Inside CHIME: New Board Members Poised to Push CHIME to New Heights
 |
10.26.17 By Liz Johnson, MS, FAAN, FCHIME, FHIMSS, CHCIO, RN-BC, CIO, Acute Care Hospitals & Applied Clinical Informatics, Tenet Healthcare |
Earlier this month, CHIME announced the election results for the Board of Trustees. I want to thank all our CHIME and Foundation firm members who sought to serve on the board and our members who cast their ballots. We had an outstanding roster of candidates for the 2017 openings. Your new board members – Sheree McFarland, John Kravitz and Rusty Yeager – have a wealth of experience working in a variety of healthcare organizations.
Sheree is CIO of the Hospital Corporation of America’s (HCA) West Florida Division. Under her leadership, the West Florida IT team attained the highest patient engagement scores in HCA. John is senior vice president and CIO at Geisinger Health System, which is renowned for its innovative use of EHRs in a market that covers 45 counties in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. Rusty is senior vice president and CIO at HealthSouth, and also served as a Medical Service Corps officer specializing in healthcare IT and cybersecurity for the U.S. Air Force. HealthSouth is based in Birmingham, Ala., and is one of the nation’s largest providers of post-acute healthcare services, with facilities in 33 states and Puerto Rico.
They each are committed to CHIME and to advancing our industry. Sheree wants to expand the international footprint of CHIME and the CHIME Foundation, raise our profile among CIOs and healthcare executives and maintain our educational mission. John is passionate about the total well-being of the patient and will bring that passion plus his experience in advocacy and advanced healthcare analytics to help us transform patient care. Rusty has served on numerous boards and will use his experience and expertise to advocate at the federal level for policy that improves cybersecurity and facilitates interoperability.
The CHIME Foundation Board also added a member: Steve Eckert, president of Divurgent, who served as an appointed Foundation Board member this year. He is a veteran executive with decades of leadership experience and will be an asset to the board and to us.
Please join me in welcoming our new CHIME Board members. Their board terms will begin on Jan. 1, 2018. On that date, I will become Foundation Board chair and Cletis Earle, my friend and colleague at Kaleida Health in Western New York state, will be CHIME Board chair.
We have made great strides in 2017 and I expect the momentum to continue into 2018 and beyond. Thank you for being such engaged and supportive colleagues. It has been and will continue to be an honor to represent you.