Realizing the Promise of Health Information Exchange: Have We Turned the Corner?

December 9th, 2010 at 11:00AM The value of accessing, analyzing, and securely sharing health information is clear—the ability to confidently come together as ...

December 9th, 2010 at 11:00AM

The value of accessing, analyzing, and securely sharing health information is clear—the ability to confidently come together as a single community to do so is not. How health information exchange will facilitate individual mission priorities, while advancing a common vision of a unified health system, is a constant demand. Core issues such as privacy, security, and trust must be put in the right context to make informed decisions, make health information exchange possible, and improve the health and wellness of our nation. Realizing the Promise of Health Information Exchange: Have We Turned a Corner?, part of the Booz Allen Hamilton Expert Voices panel series, features top industry and federal health experts who understand the opportunities and challenges of Health Information Exchange.

Panelists:
Lori Evans Bernstein– President, GSI Health
Kelly Cronin– Senior Advisor, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), US Department of Health & Human Services
Dr. Brian Jacobs– VP and Chief Medical Information Officer, Children’s National Medical Center
Deven McGraw– Director of the Health Privacy Project, Center for Democracy & Technology
Claudia Williams– Director of State HIE Programs, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)


Moderator: Timi Leslie – Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton


About the Panel:

Timi Leslie
Vice President
Booz Allen Hamilton

Ms. Timathie Leslie, a Vice President with Booz Allen Hamilton, has over eighteen years of experience in the healthcare industry, assisting payors and providers with technology strategy, government relations, product development and implementation. Ms. Leslie advises state government and Medicaid organizations as they undertake health reform and modernization programs.

Prior to joining Booz Allen Hamilton, Ms. Leslie was a Managing Director of Manatt Health Solutions, a policy and business advisory division of Manatt, Phelps, & Phillips, LLP. There, she advised region and state-wide initiatives to bring health IT to their communities, including electronic prescribing, remote access and disease management technologies. She worked with a wide variety of clients to interpret federal policy guidance and monitor state related activities. Ms. Leslie also worked directly with the state government advisory boards focused on health IT financing options, privacy and security policies, and health information exchange strategic and operational plans.

Previously, Ms. Leslie cofounded and led Object Health, a management consulting group that merged with Manatt Health Solutions. While at Object Health, Ms. Leslie worked with several funding organizations, including foundations and government agencies, to design innovative approaches to accelerating adoption of health IT among ambulatory care providers. She also performed numerous electronic health record (EHR) and chronic disease management system (CDMS) assessments resulting in published resources and product procurement.


Lori Evans Bernstein
MPH
President
GSI Health

Ms. Evans has 18 years experience in healthcare, including: executive roles within health care and health IT corporations; senior federal and state governmental appointments; health care delivery system operations; and health services and policy research. She writes and speaks regularly on health IT across the country and participates in numerous industry and federal and state policy initiatives as a national expert.

She currently serves as the President of GSI Health. GSI Health is a health information solutions provider dedicated to creating a marketplace of connected health care organizations and information systems to electronically share information and services, which improve health and the quality, safety and efficiency of the health care system.

Ms. Evans has significant experience in the public and private health care sectors. In the public sector, she previously served as a Deputy Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health leading an Office of Health Information Technology Transformation; the first of its kind at the state level. Ms. Evans oversaw a near $250 million investment program in New York’s health information infrastructure -coupled with new health care payment and care delivery models – to improve the quality and reduce the cost of health care. New York’s strategy is serving as a model for many states across the country. At the federal government level, Ms. Evans served as a Senior Advisor to the nation’s first National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the United States Department of Health and Human Services. She was responsible for launching initiatives for the certification of health information tools, modernization of health information standards, nationwide information-sharing architectures, and evaluation of new policies for protecting consumer privacy.

In the private sector, subsequent to her role in New York, Ms. Evans served as Chief Executive Officer of a provider solutions division of ActiveHealth Management. ActiveHealth Management is a health management company wholly owned by Aetna, Inc. She was a founding Managing Director of Manatt Health Solutions, a policy and business advisory division of Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, where she advised corporations on their health information and care improvement strategies. Ms. Evans also served for 5 years as Director of the Care Data Exchange division for CareScience, Inc., a care management company and provider of Internet based technologies serving hospitals and provider communities across the US. Prior to joining CareScience, Ms. Evans worked for the leadership and strategic operations group of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group in Northern California on access and operations improvement, and health IT implementation. She began her career as a health policy analyst and researcher respectively at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and the Center for Health Services Research and Policy at the George Washington University.

Ms. Evans is a member of the inaugural Board of Directors of the National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) and the Board of Trustees of the Certification Commission for HealthCare IT (CCHIT). She has received various professional honors — most recently named a 2007 rising star by Modern Healthcare and a 2009 40 under 40 business leader by Crain’s New York Business Publication. Ms. Evans holds a BA from Ohio Wesleyan University and a MPH from the George Washington University.


Kelly Cronin
Senior Advisor
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
US Department of Health & Human Services

Kelly Cronin is a Senior Advisor in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. She has been involved in establishing and evolving the national agenda for HIT adoption over the last 7 years in various roles in ONC, the Office of the Secretary, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Most recently she developed and implemented the State Health Information Exchange and Beacon Community Programs in ONC. Prior to ONC, Ms. Cronin directed patient safety initiatives at the Food and Drug Administration and coordinated the drafting of the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act while working for the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee. Her work experience also includes health policy analysis, health services research, and clinical trial coordination. She holds a masters degree in Public Health from George Washington University (GWU), is a lecturer in the Department of Health Policy.


Dr. Brian Jacobs VP and Chief Medical Information Officer
Children’s National Medical Center

Brian Jacobs, MD is Vice President, Chief Medical Information Officer and Executive Director of the Center for Pediatric Informatics at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC. In this capacity, Dr. Jacobs oversees the electronic health record and health information exchange initiatives at Children’s National. He is the Director of the Children’s IQ Network® – a pediatric health information exchange in the DC metropolitan region. The Children’s IQ Network serves the children of the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia and Maryland with broad stakeholders including community pediatricians, commercial laboratories, immunization registries, Children’s National Hospital and affiliated clinics. The Center for Pediatric Informatics is the home for academic clinicians at Children’s National who participate in many quality and research initiatives examining the role of the electronic health record in patient safety, effective care delivery, and cost-effectiveness.

Dr. Jacobs is a member of the Maryland State health information exchange (CRISP) advisory board as well as the DC-RHIO advisory board. In addition, he is actively involved in several national healthcare informatics organizations. He is current chair of the HIMSS/AMDIS Physician Community and past chair of the HIMSS Davies Organizational Award Committee. Prior to his current position at Children’s National, Dr. Jacobs served as the Director of Technology and Patient Safety at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital overseeing electronic health record initiatives at that organization. He was principle author of the Davies Award application for that organization in 2002.

Dr. Jacobs is a board certified pediatric critical care physician and Professor of Pediatrics at George Washington University. His research interests center around the role of the electronic health record in improving the quality of healthcare delivery in children. Dr. Jacobs attended medical school at the Oregon Health & Sciences University, completed pediatric residency and chief residency at Naval Hospital San Diego, and trained in pediatric critical care at Children’s National Medical Center.

A comprehensive list of publications from Brian Jacobs, MD is available via the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed online database


Deven McGraw
Director of the Health Privacy Project
Center for Democracy & Technology

Deven McGraw is the Director of the Health Privacy Project at CDT. The Project is focused on developing and promoting workable privacy and security protections for electronic personal health information.

Ms. McGraw is active in efforts to advance the adoption and implementation of health information technology and electronic health information exchange to improve health care. She was one of three persons appointed by Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), to serve on the Health Information Technology (HIT) Policy Committee, a federal advisory committee established in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. She co-chairs the Committee’s Privacy and Security “Tiger Team” and serves as a member of its Meaningful Use, Information Exchange, and Strategic Plan Workgroups. She also served on two key workgroups of the American Health Information Community (AHIC), the federal advisory body established by HHS in the Bush Administration to develop recommendations on how to facilitate use of health information technology to improve health. Specifically, she co-chaired the Confidentiality, Privacy and Security Workgroup and was a member of the Personalized Health Care Workgroup. She also served on the Policy Steering Committee of the eHealth Initiative and now serves on its Leadership Council. She is also on the Steering Group of the Markle Foundation’s Connecting for Health multi-stakeholder initiative.

Ms. McGraw has a strong background in health care policy. Prior to joining CDT, Ms. McGraw was the Chief Operating Officer of the National Partnership for Women & Families, providing strategic direction and oversight for all of the organization’s core program areas, including the promotion of initiatives to improve health care quality. Ms. McGraw also was an associate in the public policy group at Patton Boggs, LLP and in the health care group at Ropes & Gray. She also served as Deputy Legal Counsel to the Governor of Massachusetts and taught in the Federal Legislation Clinic at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Ms. McGraw graduated magna cum laude from the University of Maryland. She earned her J.D., magna cum laude, and her L.L.M. from Georgetown University Law Center and was Executive Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. She also has a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.


Claudia Williams
Director of State HIE Programs
Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)

Claudia Williams is Director of the State Health Information Exchange Program for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), providing strategic direction to ONC’s efforts to rapidly enable information exchange to achieve meaningful use and health care improvement. She manages the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program, a half billion dollar initiative to advance local and regional solutions and scalable innovations for health information exchange. Prior to joining ONC, she was Director of Health Policy and Public Affairs at the Markle Foundation, where she helped manage and direct Connecting for Health, a public-private collaborative working to realize the full potential of information technology in health and health care in the United States.

Before joining the Markle Foundation, Ms. Williams was the founder and principle of AZA Consulting, providing policy and strategy consulting in the areas of health coverage reform, health system improvements for chronic care and translating research for policymakers. She directed the Synthesis Project, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to distill evidence on critical policy issues for Federal and State policymakers. Before establishing AZA Consulting, Ms. Williams worked as a senior policy analyst in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at HHS and as a Senior Manager at The Lewin Group. She holds an MS in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health and a BA from Duke University. Ms. Williams sits on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Synthesis Project Advisory Board.


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