Dr. Bill Braithwaite has dedicated his career to improving the quality and efficiency of health care for patients and practitioners utilizing information technology. He is best known as the author of the Administrative Simplification Subtitle of HIPAA and as a major contributor to the subsequent regulations setting federal standards for transactions, code sets, identifiers, security, and privacy of personal health information. He also helped obtain open US licensing for SNOMED-CT and discussed the ICD-10 transition proposal in the 2004 PITAC Report. He currently works as a part-time consultant. Rhonda Buckholtz is vice president of ICD-10 education and training at AAPC. She has more than 20 years of experience in health care, working in the reimbursement, billing and coding sector, in addition to being an instructor. She is responsible for all ICD-10 training and curriculum. She has authored many articles for health care publications and has spoken at conferences across the country. She is co-chair for the WEDI ICD-10 Implementation workgroup and has provided testimony ongoing for ICD-10 and standardization of data for NCVHS and sits on the Provider Outreach and Education committee for Novitas Solutions (formerly Highmark Medicare Services). Shannon Chambers serves as the Billing Office Manager for the South Carolina Office of Rural Health and is responsible for managing all billing functions for participating Rural Health Clinics. She assists private physician offices that desire to convert to Rural Health Clinic status and provides technical assistance to Rural Health Clinics in maintaining compliance with the Department of Health and Environmental Control guidelines. Shannon graduated from Midlands Technical College with a certificate
in Medical Billing. She has been a certified professional coder with the American Academy of Professional coders since 2006. Jim Daley is the Director of IT Risk and Compliance for BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, a company that offers real-time claims adjudication and is among the largest Medicare claims processors in the nation. Jim represents BlueCross nationally on health IT and serves as an internal consultant on national health IT regulatory matters. Jim also founded and chaired the BlueCross Corporate Security Council. Jim is Chairman of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) Board of Directors and he co-chairs the WEDI ICD-10 workgroup. Jim is a past recipient of WEDI s Chairman s Award, Distinguished Service Award, and Andrew H. Melczer Excellence in Volunteerism Award. He is frequently quoted in industry publications regarding ICD-10 and is asked to speak nationally regarding ICD-10 and other industry issues related to health IT. He also serves on the Health IT Plan Advisory Group for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and served as a commissioner with the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission. Jim is a graduate of the University Of Connecticut School Of Engineering and was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army. Laurie Darst is the Senior HIPAA/Industry Relations Coordinator at Mayo Clinic. In this role she serves as a HIPAA/Revenue Cycle consultant to Mayo Clinic s three large group practices in Rochester, MN, Scottsdale, AZ and Jacksonville, FL and to the Mayo Health System sites which encompass 62 communities in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. Her primary focus includes HIPAA regulations, administrative simplification opportunities, and industry trends impacting Mayo s revenue cycle. Laurie stays abreast of these initiatives by actively participating in a number of state and national standard setting organizations including: ANSI X12N, National Uniform Claim Committee (NUCC), National Uniform Billing Committee (NUBC), Health Level Seven (HL7) Attachment Special Interest Group, MN Administrative Uniformity Committee (AUC), and the FL Provider Collaborative. She is actively involved in numerous WEDI initiatives and is currently serving on the WEDI Board of Directors. Gary Gibler is a Principal Healthcare Consultant with of over 25 years experience working with providers, payers and vendors. He has worked on C Level strategic planning that optimizes clinical and financial operations in midsize and large healthcare networks. Working with state insurance commissioners for a national insurance company creating a multi-state member benefit package and provider contract networks. Gary has five years of experience with ICD-10 physician, provider and payer designs and is a member of WEDI and involved in several workgroups.
Rob Gibran is a Senior Technical Consultant at Cognosante with over eight years of experience in the Healthcare IT field. His most recent work on ICD-10 remediation spans two state Medicaid agencies, where he has created enterprise-level testing strategies and plans for their ICD-10 projects. Rob s expertise ranges from large-scale MMIS system implementation and testing to more agile software projects, taking on business, technical, and leadership roles. He holds a Masters Degree in software engineering and a B.S. in computer science from Seattle University, and is a co-chair of the testing subworkgroup at WEDI. Betty Gomez, VP of Regulatory Affairs at ZirMed, brings more than 23 years of healthcare industry experience to her leadership of the company's regulatory strategy efforts, in which she presently focuses on ICD-10 readiness initiatives, solutions, and helping clients prepare for the new code set. Prior to her current role, Ms. Gomez led ZirMed clients through a successful HIPAA 5010 implementation as the company's Vice President of IT Operations and Support. As a result of Ms. Gomez's leadership, KLAS(r) ranked ZirMed the highest in the industry for helping clients successfully transition to HIPAA 5010, and currently ranks ZirMed highest in confidence for the ICD-10 client transition. Ms. Gomez has a Degree in Systems Administration from the Politecnico Gran Colombiano in Bogota, Colombia. Keith Hatch is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University with over 20 years in risk management and internal control experience within the healthcare industry. His experience has been obtained with health plans such as Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Virginia, Amerigroup Corporation, and Florida Blue (Formerly Florida Blue Cross Blue Shield). He has recently led the Florida Blue, HIPAA 5010 provider testing and migration, through the development and implementation of a risk-based testing strategy to minimize the business disruptions. Mary Rita Hyland RN, BS. MBA, CHP, is the VP of Industry Affairs, for The SSI Group, Inc. She has over 35 years of professional experience in the healthcare industry in hospital administration and clinical areas, health plans, clearinghouses and vendor IT organizations. A nationally recognized speaker in regulatory, technical and professional impacts of ICD-10, Mary currently serves as the Vice President of the Cooperative Exchange ( a consortium of Clearinghouses), and is a member of HIMSS and WEDI ICD-10 and Privacy & Security Committees.
Dr. Devin Jopp is the President and Chief Executive Officer for the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI); a national nonprofit whose members represent a cross-section of the American healthcare system dedicated to enhancing the exchange of clinical and administrative healthcare information in order to increase efficiency, improve quality and reduce cost. WEDI also serves as an advisor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) named under the HIPAA regulation. Before coming to WEDI, Dr. Jopp served as Chief Operating Officer for SCORE, a leading national nonprofit organization that provides business mentoring and training to over 400,000 American entrepreneurs per year. Prior to joining SCORE, Dr. Jopp served as Chief Administrative Officer at URAC, an independent, nonprofit healthcare accreditation organization and provided leadership for all corporate functions. Dr. Jopp holds a bachelors of arts (B.A.) in computer information systems from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, a master s of science (M.S.) in computer and information sciences from Hood College and a doctorate of education (Ed.D.) from George Washington University s executive leadership program in human and organizational studies. Courtney Lakin is the Co-Founder and Chairperson of the ICD-10/5010 Local Collaboration Group, a consortium of Oregon and SW Washington healthcare providers. The mission of the 20+ member consortium is to facilitate information sharing among payers and clearinghouses while working together to enable a smooth transition to ICD-10. Over the past decade, Courtney has held thought leadership, consulting, project management and IT positions in traditional medical institutions, academic medical centers and pediatric hospitals. Courtney is a Founder and Managing Partner of Voice Choice Corporation in Portland, Oregon and is currently Legacy Health ICD-10 Program Manager in Portland, Oregon. Mark Lott brings over 27 years of extensive quality assurance expertise in healthcare, pharmaceutical and financial services in his role as a testing evangelist. Mark has developed the industry s first ICD-10 end-to-end testing framework using dual coded medical records and collaborative delivery model which is in use in many ICD-10 pilots today. Mr. Lott is the HIMSS WEDI ICD-10 National Pilot Testing Coordinator and is also active in many industry workgroups and associations pushing for the advancement of testing initiatives and educating the industry on testing best practices for large scale trading partner networks. Mark s focus is on delivering software testing best practices and greater visibility into advanced testing strategies that will bring about greater cost savings with the adoptions of electronic transactions and standards.
Dave McCord, PMP, has over 30 years of experience in healthcare and IT focused on strategic and tactical project planning, management, and execution. As TM Floyd & Company s ICD-10 Practice Leader, Dave has provided consulting services to payers and providers across the country and coauthored TM Floyd s 5010 and ICD-10 gap analysis, implementation, and methodology materials. Dave has led ICD-10 readiness assessments for St. Luke s Health System, Rex Healthcare, Amerigroup, BCBS of Montana, Network Health, 1199SEIU, South Carolina Office of Rural Health (SCORH) providers, and PacificSource. He is currently providing project management and ICD-10 expertise for Lovelace Health Plan s ICD-10 remediation project, Cardinal Innovations Healthcare Solutions, and the compliance project for SCORH hospitals Stanley Nachimson is principal of Nachimson Advisors, a health IT consulting firm dedicated to finding innovative uses for health information technology and encouraging its adoption. The firm serves a number of clients, including, the Cooperative Exchange, EHNAC, the Maryland Hospital Association, and the University of Maryland Faculty Practice Group. Stanley is focusing on assisting health care providers, vendors, and plans with their ICD-10 and other regulatory implementations, and is the director of the NCHICA-WEDI Timeline Initiative. Erik Newlin is the Director of National Standards Consulting with Xerox State Healthcare, with over a decade of Healthcare industry experience primarily in the Medicaid space. He has successfully served in many roles over his career that provides a blend of industry knowledge and client skills. This includes: Senior Systems/Business Analyst for various Social Service programs including TANF, Food Stamps, and Medicaid, Medicaid Management Information Systems (MMIS) Project Manager, MMIS/Fiscal Agent Contract Manager, Statewide Manager for the State Children s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Medicaid Transformation Grant Manager, Medicaid Information Technology Architecture Assessment (MITA) Project Manager, and 1115 HIFA waiver Project Manager. Dr. Joe Nichols is a board certified Orthopedic Surgeon with a long history in health information technology. He has a wide range of experiences in healthcare information technology on the provider, payer, government and vendor side of healthcare business. He has served in positions in executive management, system design, logical database architecture, product management, consulting and healthcare value measurement for the last 18 of his 35 years in the healthcare industry. He has given over 100 presentations nationally related to ICD-10 over the past 3 years on behalf of CMS, payers,
providers, integrated delivery systems, consulting groups, universities, government entities, vendors and trade associations. He is also an AHIMA approved ICD-10 coding trainer. Tim Nix is the ICD-10 Program Manager at UCare, an independent, nonprofit health plan serving more than 300,000 members in Minnesota and western Wisconsin. He joined UCare in 2009 as Portfolio Manager for the plan s Clinical Services applications. He subsequently led UCare s 5010 remediation program and, in mid-2011, was given responsibility for the enterprise-wide ICD-10 initiative. Tim is the co-chair of the WEDI ICD-10 Sub Workgroup for State Collaboratives, co-chair of the Minnesota ICD-10 Collaborative, and a participant on the State of Minnesota Administrative Uniformity Committee (AUC). He has been a panelist and presenter on ICD-10 topics on behalf of the Managed Care Executives Group (MCEG), the Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP), the Minnesota Medical Group Management Association (MMGMA), the Minnesota Chapter of HIMSS, and the Minnesota ICD-10 Collaborative. Erik Pupo currently serves as a key senior advisor to several federal health agencies, providing expertise on health information exchange and healthcare standards, and leading standards and interoperability efforts on the DOD/VA iehr (Integrated Electronic Health Record). Erik has over 12 years of experience in healthcare, including working in senior positions for federal, state, and commercial healthcare programs, and has worked with agencies such as NIH, CMS, CDC, and FDA. Gale Scott has been responsible for HIPAA EDI development at Tampa General Hospital since January 2003. Highlights of her experience includes seven years as Director of Management Information Systems for a hospital system, thirteen years of healthcare consulting with a focus on revenue cycle improvement and many years of direct operational and system involvement within the hospital Information Technology and Financial areas. Nancy Spector is the Director of Electronic Health Systems at the American Medical Association. In this role, she advocates on behalf of physicians on the topic of reducing administrative burden on their clinical practice. She has developed many of the AMA s resources on ICD-10 and works closely with the AMA s advocacy team on efforts to reduce the burden of ICD-10 on physicians. Nancy also chairs the National Uniform Claim Committee and is a Director on the WEDI Board, a co-chair and member of several WEDI committees, and a co-chair of the WEDI 837 SWG.
Robert Tennant is the Senior Policy Advisor with the Washington, DC-based Government Affairs Department of the Medical Group Management Association, headquartered in Englewood, Colorado. Since 1926, MGMA has delivered networking, professional education and resources, and political advocacy for medical practice management. Today, MGMA s 22,500 members lead 13,700 organizations nationwide in which some 280,000 physicians provide more than 40 percent of the health care services delivered in the United States. Mr. Tennant currently serves on numerous industry efforts including: vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI); Co-Chair of an ICD-10 Coalition; the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare CORE initiative; the National Uniform Claim Committee; the Physicians EHR Coalition; and others. Mr. Tennant was the recipient of the WEDI Leadership in Technology, WEDI Award of Merit and the WEDI Distinguished Service awards. George V. Vancore, Jr. is a Sr. Manager/Systems Integrator & Business Architect working in the Delivery Systems organization at Florida Blue. He is responsible for the Delivery Systems Compliance Portfolio which includes business process and systems integration of regulatory mandates and compliance programs throughout the enterprise. This work includes health care specific federal, state and Blue Card regulatory mandates and compliance programs. George has over 40 years of experience in Information Technology and has been with Florida Blue for 20 years. He holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics and is attending the University of North Florida where he is scheduled to complete his Master s Degree in Health Information Management and Technology in the Fall of 2014.