue cycle includes Patient Access, Charge Capture, Patient Accounting, and Information Technology. She has many years of operational experience working for a provider and as a consultant. Kim has worked for multi hospital health systems, community hospitals, academic medical centers, and large physician practices across the country. Her areas of expertise include process improvement, change management, project management, and information systems implementation and adoption.
As Project Management Consultant responsible for reducing the inpatient unbilled file by $30 million, Kim developed a process to ensure the file was maintained at an acceptable level and implemented similar controls for the outpatient unbilled file. She developed policies and procedures for Patient Accounting Information Systems, Patient Access, Financial Counseling, and Health Information Management; as well as developed the process to review and resolve system rejections timely to ensure integrity of data files, reduce billing rejections, and ensure accuracy of revenue. Kim has been the Project Manager for several re-engineering and system implementation projects, as well as system standardization projects, for large, multi-hospital healthcare organizations.
Kim has provided executive project oversight on multiple IMA Consulting projects. She was responsible for ensuring the quality of project deliverables for all Revenue Management projects. As leader of the Revenue Management service line, her duties include recruiting, hiring, training, and evaluation of staff; overseeing staff activities; and planning engagements and staff assignments.
James Holly
CEO
Southeast Texas Medical Associates
Dr. Holly is the CEO of Southeast Texas Medical Associates in Beaumont, Texas which is a multi-specialty practice. He has led SETMA to become an NCQA Tier III and an AAACH accredited Medical Home, as well as to be a Joslin Diabetes Affiliate. Dr. Holly writes extensively and speaks on healthcare transformation and informatics. He and his wife have endowed a Distinguished Professorship and also a Distinguished Lecture Series in PC-MH at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio School of Medicine. SETMA was the 2011 HCI Innovator of the Year Runner Up. SETMA is a Davies Award winner in 2005 and SETMA’s HIMSS Stories of Success was published in 2011.
In September, 2011, in a letter of transmittal of a $100,000 contribution to the Distinguished Professorship endowment, Mr. Ted Carpenter, President of Universal American’s Medicare Advantage Division, commenting about thousands of physician partners and dozens of physician leaders said, “That said, Dr. Holly is in a league by himself. His energy, passion, and unrelenting commitment to improving quality in health care is unequaled in my experience. He drives positive change with his organization and community, implements value-added technology to improve clinical outcomes, reads and writes prolifically regarding clinical and pubic health issues and generously shares what he has learned with all interested parties across the United States.”
Christopher Longhurst, MD, MS
Chief Medical Information Officer
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford
Dr. Christopher Longhurst is a board-certified pediatric hospitalist at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He also holds an administrative appointment at Packard Children's as the Chief Medical Information Officer, where he has helped lead the organization through the implementation of a comprehensive electronic medical record (EMR) since 2004. These efforts resulted in national attention when Dr. Longhurst published the first-ever correlation between implementation of a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system and a decrease in hospital-wide mortality in 2010. That same year he was honored to be the selected by Modern Healthcare magazine as one of the top 25 Clinical Informaticists in the nation.
Charlene Marietti
Executive Director Editorial Initiatives
Vendome Group
Charlene Marietti is Executive Director Editorial Initiatives for Vendome Group, the publishers of Healthcare Informatics magazine, where she has served as Editor-in-Chief. Her extensive healthcare experience includes clinical and consulting positions across the spectrum of healthcare facilities and service centers as well as teaching positions at university and college institutions. She is a medical technologist (MT-ASCP) with an M.S. degree in clinical pathology from The Ohio State University.
Jonathan P. Palma, MD
Fellow in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine
Stanford University
Jon Palma is completing his final year of neonatology fellowship at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. Following pediatrics residency, he spent one year as a NICU hospitalist and Clinical Instructor in Pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and held an administrative appointment as the Associate Medical Director of Clinical Informatics at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. During fellowship, he continues to focus on using health information technology to enhance patient safety and quality of care in the neonatal intensive care unit. To that end, he will complete a M.S. in biomedical informatics at Stanford this year; mining clinical data is his scholarly concentration. In 2000, Jon received his B.S. from Davidson College with a major in biology major and a minor in chemistry. He graduated cum laude from the University of Florida College of Medicine in 2005. Jon completed his pediatric residency at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford in 2008.
Brian D. Patty, MD
Vice President and CMIO
HealthEast Care System
After four years as the medical director for Fairview Clinical Information Services (FCIS) in Burnsville, Minnesota, Brian came to HealthEast Care System in 2005 as the Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO), responsible for championing clinical applications and the use of technology to serve patients, leading computerized provider order entry (CPOE) and electronic health record (EHR) implementations system wide. His long-standing quest to promote evidence-based medicine led to an AMDIS Award in 2005 for his success in a CPOE implementation at a community hospital and ultimately to his role as the CMIO for HealthEast. In 2011 Dr. Patty received another AMDIS award for his championing the EHR’s role in the quality improvement efforts at HealthEast.
Jeffrey M. (Jeff) Petry
Vice President, Strategic Initiatives
Premier Healthcare Alliance
Jeffrey M. (Jeff) Petry is Vice President, Strategic Initiatives for the Premier healthcare alliance. Premier healthcare alliance is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and 75,000-plus other healthcare sites using the power of collaboration to lead the transformation to high quality, cost-effective care.
Jeff serves as a senior leader for the design and launch of new programs and business relationships to support Premier’s members. Key responsibilities have included serving as the General Manager for Premier’s acquisition of Safety Surveillor, management of Premier international quality improvement business with the National Health Services in the UK and the design and launch of Premier’s QUEST and ACO national collaboratives.
Petry joined Premier in 1992 and was part of a number of leadership and operational roles over a ten year period including founder and practice director for Premier’s information technology practice and Chief Information Officer for Premier’s national physician practice management company. He also held senior business development roles for Premier's e-commerce exchange business and IT outsourcing businesses.
In 2002, Petry left Premier to start-up a healthcare capital management company, Mezzia, serving as Vice President of Operations, Business Development and Marketing. Before rejoining Premier in 2007, Petry also served as a senior director at The Advisory Board Company, a healthcare research company based in Washington DC. Petry also currently serves as the chair for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Masters in Healthcare Informatics.
Dr. George Reynolds
Vice President, Chief Medical Informatics Officer and Chief Information Officer
Children's Hospital & Medical Center
Dr. Reynolds is Vice President, Chief Medical Informatics Officer and Chief Information Officer at Children's Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska. He is board certified in Pediatric Critical Care and General Pediatrics. He also holds a masters degree in Medical Management from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2007, Dr. Reynolds was a recipient of the American Medical Directors for Information Systems Award for Excellence and Achievement in Applied Medical Informatics.
Dr. Reynolds has 20 years of experience in a broad range of physician leadership roles. His current responsibilities include IT strategic planning, CDS design and implementation, and physician adoption as well as oversight for all IT operations. Using commercially available business intelligence software, his team has developed clinical analytics tools that monitor both clinical and financial performance and guide system enhancements in order to optimize outcomes.
Jose Rivera
Corporate Director, Physician & Professional Services Central Business Office
Orlando Health
Jose Rivera started his journey in professional revenue cycle management in 1992. Today he is a proud team member of the Orlando Health Revenue Management team and is the Corporate Director of the Physician & Professional Services Central Business Office. We successfully manage the revenue cycle for 60+ [multispecialty] physician practices (faculty and non-faculty) which include 350+ employed physicians.
Jeffrey S. Rose, MD
Vice President Clinical Excellence, Informatics
Ascension Health
Jeffrey S. Rose, MD is Vice President of Clinical Excellence, Informatics, at Ascension Health where he provides senior clinical leadership and strategic support for new clinical systems and quality initiatives. Through his work with associates in both Clinical Excellence and Information Technology, he serves as the clinical liaison to Ascension Health hospitals and related facilities regarding clinical systems and medical informatics while guiding the introduction of knowledge-driven care and redesigned clinical practices to improve the quality and safety of patient care. He was selected by Modern Healthcare Magazine as one of the top 25 Informaticists in the United States in 2010.
Ascension Health (www.ascensionhealth.org) is the nation’s largest Catholic and nonprofit health system, with more than 113,000 associates serving a network of 67 hospitals, and related health facilities providing acute care services, long term care, community health services, psychiatric, rehabilitation and residential care. Comprised of more than 37 health ministries and nearly 80 acute care facilities in 20 states at 500+ locations, Ascension Health works with over 20,000 physicians and has total assets of over $16.5B.
Rick Schooler, FACHE, FCHIME, MBA
Vice President and CIO
Orlando Health
Rick Schooler joined Orlando Health in October, 2001 as Vice President/Chief Information Officer. His current areas of responsibility include Information Technology, Telecommunications, Clinical Informatics, BioMedical Engineering, Supply Chain, Retail Pharmacy and a Group Purchasing Organization. Prior to joining Orlando Health, he was the Vice President and CIO for Central Georgia Health System. From 1991 to 1994, Rick served as Director of Systems Integration for the Methodist Hospital of Indiana. His previous employers also include Ameritech, General Dynamics, and Computer Systems Corporation.
Patricia C. Skarulis
Vice President and CIO
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Patricia Castel Skarulis is the Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where she oversees all computing and communications for the clinical and research enterprise. Prior to joining Sloan Kettering, Pat served in a similar capacity as Vice President and CIO at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago where she was also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Systems Management. Prior positions include: Vice President for Information Systems and Vice Chancellor at Duke University where she was also Professor of the Practice of Computer Science; Director, Administrative Systems at Princeton University; Assistant Director, Academic Computing at Rutgers University, and Associate Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories.
Sam VanNorman, MBA, CPHQ
Director, Business Intelligence
Park Nicollet Health System
Sam VanNorman is the Director of Business Intelligence and Clinical Analytics at Park Nicollet Health System, a Medicare PGP demonstration project and Pioneer ACO participant. He is also a member of the Office of Population Management, charged with developing innovative, high value health care for populations served by Park Nicollet. Sam has a wide-ranging background in healthcare, including work in finance, operations, quality improvement, innovation, and economics at payer, provider, and consulting organizations. Sam also teaches graduate health economics at St. Cloud State University. Prior to working in healthcare, Sam designed microchips for IBM and several failed startups. In his spare time, he plays with his two crazy children, brews beer, and tries not to destroy his house with home improvement 'projects'. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Purdue University, and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina. He has also completed PhD coursework in Health Services Research at the University of Minnesota and is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ).
Ferdinand T. Velasco, M.D.
Vice President and CMIO
Texas Health Resources (THR)
Dr. Velasco is the physician champion for THR’s medical informatics initiatives and provides clinical and executive leadership for the organization’s electronic health record initiative. In addition to his role at THR, Dr. Velasco chairs the National Quality Forum (NQF) eMeasure Review Panel and the HIMSS Quality Cost and Safety Committee. In 2010, he was recognized among the Top 25 Clinical Informaticists by Modern Healthcare. Prior to joining THR in 2002, Dr. Velasco was Assistant Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, where he served as physician champion for the medical center’s initiative to implement CPOE.
Tom Yoesle
Chief Operating Officer of Patient Financial Services
Orlando Health
Orlando Health is a multi-hospital system with annual net revenues exceeding $1.5 billion. Tom’s responsibilities span Patient Business registration, scheduling and insurance verification, as well as Patient Accounting billing, collections and audit functions. Tom holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in healthcare administration and has enjoyed over 19 years with Orlando Health in various HIM, IT and financial management roles.
