Organization Governance Planning Group Members
John Tooker (Co-Chair), MD, MBA, FACP
Dr. Tooker is the Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the American College of Physicians (ACP), the largest medical specialty society in the U.S., representing 124,000 specialists in internal medicine (internists), internal medicine subspecialists, and medical students. Dr. Tooker serves on the boards of the National Quality Forum (NQF), eHealth Initiative, the National Committee for Quality Assurance (Chair-elect, 2008), the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Patient Safety Advisory Board, and the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS). He also represents ACP as a founding member of the AQA, formerly the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance, and serves on the Connecting for Health steering committee.
Dr. Tooker earned his MD at University of Colorado School of Medicine, and his MBA from the Fox School of Business at Temple University. He is an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Dennis Barry, MBA
Mr. Barry is President Emeritus of Moses Cone Health System, a multi-hospital system with a range of outpatient services designed to provide care for Piedmont, North Carolina residents throughout all stages of their lives. Before coming to the Moses Cone Health System, Barry was a general director of the North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill and assistant dean of the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr. Barry also served on the board of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), which oversees hospital quality nationally, for five years and chaired American Hospital Association’s Committee of Commissioners to the JCAHO for four years. He also Chaired the American Hospital Association’s Board of Trustees.
Mr. Barry received his MBA from the University of Chicago.
Helen Darling
Ms. Darling is President of the National Business Group on Health, a national non-profit, membership organization devoted exclusively to providing practical solutions to its large employer-members' most important health care problems and representing large employers' perspective on national health policy issues. Its 302 members, including 64 of the Fortune 100 purchase health and disability benefits for over 55 million employees, retirees and dependents. She is a member of the IOM Roundtable on Evidence-based Medicine.
Ms. Darling received a master's degree in Demography/Sociology and a BS in History/English, cum laude, from the University of Memphis.
Lori M. Evans, MPH, MPP
Ms. Evans serves as a Deputy Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health leading a new Office of Health Information Technology Transformation (OHITT). OHITT is responsible for government and private sector efforts to support improvements in health care quality, affordability and outcomes for all New Yorkers through widespread deployment of health information technology.
Ms. Evans earned her master's degree in Public Health and Public Policy from the George Washington University.
Jean-Paul Gagnon, PhD
Dr. Gagnon is Director of Public Policy at sanofi-aventis in Bridgewater, NJ. He is a former professor and division head of Pharmacy Administration in the School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina and has worked for sanofi-aventis for twenty years. He wrote over sixty articles in peer-reviewed journals and has made presentations on a variety of issues including Medicare, Part D, Evidence-based Medicine and the effect of federal policy on the pharmaceutical industry and pharmacy practice. In 1981-82, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow in Washington, D.C. and worked as a committee staff person on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health.
Dr. Gagnon received his PhD in Pharmacy Administration from the Ohio State University.
Martin Hickey, MD
Dr. Hickey is the Senior Vice President of Health Care Affairs at Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield. Dr. Hickey oversees the activities of Medical Affairs, Medical Benefits Management, Network Management and Contracting Support, Network Performance Support, Business Process Improvement, and also a pharmacy benefits management organization. In addition, Dr. Hickey is leading Excellus’ involvement in support of regional health information exchange activities in health care markets across New York State. He was also instrumental in the development of health information exchange activities in New Mexico.
Dr. Hickey is a graduate of the Rush Medical College in Chicago, and earned a Master’s degree in Administrative Medicine from the University of Wisconsin.
Robert S. Juhasz, DO, FACOI
Dr. Juhasz is the Associate Medical Director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Willoughby Hills Family Health Center, and also Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine. His medical specialty is internal medicine with areas of interest in preventive medicine and osteopathic manipulative treatments. Dr. Juhasz is a member of the current AHIC workgroup on electronic health records, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), where he also serves as the Chair for the Department of Educational Affairs. He is a member of the AOA’s Bureau of Federal Health Programs and serves as the AOA's liaison to the US Preventive Services Task Force. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the American College of Osteopathic Internists.
Dr. Juhasz received his BS from John Carroll University, and his DO from Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences.
Charles Kahn, MPH
Mr. Kahn is President of the Federation of American Hospitals (FAH), the national advocacy organization for investor-owned hospitals and health systems. In June of 2007, he was appointed as a member of the Governing Board of the National Quality Forum, a not-for-profit private-public partnership and the nation’s pre-eminent organization for developing and implementing a national strategy for health care quality measurement.
Mr. Kahn holds a Masters of Public Health degree from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Linda Kloss, MA, RHIA, CAE
Ms. Kloss is the Chief Executive Officer of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), a national association of more than 52,000 health information management (HIM) professionals founded in 1928. AHIMA is comprised of 52 component state chapters and the Foundation for Research and Education (FORE). Kloss serves on the Board of Directors for AHIMA and FORE. In her role at AHIMA, Kloss is responsible for delivering services to the fast changing HIM community, promoting its mission and values, and executing the Association’s strategic plan. Kloss led the Association’s efforts to co-found the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology, and currently chairs its Board of Trustees. Other appointments include the Steering Committee of Connecting for Health and the Board of Directors for the National Alliance for Health Information Technology.
Prior to joining AHIMA in 1995, Kloss served as one of the founding officers for MediQual Systems, Inc., and InterQual, Inc. Kloss earned a masters degree in organizational development and holds the CAE (Certified Association Executive) designation. In 2007, she received the designation from Modern Healthcare as one of the “Top 25 Women in Healthcare.”
Michael R. Lardiere, LCSW
Mr. Lardiere is currently the Director of Health Information Technology and the Senior Advisor for Behavioral Health at the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC). Mr. Lardiere has over 30 years of health care experience in inpatient, outpatient, managed care, for profit and not for profit organizations. Mr. Lardiere is responsible for developing strategy and in assisting health centers across the nation in implementing various HIT strategies to improve quality care. He is engaged with health centers, health center controlled networks, Primary Care Associations, RHIOs and other health information systems to advance the field of health information exchange.
Mr. Lardiere obtained his his Masters Degree in Social Work Administration from Fordham University in New York City. He was granted certification as a Certified Utilization Review Professional by InterQual. He also holds the “R” Certification for Social Workers in New York State.
Leslie (Les) Lenert, MD
Dr. Lenert is Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Public Health Informatics. Prior to this appointment, he served as Director for the Health Services Research and Development section of the Veterans Medical Research Foundation, as Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and Associate Director of Medical Informatics at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.
Dr. Lenert is a graduate of the University of California, Riverside, the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, and the Stanford University Biomedical Information Sciences Program. He has completed residency training in Internal Medicine and fellowship training in Clinical Pharmacology and is board certified in both of these disciplines.
S. Robert Levine, MD
Dr. Levine served multiple terms on the International Board and Executive Committee of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), and currently is Chair of its Clinical Affairs Working Group. Founded by the parents of children with Type 1 diabetes, JDRF is the world’s largest private, non-profit funder of diabetes research ($200 million for FY2009). He has also served on the boards of the Center for the Advancement of Health, the Foundation for Accountability (FACCT), the New York City Police Foundation, Literacy Partners, Inc, and the Off-Center Ballet. Since 1997, Dr. Levine has served as Chairman of the Progressive Policy Institute’s “Health Priorities Project.” Dr. Levine served as a consultant to the congressionally mandated Diabetes Research Working Group, and as a member of the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases’ Council.
Dr. Levine received his BS in Human Development and Nutrition from Cornell University in 1975, and his MD from Chicago’s Loyola-Stritch School of Medicine. He completed his Internal Medicine residency and Cardiology fellowship at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Deven McGraw, JD, MPH
Ms. McGraw is the Director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, where she focuses on developing and promoting public policies that protect privacy as personal health information is shared electronically. Previously, Ms. McGraw was the Chief Operating Officer of the National Partnership for Women & Families, where she provided strategic direction and oversight for the organization’s core program areas. She also advised health industry clients while at Patton Boggs, LLP and Ropes & Gray, and served as Deputy Legal Counsel to the Governor of Massachusetts.
Ms. McGraw her JD and LLM from the Georgetown University Law Center, and her Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Sherry Reynolds
Ms. Reynolds, currently the Executive Director of the Alliance 4 Health (A4H), is an experienced health care consumer advocate, coalition builder and organizational development expert with over 15 years of health informatics experience. She is the bipartisan Legislative Liaison for HIMSS Washington; one of the co-founders of the Consumer Advisory Group for the PSHA - a regional partnership covering 2 million people involving employers, physicians, hospitals, patients, health plans and ”recognized by Secretary Levitt as the first “Community Leader for Value-Driven Health Care.” The first consumer on the Washington State Hospital Association’s - Patient Safety Committee, she uses her natural coalition-building skills on the Healthy Washington Coalition planning board. Her entrepreneurial spirit was developed by stints at large software and consulting firms and refined by co-founding 2 non-profits. As the State Volunteer Coordinator for a Presidential campaign with 28,000 volunteers in 3 months, her innovative networking style, high-tech skills and commitment to grass roots empowerment were invaluable. In her spare time she recently developed an innovative model to link the EMS system to PHR's using Smart Cards and on occasion still consults during EMR implementations and trains providers in Washington and California.
Sherry’s academic background includes Bio-medical Engineering at USC, Construction Engineering Management with a BS in Business.
James A. Schuping, CAE
Mr. Schuping currently serves as Executive Vice President/CEO of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange, (WEDI), an association dedicated to fostering administrative simplification in healthcare through the development and implementation of electronic commerce and EDI standards. He has over thirty-five years of association management experience, twenty-six as a CEO. In addition, he has over ten years experience in marketing and management in the securities, insurance and construction products industries.
Mr. Schuping received his BS Social Sciences at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and carries the Certified Association Executive (CAE) designation.
Jane Hyatt Thorpe
Ms. Thorpe is the Deputy Director of the Office of Policy for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) within the Department of Health and Human Services. The Office of Policy functions as the Agency’s crosscutting policy and strategic planning office for the Administrator. Ms. Thorpe focuses on matters related to value-driven health care and transparency, medical technology and innovation, and health information technology. She joined the Office of Policy from the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) and prior to that was a member of the health care group at the law firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP. Ms. Thorpe is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor for Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.
Ms. Thorpe received an A.B. magna cum laude in History and a Certificate in American Studies from Princeton University and a J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law.
Paul Uhrig, JD
Mr. Uhrig is general counsel and executive vice president in charge of corporate development for SureScripts where he oversees all legal matters, corporate development and federal legislative affairs for SureScripts. Mr. Uhrig came to SureScripts from the law firm of Gardner Carton & Douglas LLP in Washington, D.C., where he was vice chairman of the firm's corporate department, chairman of the corporate department's regulated industries transactions practice group, and a member of the firm's health department
Mr. Uhrig received his JD from the American University, Washington College of Law, and his BA in Economics from The University of Notre Dame.