Areas of Expertise
- Improving care quality and outcomes through the use of information and technology
- Quality measurement and related public policy
- Rural and underserved primary care
Recent Press Coverage
- Australia's St. Stephen's Hospital earns HIMSS Davies Award for device integration, patient safety
- UCLA Health wins HIMSS Davies for innovations in depression treatment
- The Front Line: Thoughtfully Leveraging Technology in a Pandemic
- Making Merit-Based Payment Meaningful: The Next Step in Healthcare Quality Measurement
Social Media
Committees/Panel/Association Participation
- HIMSS Quality and Patient Safety Task Force
Areas of Interest
- Patient safety
- Decision support and public policy
- Value based care
- CMS Inpatient Quality Reporting Program and Quality Payment Program
- Healthcare in rural and underserved communities
Point of View
Through my work with the Davies Awards, I have observed a multitude of organizations, and I’m familiar with best practices for aligning technology with organizational culture to drive improved outcomes. I have insight into what consistent changes seem to work in different organizations and which trends are valuable. As a patient, as a caregiver, and as someone who has been around HIMSS since 2006, I've seen evolution in many areas of this industry.
With our value-based care models, we are focusing on quality to drive better behavior. In the world of quality measurement, you take information from a patient's record, and you determine if the proper care was received for the right patient at the right time. This work is often process driven, but we’re starting to transition to be more outcome driven.
Navigating that field touches on operational and clinical practice and goes into the interoperability world and the policy world. With the HIMSS Quality and Patient Safety Task Force, we try to share all of the considerations policymakers need to make sure the data collected ultimately results in improved outcomes for patients. The data must be a single source of truth. We can make data more effective and more reliable. I'm a big believer in accountability for evidenced-based care.
Technology is a tool. It can always get better, and there will always be innovation and evolution. Change ultimately comes down to an organization’s culture. As technology is developed, there will always be standards to meet, the medicine may just be much more individualized. But that accountability will never go away. That accountability piece is most important, and the culture within an organization should be constantly looking to improve.
Some of the organizations that are most impactful are not necessarily the biggest systems but organizations where there is accountability and where individuals or teams take on quality improvement projects. The expectation is that every healthcare site in the country can be a learning health system. If the small organizations do amazing things from a cultural perspective with just the baseline technology, when you can add bells and whistles, those organizations can really move the needle.
