Cara Babachicos, CHCIO, FCHIME
SVP & CIO, South Shore Health System
About Cara
| Cara Babachicos is Senior VP and CIO at South Shore Health System, a regional community health system located south of Boston. |
| Babachicos earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Boston College in the School of Management. She received her Master of Science Degree in Health Care Administration from the University of New Hampshire, and has a certificate in Innovation and Strategy from MIT. |
| Babachicos has over 25 years of experience working in healthcare information systems with a career that spans across acute care, non-acute, for profit-vendors and consulting. In her current role Cara is responsible for Information Systems, Information Security, Biomedical and Strategic Project Management for South Shore.
Cara values the importance of the healthcare continuum and seeks to enhance IT services to allow patient care in the home and/or other setting most suitable for the patient. Her hope is that IT will continue to provide better services to allow patients to stay in their home while receiving complex care. |
| She is of the firm belief that IT enables change and that true success comes from partnering with the business. She demonstrates that change is enabled by IT both in her current role as Senior VP/CIO at South Shore Health System, and in her previous role as CIO and Corporate Director of Information Systems for the Community Hospitals and Post Acute sites at Partners Healthcare. |
| Babachicos was a member of the CHIME Board of Directors 2014-2106. She is on the faculty of CHIME and teaches in the Healthcare CIO Boot Camp™. Babachicos has taught in the master’s program for Health Informatics at Northeastern University where she authored an online course focused on the patient experience. Previously, Babachicos was on the faculty at Harvard School of Public Health where she taught a course in executive project management. |
Russell P. Branzell, FCHIME, CHCIO
CEO, College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, CHIME
About Russ
Prior to joining CHIME, Russ Branzell was the VP of IS/CIO, Poudre Valley Health System (PVHS) and the President/CEO of Innovation Enterprises (PVHS’ for profit IS entity). PVHS is an integrated health system with a reputation for excellence and innovative care. They most recently are the recipients of the 2008 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the highest Presidential honor given to US businesses and organizations that demonstrate performance excellence, the Colorado Performance Excellence Peak Award (first and only organization in the state), Solucient’s 100 Top Hospitals, Health Grades Distinguished Hospital Award, Magnet Hospital for Nursing Excellence designation, Avatar International 5 Star National Award, and US News and World Report-America’s 50 Best Hospitals. In addition to these honors and awards, the Information Services Division was recognized with Information Week Magazine’s Top 500 Award for innovative technology usage and also received the Business Technology Optimization Excellence Award for IT Governance Best Practices (2004).
Prior to joining PVHS, he was the Regional Deputy CIO and Executive Director of Information Services for Sisters of Mercy Health System in St. Louis, MO.
Before his time in St. Louis, Mr. Branzell served on active duty in the US Air Force and continues to serve in the Air Force Reserves. While on active duty, Mr. Branzell served in numerous healthcare administration positions including CIO for the Air Mobility Command Surgeon General’s Office. In 1996, he was selected for the Air Force Medical Service Fellowship program and completed a CIO Internship at the Unity Health System in St. Louis, MO.
Mr. Branzell is a past member of the CHIME Board of Directors (2004-2008), past Chairperson of the CHIME Education Committee (2004-2008), and past Program Director for CHIME’s Healthcare CIO Boot Camp™ (2006 – 2009). He was instrumental in the development and ongoing success of CHIME’s LEAD Forum and CHIME Foundation Boot Camp education programs, serving both as Program Director and as a member of faculty for both since their inception. In addition, he has served as Chairperson of CHIME’s Spring and Fall CIO Forum Planning Committees and currently serves on the CHIME Education Foundation Board.
Mr. Branzell is a Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO), a fellow of CHIME and HIMSS, and board certified through the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE). He was awarded the 2005 ACHE Regent’s Award as the Young Healthcare Administrator of the Year for the State of Colorado. PVHS has received numerous industry awards in recognition of its commitment to the advancement of healthcare informatics.
Russ serves on numerous editorial, volunteer, community and management boards. Additionally, he has been a speaker at regional, national, user groups and vendor conferences.
A native of San Antonio, TX, Russ earned an undergraduate degree in business administration specializing in human resource management and labor relations from the University of Texas. In 1995, he earned a Master’s degree in Administrative Science from Embry-Riddle University with an emphasis in management.
Adrienne Edens, FCHIME, LCHIME, CHCIO
Executive Programs Advisor, CHIME
About Adrienne
Adrienne Edens, FCHIME, LCHIME, CHCIO is an Executive Programs Advisor and faculty member for CHIME. Her career in healthcare information systems extends over 40 years including experience in HIT consulting and 25 years as a CIO. In her role at CHIME Adrienne puts her years of HIT executive experience into practice, designing education programs specifically for healthcare leaders. She is passionate about the importance of being a learning leader and supports CHIME’s vision to create education to support our members in being “Exceptional Leaders Transforming Healthcare”. She has many years of experience as a speaker and trainer in numerous programs and has been serving as a faculty member for both the CHIME Healthcare CIO Boot Camp and the CMIO Leadership Academy for 10 years.
As the Vice President and CIO for the Valley Area of Sutter Health in California Adrienne lead the consolidation of the IS organizations of 2 previous regions into an integrated operational unit supporting 10 hospitals and 2000 physicians. As the CIO for St. Luke’s Health System in Boise, Idaho, she engaged the organization in developing a physician led strategy for the electronic medical record to consolidate EHRs from 14 to one. This approach provided the means to integrate a widely distributed system of hospitals, physician offices, clinics and rural critical access hospitals. While at St. Luke’s she served as a member of the board of the state wide HIE, the Idaho Health Data Exchange. As the Information Officer for National Health Plan systems for Kaiser Permanente she led the program to achieve compliance with Medicare Part D for the Kaiser regions and developed the first deductible plan capabilities for the California regions. As Regional CIO for the Sacramento Region and Information Officer, Northern California for Dignity Health (formerly Catholic Healthcare West), Adrienne managed the process of integrating systems for hospitals joining the region. Throughout her career she has developed and implemented IT governance, strategic plans and shared systems implementation for multiple regions, hospitals and physician practices.
Keith Fraidenburg
MBA, EVP and COO, CHIME
About Keith
Keith Fraidenburg has more than 20 years of experience working within the healthcare IT industry, including nearly 16 years of association management experience. In his role as Executive VP and Chief Strategy Officer, he is responsible for providing overall leadership and tactical execution of the organization’s strategic plan while identifying and cultivating new growth opportunities in support of the organization’s long-term strategic goals. He also maintains primary responsibility for the organization’s advocacy and public policy efforts and its platform of education programs and services. In doing so, he works closely with senior healthcare IT executives, key industry leaders, and industry association partners, including the American Hospital Association (AHA), American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and others to keenly understand the issues, concerns, and needs of healthcare information executives.
In his previous role as VP of Education and Communications for CHIME, Mr. Fraidenburg was responsible for leading the education, marketing and communications programs and services available through CHIME.
In addition to his responsibilities within CHIME, Mr. Fraidenburg is a member of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
George Hickman, CHCIO, FCHIME, LCHIME
EVP & CIO, Albany Medical Center
About George
| George Hickman is Executive Vice President and Systems Chief Information and Analytics Officer for Albany Medical Center in New York’s Capital Region. He is responsible for overseeing all information technology, biomedical engineering and data analytics activities throughout the academic health sciences system, its hospitals, physician faculty practice and medical college. Prior to joining Albany Med, he was a healthcare IT partner with Ernst & Young LLP. |
| This is Hickman’s third academic CIO post. He also has worked with Price Waterhouse Coopers and started his career as a hospital project engineer. He has worked with health provider organizations across the US as well as for the Ministry of Health in Singapore and the UK Health Authority and publishes frequently on healthcare IT and operational change topics. |
| He was awarded the 2007 CHIME/Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) John E. Gall, Jr. CIO of the Year. |
| Hickman is a former board chair, former Foundation board chair, a charter member, the current Education Foundation board chair, and is a Life member and Fellow of CHIME. |
| He is past board chair, past executive compensation committee chair, and a Life Fellow member of HIMSS. He is also a HIMSS Analytics past board member. |
| Hickman is the board secretary for MedAllies, the service delivery organization Hudson Valley area HIE and a national HISP for Direct exchange, and a past board and executive committee member for the Health Information Exchange of New York (Hixny). He sits on the Cerner Corporation CIO Strategic Advisory Council and the Allscripts Touchworks Executive Forum. He also serves on his organization’s regional Medicaid Reform (DSRIP) board of directors. He is an advisory board member emeritus for KLAS and sits on the editorial advisory board for healthsystemcio.com as well as several associational, local, state and vendor industry committees. |
| He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on a variety of health IT related topics and has published extensively on a variety of health IT-related topics, including co-authoring, “The Healthcare IT Planning Fieldbook.” |
| He holds a BS and an MS in engineering from the University of Tennessee. |
Jonathan Manis
Former SVP and CIO, Sutter Health of Sacramento
About Jonathan
| Jonathan Manis, a former clinician and veteran health care information technology leader, most recently served as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Sutter Health of Sacramento, CA. With more than 30 acute care hospitals, hundreds of primary care clinics and sites of care, and annual revenues in excess of $13B, Sutter Health is one of the largest and most respected integrated health care provider organizations in the country.
Manis is a seasoned CIO with more than 25 years of IT leadership experience. He joined Sutter Health in 2006 from Illinois-based Provena Health, where he served as System Vice President of Administrative Services and CIO. Prior to Provena, Manis was Vice President, Information Systems for Advocate Healthcare in Chicago and, before Advocate, he was Chief Technology Officer for Sterling Health of Miami, FL.
A native Floridian, Manis grew up on Cocoa Beach with America’s space program. After working summers at both NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and nearby Disney World, Manis enlisted in the US Navy and was trained as a licensed practical nurse. He served as a Hospital Corpsman on submarines and as a combat medic for the US Marine Corps before being selected to attend the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. Parachute and SCUBA qualified, Manis was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the US Marine Corps and was trained as a ground combat officer. Manis served as a Forward Observer and Fire Direction Officer, and participated in combat operations in Panama and Haiti. During Desert Shield/ Desert Storm, Manis served as a Tactical Fire Support Coordination Officer for coalition forces. Following graduate school at the US Naval Academy Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, Manis was promoted and assigned to Headquarters, US Marine Corps, The Pentagon, Washington, DC where he managed information systems for the Navy and Marine Corps. Selected for promotion to Major, Manis accepted an early military retirement offer in 1994.
A decorated combat arms officer, Manis attended the United States Naval Academy and Auburn University. He holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science/ Information Systems Management from the U.S. Naval Academy Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, and he has completed continuing graduate education coursework at Stanford University, UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan. Manis is a regularly featured speaker regarding technology and information systems management and he has authored multiple professional articles on the topics of information technology management and support function leadership.
Jon Manis and his wife, Bobbi, make their home in Granite Bay, CA. With two school-aged children, they enjoy skiing, scuba diving, sailing, and family travel. He has yet to master the guitar. |
Theresa Meadows, RN, MS, CHCIO (Associate Faculty)
SVP & CIO of Cook Children’s Health Care System
About Theresa
| Theresa Meadows, MS, RN, CHCIO, FHIMSS is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Cook Children’s Health Care System. Cook Children’s Health Care System, based in Fort Worth, TX, is a national award-winning, not-for-profit, integrated pediatric health care system comprised of nine companies. She leads a team of 200 members covering areas such as infrastructure, applications, telecommunications, and program management. The IS team currently supports 140 project initiatives that include deploying business intelligence, advanced clinical systems, and enterprise resource management.
Ms. Meadows has led the organization through extensive improvements and modernization. In 2012, the organization received recognition as one of the “Most Improved Hospitals” as part of the Healthcare’s Most Wired™ award program and recognized as one of the “Information Week 500 innovators.” In 2013 and 2014, Cook Children’s received Healthcare’s Most Wired™ designation. Cook Children’s was recognized by Computerworld’s Honors program for their state-of-the-art distributed antenna system implementation. In addition, Ms. Meadows was also named one of Computerworld’s “Premier 100 IT Leaders” for 2013. Ms. Meadows’ department has been recognized as one of the “Best Hospital IT Departments to Work” by Healthcare IT News in 2013.
Ms. Meadows has 20 years of experience leading efforts for incorporating information systems as a mechanism for facilitating process improvement and efficiency. Prior to joining Cook, Theresa was a Director for Ascension Health Information Services. In that role she leads the strategic direction for clinical information solutions that cross care settings for 10 facilities within Ascension Health.
Ms. Meadows currently serves on the NetApp Healthcare Advisory Board and is a member of the McKesson Innovation Leadership Council. She served as chair for the North Texas Healthcare Information and Quality Collaborative (NTHIQC). Ms. Meadows has published several articles and her organization was the first to participate in the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) case study publications on their successful implementation of bar-coded medication verification.
Ms. Meadows has a master’s degree in healthcare informatics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham; a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is an active member of the Children’s Hospital Association CIO Council; is a Fellow in the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS); is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and is an active member of the CHIME. Ms. Meadows is a graduate of the CHIME Healthcare CIO Boot Camp™ and is a credentialed by CHIME as a Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO). |
George Reynolds, MD, MMM, FAAP, CHCIO
Executive Advisor, CHIME Clinical Informatics
About George
| Dr. Reynolds’ retired in 2015 from Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska where he served as the CIO and CMIO. He now advises healthcare organizations on a range of Healthcare IT initiatives including analytics and data governance, population health management, patient and physician engagement, and IT governance. He has a special interest in helping organizations develop efficient, lean project leadership and staffing. |
| George is board certified in Clinical Informatics, Pediatric Critical Care and General Pediatrics. Prior to his transition to the CIO role, he directed the PICUs at Children’s and the Nebraska Medical Center. He also holds a masters degree in Medical Management from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been recognized as Healthcare Informatics’ Innovator of the year for Children’s Analytics program, as well as the AMDIS Award in Applied Medical Informatics. Modern Healthcare named him one of the 25 top Clinical Informaticists and Becker’s Healthcare included him in their 25 CMIOs to know list. |
Sarah Richardson, CHCIO
CIO, California Market, Davita Medical Group
About Sarah
| Sarah Richardson is a transformative, inspirational and results-driven business and technology executive who operates within large-scale healthcare and hospitality environments. She attains aggressive goals, catalyzes change and advances sustainability by designing and executing high performance-based strategies, cultivating top-tier talent, infusing expectations and accountabilities, instilling customer-centric practices and forging collaborative cultures.
Sarah is one of those people who ‘gets things done’ and has a penchant for bringing out the best in people. With an enthusiastic and genuinely friendly attitude, Sarah radiates a sincere passion for delivering value and benefits to the teams she leads and serves. She has built award-winning teams and has been recognized by The Kansas City Business Journal as a ‘Woman Who Means Business’, a “Next Gen Leader’, and a ‘Rising Star’ by KC Business Magazine.
With a B.S. in Hospitality Administration and a Master’s in Business, Sarah spent six years in the hotel and casino industry in Las Vegas, NV, before making the purposeful decision that she could create more meaningful results for more people if she moved into the healthcare industry. Her first 5 years in healthcare began as an IT Administrator at University Medical Center in Las Vegas, NV, where she then began her ten-year career with HCA (Hospital Corporation of America).
Promoted three times in her ten-year tenure with HCA, culminating in a Division CIO position, Sarah’s contributions centered on leading the development and delivery of IT in a shared service model along with scalable operational programs and improvement activities. She is most proud that her work focused on building long-lasting, loyal relationships across the continuum, resulting in collaborative strategies to meet project delivery needs, productivity gains, and the use of technology to advance patient care resulting in better outcomes. Her ability to coordinate teams of technology experts, strategic business partners, physicians, and clinicians, has enabled her to repeatedly deliver programs, services, and tailored solutions in the healthcare setting.
Currently, Sarah serves as CIO for DaVita Medical Group in El Segundo, CA. Since 1992, HealthCare Partners has been committed to developing innovative models of healthcare delivery that improve their patients’ quality of life while containing healthcare costs. Their strength is in their steadfast commitment to their guiding principle of coordinated care. Their physicians strive daily to bring the benefits of coordinated care to more than 600,000 managed care patients in California, who represent the diversity of cultures, socioeconomic groups, ages, and health statuses in the communities they serve.
An active member of CHIME as a Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO) and current Vice President of Marketing & Communications for the Southern California chapter of HIMSS, Sarah regularly publishes industry relevant content on her website at www.conciergeleadership.com. She also volunteers her time as a board member with the Children’s Bureau and is currently enrolled at UCLA Extension, seeking a certification in Healthcare Management. She is an avid scuba diver and scuba diving instructor with a passion for conservation. |
Donna M. Roach, CHCIO (Associate Faculty)
CIO, DMR Advisors
About Donna
| Donna Roach is responsible for the Information Technology department and its functions for Via Christi Health, a 12 hospital system located in Central/ South Kansas. Prior to her CIO position at Via Christi she was the CIO for Borgess Health and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospitals, both systems are under Ascension Health.
With more than 30 years’ experience in the healthcare industry, Roach has focused on healthcare information technology for the past 25 years. Before joining Ascension, she was CIO/VP of Information Services for Bronson Health in Kalamazoo, Michigan and previous to this the CIO/VP of IT at Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, Illinois. Her past experience includes W.A. Foote Memorial Hospital, Adventist Health System, Resurrection Health Care, Central DuPage Hospital, Rush University Medical Center, and the Veterans Administration.
Roach earned her Bachelor of Science Degree, Health Administration, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and her Master of Science in Health Systems Management from Rush Medical College in Chicago. She completed her Fellowship at the North Chicago Veterans Administration.
Roach is a Certified Healthcare Chief Information Officer, a Fellow within the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society, a Board Member for the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and active as a StateNet CHIME coordinator. Previously, she was the President of the Michigan Chapter of Healthcare Information Management Systems Society and Chair for the Michigan Hospital Association Technology Board.
She has taught at the University of Illinois – Circle Campus, Rush University, Department of Health Systems Management, and UCONN, Health Administration. |
Tim Stettheimer, Ph.D., CHCIO, FCHIME, LCHIME
VP, CHIME Education
About Tim
| Timothy Stettheimer, PhD, is Vice President of Education for the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), a 2,400-plus member professional organization. In this role, Dr. Stettheimer leads all education strategy for members and affiliate associations, as well as international efforts. Education initiatives include CHIME’s Fall and Spring Forums, CIO Bootcamps, Leadership Academies as well as other summits, workshops and symposia.
Dr. Stettheimer has previously served as a healthcare CIO for two decades and has worked with healthcare information technology and healthcare leaders for twenty-five years. He most recently served as the Regional Chief Information Officer (RCIO) for the South and Central Region of Ascension Information Services (AIS), which is made up of seven geographic markets as well as all senior living locations and all medical groups. As RCIO, Dr. Stettheimer was the regional leader responsible for AIS service delivery and technology visioning. He also guided governance models, served on Ascension-level committees, and supported diverse AIS functions such as goal sponsorship, compensation committee efforts, IT general control oversight, infrastructure governance, and AIS Model Community Survey action planning.
Prior to his Ascension role, Dr. Stettheimer served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for St. Vincent’s Health System, Birmingham. In this role, he was responsible for managing the Health Ministry’s technology strategy, portfolio, and operations, while serving as the Health Ministry’s technology service delivery senior escalation point. He has also served in leadership roles at Adventist Health System and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas.
Dr. Stettheimer earned a doctorate in information services focused in medical informatics, information theory and design, and information policy and management from the University of North Texas in Denton. He holds a master’s degree in applied cognition and neuroscience from the University of Texas in Dallas and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. Dr. Stettheimer is a fellow with both the American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE) and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (FCHIME). He is a member of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), holds the Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO) credential, is a certified professional in healthcare information management systems (CPHIMS), and is a member of the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS). He served as a fellow through a National Institute of Health grant during his doctoral studies. Dr. Stettheimer has held faculty positions with the University of North Texas and the University of Alabama at Birmingham and serves on a number of non-profit boards.
Dr. Stettheimer has earned the Certified Healthcare CIO distinction from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME). He also served as the CHIME 2010 Board Chair, the 2011 CHIME Foundation Board Chair and the 2013-1014 CHIME Education Foundation Board Chair. Dr. Stettheimer and his wife Carol live in Birmingham, AL and are the parents of four children. |
Healthcare CIO Boot Camp™ attendees are eligible to receive up to 32 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) toward the Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO) Program.
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