Top 25 Clinical Informaticists - 2011

Dr. Colin Banas, 35, is chief medical information officer at 732-bed Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, Richmond. In his current role, and in his previous role as assistant CMIO, Banas, who also is a hospitalist, helped to create a program that allows physicians to use smartphones to improve charge capture. He also led the rollout of the health system's electronic health record in its 60 outpatient clinics, and spearheaded a medication reconciliation project that raised levels of discharge medication reconciliation to 90%.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Colin Banas, 35, is chief medical information officer at 732-bed Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, Richmond. In his current role, and in his previous role as assistant CMIO, Banas, who also is a hospitalist, helped to create a program that allows physicians to use smartphones to improve charge capture. He also led the rollout of the health system's electronic health record in its 60 outpatient clinics, and spearheaded a medication reconciliation project that raised levels of discharge medication reconciliation to 90%.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
As chief medical officer of Premier health alliance, Dr. Richard Bankowitz, 54, leads informatics efforts for the Charlotte, N.C.-based group-purchasing and quality-improvement organization. Bankowitz develops measures and refines methodology for the organization's Quest initiative, a collaborative performance-improvement program with more than 250 hospitals. He also serves as a leader on the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration Project, a pay-for-performance initiative run jointly by Premier and the CMS. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Peter Basch, 59, is medical director, ambulatory EHR and health IT policy, for nine-hospital MedStar Health, Columbia, Md. Basch, a practicing internist, led MedStar's implementation of its electronic health record in more than 170 physician practices and developed a systemwide dashboard that uses clinical analytics to measure and improve the quality of diabetes care. Basch also is a senior fellow for health IT policy with the Center for American Progress.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
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Dr. Matthew Berger, 55, is director of medical services, Einstein Division, of 1,490-bed Montefiore Medical Center, New York, and technical director of clinical informatics at Emerging Health Information Technology, a Montefiore subsidiary. A practicing internist, Berger has spent the past 15 years working on various IT initiatives including Montefiore's implementation of computerized physician order entry more than a decade ago, and customization of the hospital's clinical decision-support system.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Lyle Berkowitz, 45, is medical director of clinical information systems for Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group, a Chicago-based hospital-owned group that includes more than 100 physicians. At NMPG, Berkowitz, who is also a practicing internist, has led the practice's implementation of a patient portal and has also spearheaded efforts to leverage existing IT systems for performance improvement. Additionally, Berkowitz is founder and director of the not-for-profit Szollosi Healthcare Innovation Program.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. William Bria is co-founder and president of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems. Bria, 60, is also chief medical information officer for Shriners Hospitals for Children, a 20-hospital system headquartered in Tampa, Fla. He is currently leading the system's efforts to attest to meaningful use in 2012. He also co-edited with AMDIS CEO Richard Rydell the CMIO Survival Guide, an instructional handbook for clinical informatics leaders. Bria is also a practicing pulmonary critical-care physician. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
As director of clinical informatics at 599-bed PinnacleHealth in Harrisburg, Pa., Cindy Brown has led a range of projects, including the system's deployment of computerized physician order entry. She used PinnacleHealth's clinical information system to create tools to improve aspiration pneumonia rates in stroke patients, to increase pneumonia vaccination rates amongat-risk patients, and to lower rates of catheter-associated urinary tract infections. She also is the project lead for the health system's meaningful-use initiative.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
As chief medical information officer and director of clinical applications for 530-bed Wishard Health Services, Indianapolis, Dr. Paul Dexter has implemented a computerized physician order entry system that has resulted in shorter lengths of stay, lower costs and 80% fewer adverse drug events. Dexter is charged with coordinating the hospital's clinical decision-support system and has led interventions to lower hospitalization rates among patients with heart failure and inappropriate medication rates among elderly emergency patients.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Susan Dezavelle, 55, is director of medical informatics for the 400,000-member Presbyterian Health Plan, which serves as the business unit for seven-hospital system Presbyterian Healthcare Services, Albuquerque. Dezavelle, a registered nurse, is leading a multiyear project that works with local primary-care groups to improve care coordination and align payment with better outcomes. Additionally, Dezavelle is working with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on its Aligning Forces for Quality initiative.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. William Hersh is professor and chairman of the department of medical informatics and clinical epidemiology in the school of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. Hersh, 53, leads one of the largest clinical informatics educational programs in the country. In partnership with the American Medical Informatics Association, he developed the 10x10 program, which sought to educate 10,000 healthcare professionals in biomedical and health informatics by 2010. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Brent James, 60, is chief quality officer and vice president of medical research and continuing medical education at Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City. James also is executive director of Intermountain's Institute for Health Care Delivery Research. Through a partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, James has overseen the Advanced Training Program in Health Care Delivery Improvement, a clinical quality-improvement education program completed by more than 1,200 medical leaders.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Kevin Johnson is a professor and vice chairman of biomedical informatics at 815-bed Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville. Johnson, 50, is the founding director of RxStar, Vanderbilt's e-prescribing system, which uses electronic health-record data to provide safety checks and patient-specific alerts. He has received grants from HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for a number of projects examining topics such as the impact of electronic prescribing on medication errors.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Liz Johnson, 59, is vice president of applied clinical informatics at Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. Since joining Tenet in 2002, Johnson has spearheaded the 53-hospital system's IMPACT (Improving Patient Care through Technology) program, which trains clinical informaticists in technology and evidence-based practices. Under her leadership, Tenet plans to implement EHRs and computerized physician order entry in all of its hospitals by 2014. She also serves on the federal government's Health IT Standards Committee. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Howard Landa, 54, serves as chief medical information officer of 312-bed Alameda County Medical Center, Oakland, Calif., and as CMIO at Hawaii Permanente Medical Group, Honolulu. In 2009, under Landa's leadership, Kaiser Permanente's Hawaii region attained HIMSS Stage 6 implementation—one step from the top of the scale—of its electronic health record system, just two months after rollout. Landa is a practicing pediatric urologist and also is vice chairman of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Christopher Longhurst, 36, is a pediatric hospitalist at 303-bed Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, Palo Alto, Calif. In 2010, after serving as a physician lead and medical director of informatics, Longhurst was named chief medical information officer. He oversaw Lucile Packard's rollout of computerized physician order entry using a dashboard of quality and safety indicators, and in 2010 co-authored the first study demonstrating a link between CPOE use and a reduction in mortality.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
As chief medical informatics officer of eight-hospital Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, Houston, Dr. Robert Murphy, 47, has led efforts to implement and enhance clinical decision-support tools, an achievement that the system credits with preventing more than 7,000 medication errors per year. Murphy is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics, where he teaches a course on clinical decision support. He has also led Memorial Hermann's preparations to meet meaningful-use requirements. Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Brian Patty is vice president and chief medical informatics officer of four-hospital HealthEast Care System, St. Paul, Minn. As part of the system's multiyear Quality Journey initiative, Patty, 53, has led the deployment of a number of clinical decision-support tools in areas such as nursing and management of chronic disease. Among his projects, Patty helped to develop a technology-assisted tool used to prevent ventilator-assisted pneumonia that is credited with lowering VAP rates to zero at all of the system's hospitals by 2010.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Jeff Rose, 58, is vice president of clinical excellence, informatics, at Ascension Health, a 76-hospital Catholic health system based in St. Louis. Since assuming the post in 2004, Rose has led a range of projects focused on clinical decision support, optimized clinician workflow and patient safety. He was also an original member of the Care Collaborative, a partnership that developed and marketed more than 700 evidence-based order sets. Before joining Ascension, Rose was vice president and chief medical officer at Cerner Corp., Kansas City, Mo.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Rebecca Schwietz is vice president of clinical performance at Healthfirst, a nor-for-profit managed-care organization based in Newark, N.J. Schwietz, 34, was named to the post in 2010. She is charged with overseeing Healthfirst's performance under the CMS' Medicare Advantage star-rating system, which provides revenue bonuses based on quality of care and patient satisfaction. Schwietz also created a quality report for network hospitals that shows quarterly performance on selected quality measures.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Michael Shrift, 48, is vice president and chief medical information officer at Allina Hospitals & Clinics, a 10-hospital health system based in Minneapolis. Shrift leads Allina's clinical decision-support team,which numbers 40 informaticists, and he is co-leader of Allina's meaningful-use program. He has also led efforts to optimize the system's electronic health record and improve workflow. Shrift is a faculty member of the University of Minnesota's Institute for Health Informatics.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Rod Tarrago, 39, is chief medical information officer at Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. He has led the system's implementation of nursing documentation and computerized physician order entry. His team also instituted a safety checklist in the system's pediatric intensive-care unit that is embedded within the EHR and tracks clinician compliance. In addition, he created a change management program that used departmental champions, regular meetings and internal communications to ease IT transitions.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Charlene Webber-Schuss, 49, is the director of clinical informatics and the co-director of health information technology at 205-bed Community Hospital of the Monterey (Calif.) Peninsula. A registered nurse, Webber-Schuss has worked at various positions in the hospital for 27 years. In her role as an informaticist, she has led adoption of clinical documentation and computerized physician order entry and is currently working to implement closed-loop medication administration.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
David Yost, 54, is director of performance analytics for 32-hospital Catholic Health Partners, Cincinnati. He leads the system's analytics team, which provides feedback about clinical, operational and financial performance. The use of analytics is credited with a number of improvements, including drops in mortality and average length of stay, as well as increases in efficiency. Yost is a registered nurse who has nearly two decades of clinical nursing and nursing education experience.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page
Dr. Devin Zimmerman, 51, is chief medical information officer of 258-bed St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, South Bend, Ind. Zimmerman, a practicing neurologist, led the hospital's implementation of an electronic health record, hospitalwide discharge notes, point-of-care medication bar code scanning, and a module that allows real-time surgical anesthesia documentation. Zimmerman also headed the hospital's recent attestation to Stage 1 meaningful-use requirements.Top 25 Clinical Informaticists Home Page