Elise Sweeney Anthony serves as the executive director of policy at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). She leads ONC’s engagement on a range of high-priority federal policy efforts, including regulatory development, information blocking, Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) implementation, and governance. Her portfolio also includes emerging issues and health IT policy matters impacting EHR Incentive Program participants and other care settings.

Prior to this position, she served as the deputy director of policy, where she led the Division of Strategic Policy, the Division of State and Interoperability Policy, and the Division of Federal Policy and Regulatory Affairs. She also led ONC’s coordination with CMS on the EHR Incentive Program regulations—including the 2014 CEHRT Flexibility Rule and the Stage 3 and Modifications to Meaningful Use in 2015 through 2017 final rule. Anthony is an experienced health policy attorney and adviser. She spent many years at a leading law firm, where she spearheaded a variety of health improvement initiatives, and served as a senior director at a global development consultancy.

Rachel Arndt is a reporter at Modern Healthcare, where she covers technology. Before joining Modern Healthcare, she earned MFAs in poetry and nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa. Earlier, she was a technology editor at Popular Mechanics. Her first book, Beyond Measure, came out in 2018.

Russell Branzell is president and CEO of CHIME and its affiliate associations, AEHIA, AEHIS and AEHIT. In addition to his position at CHIME, he serves on the faculty at Columbia University, where he teaches executive classes in health information technology. He also is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a position that was appointed by the Secretary of Commerce. 

Branzell joined CHIME as president and CEO in April 2013 after being an active member for 15 years. Prior to taking his position at CHIME, he was the CEO at the Colorado Health Medical Group; vice president of Information Services and CIO for Poudre Valley Health System; president/CEO of Innovation Enterprises (PVHS’ for-profit IS entity); and regional deputy CIO and executive director of Information Services for Sisters of Mercy Health System in St. Louis, Mo. He served on active duty in the United States Air Force and retired from the Air Force Reserves in 2008. While on active duty, he held numerous healthcare administration positions, including CIO for the Air Mobility Command Surgeon General’s Office.

Erik Decker is the chief security and privacy officer for the University of Chicago Medicine and chair of the AEHIS Board. At UC Medicine, he is responsible for its cybersecurity, identity and access management and HIPAA privacy programs. Decker has 18 years of experience in information technology, with 12 years focused on information security. In 2017, he was named the 2017 Chicago CISO of the Year.

Decker is currently co-leading a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) task group of more than 150 industry experts across the country for implementing the CISA 405D legislation within the healthcare sector. This group is charged with “Aligning the Health Care Industry Security Approaches” as well as implementing several components of the federal Cybersecurity Task Force report. He is also a leader of the HHS Joint Cybersecurity Work Group, which is a public-private workgroup formed under the National Infrastructure Protection Plan.

Cletis Earle is senior vice president and CIO, information technology, at Kaleida Health. He currently serves as chair of the CHIME Board of Trustees and is a member of the CHIME Public Policy Steering Committee. At Kaleida, he is responsible for the hospital’s IT infrastructure, including security and the integration of electronic medical records.

Earle spent much of his career with Brooklyn Queens Health Care, a multi-hospital, 1,000-bed acute-care system, where he served as vice president, CIO and privacy officer. He began there 15 years earlier as a support manager and rose to the position of director and then vice president of IT. Over his time there, he created a multi-hospital information infrastructure to ensure patient information could be shared seamlessly between sites.

Gregory Garcia is executive director of the Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council (HSCC).  The healthcare and public health sector is one of 16 critical industry sectors identified under Presidential Policy Directive 21. The HSCC brings together the many subsectors of the healthcare industry in collaboration with the government – principally the Departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security –  to develop and implement evolving ways to strengthen the sector’s security and resiliency against cyber and physical threats.  

Garcia was appointed by President George W. Bush as the nation’s first assistant secretary for Cyber Security and Communications at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from 2006-2009, where he led the National Cyber Security Division, the National Communications System and the Office of Emergency Communications. Under his leadership, DHS was a key driver in developing the Bush Administration’s Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative (HSPD 23), the National Emergency Communications Plan, and the precursor to what is now the National Cyber and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC). He is a member of the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, a federal advisory committee and CompTIA’s Cybersecurity Advisory Board.

Kate Goodrich is director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) chief medical officer (CMO). She joined CMS in September 2011. CCSQ is responsible for over 20 quality measurement and value-based purchasing programs, implementation of the new Quality Payment Program and the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act, quality improvement programs in all 50 states, clinical standards and survey and certification of all providers across the nation, and all coverage decisions for treatments and services for CMS. The center budget exceeds $1.5 billion annually.

Prior to being CCSQ director and CMO, Goodrich served as the director of the Quality Measurement and Value-based Incentives Group in CCSQ from 2012 through 2015. She served as a senior adviser to the director of CCSQ and the CMS chief medical officer from 2011 to 2012 and from 2010 to 2011 she served as a medical officer in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) in HHS. From 1998 to 2008, she was on the faculty at the George Washington University Medical Center (GWUMC) and was division director for Hospital Medicine from 2005 to 2008 and chair of the Institutional Review Board from 2004 to 2008. She continues to practice clinical medicine as a hospitalist and professor of medicine at GWUMC.

Liz Johnson is CIO, Acute Care Hospitals & Applied Clinical Informatics at Tenet Health and chair of the CHIME Public Policy Steering Committee and chair of the CHIME Foundation Board. She provides the strategic vision and tactical planning for all clinical, patient management, imaging, productivity and supply chain systems used across Tenet’s acute care hospitals nationwide. As a pioneer in nursing and nurse informatics, she led the most aggressive and successful electronic health record (EHR) implementation effort in the nation.  Due to her leadership, Tenet Healthcare is now a national model of healthcare reform, using quantifiable data to transform clinical practice to enhance care delivery and improve patient outcomes through the use of EHR systems.

Johnson has served in various elected, assigned and philanthropic positions at the national level that include serving as CHIME Board Chair for 2017; board member for Health Level 7 (HL7) International; and appointee to the Health Information Technology (HIT) Standards Committee of the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) from 2009- 2016.  She is the recipient of the HIMSS 2018 Distinguished Fellows Service Award, the 2016 University of Texas at Arlington Distinguished Alumni Award and many other honors.

John Kravitz is senior vice president and CIO at Geisinger Health System. He currently serves on the CHIME Board of Trustees and is a member of the CHIME Public Policy Steering Committee. At Geisinger, he is responsible for IT strategy, governance and operations and business growth as well the organization’s advanced analytics platforms. In addition, he is responsible for the regional health information exchange, KeyHIE, which currently connects organizations throughout Pennsylvania. He has been involved with the Care Connectivity Consortium, a group of healthcare providers that consists of Geisinger, Intermountain Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente and Mayo Clinic who are developing tools to support the Nationwide Health Information Exchange.  

Prior to joining Geisinger, Kravitz was vice president and CIO for Good Shepherd Rehab Network in Allentown, Pa.  While at Good Shepherd he had the technology responsibility for Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a post-acute hospital and ambulatory clinic network through a joint venture with the University of Pennsylvania Health System in downtown Philadelphia. 

Leslie Krigstein is vice president of congressional affairs at CHIME, where she oversees CHIME’s congressional advocacy engagement efforts, which are focused on the effective use of information management within healthcare. Prior to joining CHIME, she was a member of the congressional affairs team at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

Krigstein first moved to the nation’s capital in 2009 to join the legislative staff of Congressman Daniel B. Maffei (NY-25). Immediately after leaving Capitol Hill, she provided public affairs and association management services to clients including the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), the Association of Clinical Research Organizations (ACRO) and Quintiles during her tenure with the Washington Health Strategies Group.

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee is executive editor at Information Security Media Group, where she leads content development of the HealthcareInfoSecurity.com media site and events. That includes overseeing coverage of such issues as HIPAA and other regulatory compliance, information risk management, health data privacy and cybersecurity, including challenges facing medical devices. She has been chronicling IT, as well as health IT issues, for more than 20 years. Prior to joining ISMG, she oversaw health IT and related coverage at United Business Media’s InformationWeek magazine and online news site.

Marc Probst is vice president and CIO at Intermountain Healthcare, an integrated delivery network based in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is a past chair of the CHIME Board of Trustees and is a member of the CHIME Public Policy Steering Committee. He is nationally recognized as a CIO and served on the Federal Healthcare Information Technology Policy Committee, which assisted in developing HIT policy for the U.S. government.

He has been involved with information technology and healthcare services for the past 32 years. Prior to Intermountain, he was a partner with two large professional service organizations, Deloitte Consulting and Ernst & Young, serving healthcare provider and payer organizations. He has significant interest in the use of information technology to increase patient care quality and lower the costs of care. He is experienced in information technology planning, design, development, deployment and operation, as well as policy development for HIT-related issues.

Alex Ruoff covers Congress for Bloomberg Law’s health desk, unpacking health-related legislation for healthcare providers, lawyers and compliance professionals. Before being sent to Capitol Hill, he covered health IT issues for Bloomberg Law. He has covered most topics in health, from Medicare payment polices to HITECH to data breach response.

Mari Rose Savickis is vice president, federal affairs, at CHIME, where she oversees all advocacy and interaction with federal agencies and the White House. She manages a wide swath of health IT policy priorities, including the Meaningful Use program, cybersecurity, quality measurement, patient safety, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), interoperability policies, patient identification and opioids. She is a subject matter expert on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) and has extensive knowledge of the Medicare program.

 

Prior to joining CHIME, she served as assistant director of federal affairs at the American Medical Association for nearly a decade, leading their health IT and HIPAA advocacy.  She formerly worked in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).

Nick Uehlecke is a professional staff member for the House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health majority staff. His portfolio includes Medicare Advantage and Part D policies as well as Medicare fraud and program integrity across the system. He has been with the subcommittee since the start of 2011, prior to which he was an analyst for the Marwood Group in several fields, including healthcare for nearly three years.

Karl West is the chief information security officer and assistant vice president of information systems at Intermountain Healthcare and an ex officio member of the AEHIS board. At Intermountain, he is responsible for all aspects of the organization’s security strategy. His leadership—throughout the planning, development, implementation, and maintenance of an excellent security program—has earned Intermountain national recognition as a leader in health information security. His teams cover a wide range of security specialties—governance, architecture, risk and compliance, identity and access, eDiscovery, forensics and incident management.

Prior to his role at Intermountain, West was vice president and managing partner at AT&T Consulting Services. He is a member of the Utah Health Information Network (UHIN) Privacy and Security Board. He’s also a board member of Weber State College’s Computer Science department.