Faculty

	Linda Attarian, JD, MPH is Senior Legal Health Policy Advisor at the NC Department of Health and Human Services Division of Medical Assistance. She also served as the co-leader of the HISPC 3 Consent Policy Options Collaborative. Her prior legal experience includes service as General Counsel in the Office of the Speaker of the NC House of Representatives; Senior Legislative Analyst and Staff Attorney for the NC General Assembly; Assistant Attorney General for the NC Department of Justice; and staff attorney for the NC Department of Labor. She earned her law degree from NC Central University School of Law, and holds an MPH from UNC School of Public Health.
	Reba Beavers, BSN, MBA, MHA is the nurse analyst for CPOE implementation at Durham Regional Hospital. She has held numerous staff and management level positions in nursing, and for the past decade has focused on clinical informatics. She was instrumental in the transition from paper to electronics for nursing documentation at Durham Regional Hospital. She holds a BSN from North Carolina Central University and an MBA/MHA from Pfeiffer University.
	Russell Bessette, MD is a Special Advisor to the Senior Vice Provost and VP for Heatlh Sciences at State University of New York at Buffalo. He is currently working in a public/private partnership between CTG (Computer Task Group) and the NY State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences to develop a Health Information Data Center with improved model prediction for value-based outcomes in quality healthcare. Since 2006 he has been a member of the NY State Hospital Review and Planning Council charged with overseeing the certificate of need process for hospitals and healthcare facilities.
	Kevin Burchill is a Director at Beacon Partners with over 25 years of senior level healthcare executive experience in strategic planning, physician contracting and operational turnarounds, including post-bankruptcy situations. His extensive hands-on experience includes administration at small and rural hospitals, community hospitals, hospital mergers/affiliations, state-wide not-for-profit hospital networks, community teaching hospitals, long term acute care hospitals, skilled nursing facility, physician service companies and for-profit experiences with three nationally-recognized companies.
	Avery Cloud is CIO of New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, NC. He is a 33 year veteran in the field of information management. He began his career in global manufacturing and after 13 years moved into healthcare information management. He moved briefly into disaster recovery consulting while completing his doctorate in business information management, but returned to healthcare where he has continued his career. He is also a widely published author and frequent speaker.
	Linda Dimitropoulos, PhD is the Director of the Health Services Program in the Survey Research Division at RTI International. She holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has 15 years of experience designing and directing large-scale national field studies, site-based studies, telephone, mail and web-based research efforts. She has spent the past four years focused on projects related to health IT and health information exchange (HIE). Most recently, she was Director of the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration project for AHRQ and ONC and she leads the "Technical Assistance to Medicaid and SCHIP to Implement Health IT and HIE" contract for AHRQ.
	John Dooley is Director of Strategic and Executive Services for CTG HealthCare Solutions. He is responsible for assisting clients in developing solutions that address their strategic eHIS, EMR, ambulatory, physician, financial, revenue cycle, and clinical and patient safety objectives. He also provides advisory services on matters including mergers and de-mergers, turnarounds, work outs and organizational revitalizations. He has more than 30 years of provider, managed care and life sciences healthcare IT experience, as a "C" suite executive, CIO and senior advisor consultant.
	Sherrie Drye Cannoy, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Business Education Department at NC A&T State University. She has served as a Resource Panel member for NCHICA's NC Consumer Advisory Council on Health Information (NC CACHI) since its formation in 2006. Her interest in healthcare research during her doctoral studies was motivated through her experiences with NC CACHI as well as by her prior IT work experiences in the healthcare field. She earned her PhD in Information Systems from UNC-Greensboro. She also earned Masters degrees in Business Education and Information Technology Management. Her work experience also includes teaching at various levels of the educational system in North Carolina.
	Raj Gopalan, MD, MSIS is the Director of Medical Informatics at UNC Health Care System. Prior to joining UNC, he worked as a Clinical Architect for two healthcare information system companies. He got his fellowship and degree in Medical Informatics from the University of Pittsburgh. He served as a faculty fellow at the University of Maryland and a visiting fellow at the National Cancer Institute.
	Clyde Hewitt, MS, CISSP is a Principal Consultant for Forsythe Solutions Group. He also serves as a distinguished lecturer on HIPAA implementation policies and HIPAA security to various healthcare associations and organizations nationwide. He holds a BA in International Relations from UNC-Chapel Hill and MS in Operations Management from the University of Arkansas. He earned his Program Management credentials from Defense Acquisition University, and is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College and Air War College. He serves on the NCHICA Board of Directors.
	Gail Hinte, MPA is a management consultant with HIMformatics, a healthcare IT consulting firm. For over 15 years, she has provided consulting services to leading healthcare organizations through her work with First Consulting Group, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Cisco Systems. She brings a wealth of experience assisting healthcare executives with information systems initiatives to support the organization's strategic business plan. She has led numerous engagements in strategic planning, process redesign, system selection and implementation, and has provided project management and interim management support. She has an MPA in Health Administration from Suffolk University. She serves on the NCHICA Board of Directors as 1st Vice President.
	Amy Ising, MS is the Program Director for the North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT). She has contributed to the design, development, implementation and maintenance of NC DETECT and its precursor NCEDD since 2000. She is an Adjunct Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is also Chair of the HIMSS Davies Public Health Committee. She received her MS in Information Science from UNC-Chapel Hill.
	Julie Jenkins MSN, is Education Coordinator for Tucson Heart Hospital, where she currently has oversight for the delivery of education standards and activities. She collaborates with department educators, managers, directors and senior leadership to identify and create network education standards within the organization; develop and mentor educational competencies using systematic processes; and ensure quality for network programs and processes. She has over 20 years of nursing experience in a wide variety of acute care settings, primarily Critical Care.
	Thomas Jepsen is an IT consultant and serves as Chair of the IEEE-USA Medical Technology Policy Committee. He is also the Chapter Chair of the IEEE Eastern North Carolina Section and the Programming Languages Editor of IEEE IT Professional magazine. He earned his BA from the University of Colorado and did graduate work in Computer Science at NC State University. He is the author of Distributed Storage Networks: Architecture, Protocols and Management and a contributing author of Systems Engineering Approach to Medical Automation.
	Steven Kahn is a product technical specialist with the Intel Digital Health Group. He serves as a vendor board member of the CareSpark™ Health Information Exchange in Tennessee. He has mobile and wireless implementation and security experience dating back to 2001. His subject matter expertise in telecommunications and computer technology comes from his past work with organizations such as XO Communications, Bay Networks, Wang Labatories Inc, Secure Computing and Intel Corporation.
	David Kirby, MS provides consulting in information security and privacy and emerging IT as part of Kirby Information Management Consulting LLC. He has spent over thirty years in various roles involving innovation in the use of IT in healthcare. His focus in recent years has been on HIT elements in the area of public health. He works with many state, national and international organizations to envision, prototype and develop various forms of innovative IT. He was a seminal figure in collaboration among academic medical centers to develop the Guidelines for AMCs on Security and Privacy. He has co-chaired the five national AMC Privacy and Security Conferences, and served as the co-chair of NCHICA's HIPAA Task Force from 1999 to 2004. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Division of Medical Informatics at Duke University Medical Center.
	Tracy Lockard is the Business Process Director for the Cabarrus Health Alliance, the Public Health Authority of Cabarrus County. In this role she manages a $600,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to identify quality improvement needs in public health services, processes and outcomes and develop best practices. Most recently she directed the collaboration of three county health departments in developing information system requirements and the evaluation and selection of a practice management/EMR system. She also assists in the development of a regional and state health information exchange. She holds a BA in Communications from the University of Kentuckyand completed the Management Academy for Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill.
	Michael Magliaro, MBA, MHA is the National Healthcare Industry Practice Leader for TM Floyd & Company. His 30 years of healthcare and health plan experience includes ten years in CEO roles at fee-for-service and managed care organizations and 20 years of consulting. He has significant experience in business and clinical information reengineering, information systems selection and implementation (including EMR), program management and revenue cycle management. He developed compliance programs for the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, and now heads TM Floyd's ICD-10 Practice.
	Trish Markus, JD is a partner with Smith Moore LLP, where she handles healthcare regulatory compliance and patient care matters for physicians, hospitals and other healthcare providers. She has advised North Carolina's first regional health information organization on HIPAA privacy and security issues. She served as co-chair of the Legal Workgroup for the NC Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration (HISPC) Project and as the co-leader of the HISPC 3 Consent Policy Options Collaborative in NC. She earned her law degree from Boston College Law School.
	Dave McCord, PMP is Director of Application Development for TM Floyd & Company. He has over 30 years of experience in healthcare and banking information technology, including extensive executive leadership experience with emphasis on strategic and tactical project planning, management and execution. He has experience in large-scale mainframe systems, integrated client-server applications and architecture, and browser-based applications. Since 1987, he has focused his efforts towards the provider side of the healthcare IT community, serving in a variety of roles working directly with executive boards, physicians, administrators, nurses, and administrative staff.
	Mary Jo Nimmo, RN, MSN is the Director of Management Information Systems at Lenoir Memorial Hospital. Since becoming the Director of MIS she has successfully coordinated the implementation of a conversion from one Hospital Information System to another. She earned a BSN from the Medical University of South Carolina and MSN from East Carolina University. She has worked as a Flight Nurse, Quality Coordinator, Director of Nursing and Director of Process Redesign.
	Kurt Remmert is Solution Delivery Manager for CTG HealthCare Solutions. He has 31 years of experience in the healthcare industry. As a Cerner Project Architect/SurgiNet Solution Architect, he has implemented multiple solutions for a variety of healthcare providers. He has directed and managed solution specific resources, educated clients in the implementation process, integration and system validation, and developed the national design for Perioperative documentation utilizing CareNet Acute Management (Nursing Documentation) and SurgiNet documentation for a large multistate/facility healthcare organization.
	Marla Roberts, PhD, RN has over 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry and 18 years of healthcare operations and information technology knowledge. She practiced critical and emergency care and held management positions in large university-affiliated academic medical centers including Director in a 550 bed hospital. Specializing in operational performance improvement, she has a doctorate in organizational development and evaluation research plus organization-based certifications in Lean/Six Sigma and project management methodologies. Currently, she is consulting with a regional health information exchange for deployment of clinical transformation in conjunction with EHRs connected to the exchange.
	Maria Rudolph, MPH is a Vice President at e-MDs, where she oversees Government Relations and participation in national HIT initiatives. She has over 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, implementing and developing enterprise systems at Cerner and QuadraMed. Prior to joining e-MDs, she led informatics initiatives for two major medical associations, the American College of Cardiology and the American College of Physicians, representing physician interests on several national initiatives including the CCHIT Interoperability workgroup, HITSP and IHE. She currently serves as the Vice-Chair of the EHRA Communications workgroup and is the ambulatory EHR representative on the EHRA Executive Committee. She received her master's at the Harvard School of Public Health.
	Angie Santiago is a health care IT consultant. She has assisted numerous clients with information technology vendor negotiations, project management and implementations for hospital, practice management, and electronic medical record information systems. She has also assisted the legal community, non-profit associations, governmental agencies and health care providers comply with the myriad of accreditation and federal regulations that protect the privacy and confidentiality of health information. Combining her health care operations management and technology backgrounds, she is an effective liaison between software vendors and impacted health care stakeholders.
	Sheba Smith, RN is the CPOE Education Instructor for Durham Regional Hospital. She conducts CPOE training classes for the physicians, allied health practitioners and nurses. She also teaches new nursing employees CPOE as part of their orientation period. She holds a BSN from North Carolina Central University and has provided training at the hospital in other departments such as Educational Services and Information Systems. She has worked at Durham Regional Hospital for over 20 years.
	Donald Spencer, MD, MBA is Associate Director of Medical Informatics at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is also Professor of Family Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine. He earned his medical degree from UCLA, completed his Family Medicine Residency at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and earned his MBA in Management from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
	Evan Steele, MBA is the CEO of SRSsoft. He has a background in investment banking with Citicorp and Bear Stearns. A unique opportunity to reorganize and manage a New York City medical practice provided his entrance into the healthcare industry. In 1997, facing significant problems with chart access and lacking an available, user-friendly paperless office software solution, he created the SRS hybrid EMR, the flagship product of SRSsoft. He earned his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
	William Underwood, MPH is a Senior Associate at the American College of Physicians (ACP) Center for Practice Innovation and Improvement. His work encompasses a broad range of activities including directing the ACP EHR Partners Program to develop a comprehensive review of participating electronic health record vendors, and developing tools for small medical practices undertaking practice redesign and improvement. He has provided consultation for practices in current medical home demonstration projects and worked on a joint project with the Urban Institute, led by Robert Berenson, on "Costing the Medical Home." Prior to arriving at ACP he worked as a health care policy advisor to New Hampshire Representative Martha McLeod. He received his MPH is from Dartmouth Medical School's Center for Evaluative Clinical Sciences.
	Philip Villacci, MBA is a Principal with Beacon Partners, Inc. He is a senior healthcare consultant with over 30 years in the industry 20 of those years at the C-level, specifically in physician practice management. His major areas of expertise include governance, ambulatory operations, physician compensation, revenue cycle management, strategic planning, team development, finance and reimbursement. He holds an MBA from the City University of New York, Baruch College.
	Albert Villarin Jr., MD is an emergency physician and CMIO of the Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, a 1,200 bed integrated delivery network serving the communities of North Philadelphia and Montgomery County, PA. At the core of that network is the Albert Einstein Medical Center, a 509-bed academic tertiary care center located in downtown Philadelphia. He earned his medical degree from Jefferson Medical College and did his postgraduate training at Darnall Army Community Hospital. He has a blog on the Healthcare Informatics website that focuses on patient care.
	Pat Wilkerson, RN is the Clinical Informatics Manager for Nursing Administration at Durham Regional Hospital. She has been a practicing nurse for 27 years, with an ED/Critical Care/Nursing Education background. She has been facilitating Nursing Informatics for 11 years, and is involved in nursing documentation, ED systems, critical care systems, medication dispensing/bar-coded medication systems, OR systems and web design. She earned her BSN from Barton College and holds a Nursing Informatics Certification from AACN.
	Roy Wyman, Jr., JD is a partner in William Mullen's Health Care Section. He focuses on the corporate and regulatory concerns of healthcare clients including issues such as HIPAA, information technology, fraud and abuse, Stark, Certificate of Need, antitrust, physician self-referral, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement. He served as co-chair of the Legal Workgroup for the NC Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration (HISPC) project and led the HISPC 3 Interorganizational Agreements Collaborative in NC. He was also a member of the NCHICA subcommittee that drafted a Business Associate Agreement, Notice of Privacy Practices, and revised the HIPAA Privacy and Security Tools. He earned his JD from the University of Michigan School of Law.
	Debbie Zanes, RN is the Sr. Manager for Clinical Informatics for Durham Regional Hospital. She has responsibility for the support of Clinical Informatics including CPOE. She holds a BSN degree with a nursing informatics and a project management background. Prior to joining Durham Regional, she was a healthcare consultant doing project management and programming for Siemens clients involving order entry and nursing documentation. She holds certifications in ITIL and PMP.