Institute for Health Metrics Quality Symposium:

"Closing the Gap Between Theory and Performance"

October 11, 2006 Endicott House - Dedham, MA

Samuel O. Thier, MD

Samuel O. Thier, MD is professor of Medicine and professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. He was president and chief executive officer of Partners HealthCare System from 1996-2002. From 1994-1997 he was president of The Massachusetts General Hospital, and was Brandeis University's president during the previous three years. He served six years as president of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences and eleven years as chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, where he was Sterling Professor. Dr. Thier is an authority on internal medicine and kidney disease and is also known for his expertise in national health policy, medical education and biomedical research.

Born in New York, he attended Cornell University and received his medical degree from the State University of New York at Syracuse in 1960. He served on the medical staff of Massachusetts General Hospital, as an intern, resident, chief resident in Medicine and chief of the Renal Unit, and held a faculty appointment at Harvard. Prior to joining the faculty of Yale in 1975, he was professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He has received fifteen honorary degrees and the UC Medal of the University of California, San Francisco. He has served as president of the American Federation of Clinical Research and chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine and is a Master of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Dr. Thier is a director of Charles River Laboratories, Inc., The Commonwealth Fund (Chairman), Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and Merck & Co., Inc. and a member of the Board of Overseers of TIAA-CREF and the Board of Overseers of Cornell University Medical College. Back

Michael B. Blackman, MD

Michael B. Blackman, MD is Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Berkshire Medical Center, the main facility within Berkshire Health Systems. Until recently, he was also an attending physician at the Medical Center. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine.

Dr. Blackman graduated from the Brown University School of Medicine in 1997, having been a founding member of the Primary Care Interest Group and an elected medical student representative to the Advisory Committee for University Planning. He was Co-President of the Brown Chapter of the American Medical Student Association from 1993 to 1997. He received his A.B. in Political Science from Brown in 1987 and his M.B.A. from the University of Michigan Graduate School of Business Administration in 1990. While at Michigan, Blackman was the Logistics and Finance Director for the University of Michigan Solar Car Team.

Blackman also completed pre-medical studies at Columbia University and has been a consultant to a number of health related enterprises, including: Islesboro Health Center, where he planned and implemented a geriatric needs assessment; Tapestry Health, where he is a director; Medical Information Technology, Inc., a member of Physician Advisory Committee; Health New England, a member of Berkshire County Physician Advisory Board; Patient Keeper, Inc., a member of Client Advisory Board; and the eHealth Initiative, member of Practicing Clinicians Working Group on Health Information Exchange. Back

Mary E. Charlson, MD

Mary E. Charlson, MD is a General Internist and Clinical Epidemiologist, as well as the Executive Director of the Cornell Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine, Chief of General Internal Medicine and is the William T. Foley Distinguished Professor in Medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University/New York Presbyterian Hospital. She also serves as the Program Chairperson for the Master of Science Program in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research and Director for the Agency for Health Research and Quality T32 fellowship in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research Training Program, and a T32 fellowship in Complementary Medicine funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

She is an international leader in the measurement and improvement of risk-adjusted quality outcomes. She developed a method of assessing the prognostic impact of comorbid conditions; the 'Charlson index', with more than 2,200 citations, and is one of the most widely cited articles. She leads a multidisciplinary research team that performs clinical trials, outcomes research, and population-based studies. Her work has focused on developing predictive models in chronic illness and using the models to develop interventions to improve outcomes in inpatients and outpatients. She has also translated basic theories from economics and psychology to develop individually tailored strategies that patients with chronic illness can employ to successfully change their health risk behaviors.

Dr. Charlson received her medical degree from Yale University School of Medicine. After completing her residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale. She is a member of the American Association of Physicians and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. Back

James M. Keegan, MD

James M. Keegan, MD is the Vice President Clinical Quality at Rapid City Regional Hospital in Rapid City, South Dakota. He also serves as the Medical Director of Infection Control and the Medical Director of the Antibiotic Management Team. He is also an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of South Dakota School of Medicine and a Clinical Consultant for the South Dakota State Health Department.

He attended the Emory University Medical School and completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. He completed an infectious disease fellowship at the University of Vermont. He is board certified in Infectious Disease and Internal Medicine. Back

Stephan R. Laverty

Stephen R. Laverty has served as president and chief executive officer of Northeast Health System and Northeast Hospital Corporation since September of 2000. Mr. Laverty oversees the strategic and day-to-day operations for the $300 million not-for-profit System, which employs 4,500 people at its four hospitals, five senior services facilities and more than 40 behavioral health centers.

Prior to joining Northeast, Mr. Laverty served as the president and chief operating officer at Children's Hospital Boston, where he directed operations at the hospital, its satellite facilities and related institutional affiliates. From 1993 until 1998 Mr. Laverty was the president and chief executive officer for Winchester Hospital. He joined Winchester in 1985 and served in a progression of leadership roles before being named president and CEO. Mr. Laverty also held management positions at Milton Hospital, St. Elizabeth's Hospital and Brigham & Women's Hospital.

Mr. Laverty is a Member of the American College of Healthcare Executives, an Advanced Member of the Hospital Financial Management Association and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Hospital Association. He also sits on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Council of Community Hospitals. Mr. Laverty holds a master's degree from Suffolk University and a bachelor's degree from St. Michael's College. Back

Denni McColm, CIO

Denni McColm is Chief Information Officer for Citizens Memorial Healthcare (CMH). Denni has been a part of the CMH organization since 1988 and served as Director of Human Resources and Director of Finance before being named as CIO in June, 2003. In her role as CIO, Denni supervises and coordinates the design, acquisition, maintenance and use of computer, information and telephone technology and champions information technology initiatives that add value to organization.

The most important accomplishment for CMH in information technology over the past few years has been the implementation of a fully electronic medical record system. CMH was honored to be the 2005 recipient of the HIMSS Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence in the implementation of the electronic medical record. CMH has also been named to the Most Wired Small and Rural Hospitals list for 2005 and 2006.

Denni participated on the HL7 small hospitals workgroup for drafting the EHR-S functional model draft standard in 2004 and was recently appointed as a commissioner on the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology.

Denni has a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Back

Mark Metersky, MD

Mark Metersky, MD is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care and is Director of the Pulmonary /Critical Care Fellowship Program.

He graduated from New York University School of Medicine in 1985 and completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Boston City Hospital and a Fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center.

Dr. Metersky is serves on the Technical Expert Panel for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services National Pneumonia Project, the Quality Improvement Committee of the American College of Chest Physicians and the AMA Performance Measures Implementation and Evaluation Advisory Committee of the Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement. Dr. Metersky has published and presented extensively on Quality Improvement and the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of pneumonia. Back

Barbra Rabson

Barbra Rabson has been the executive director of the Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) since 1998. Under Ms. Rabson's leadership, MHQP has become a trusted source of physician performance information in Massachusetts, and MHQP is nationally recognized for its collaborative approach to collecting and reporting performance information to improve care. Ms. Rabson was the principle investigator for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Rewarding Results grant awarded to MHQP to evaluate how financial and non-financial incentives impact the of quality care.

Ms. Rabson is a founding member of, and currently chairs the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI), a national network of regional quality collaboratives. She is a member of the NCQA National Forum on Benchmarking of Physician Offices (NFBPO) and serves on the RAND advisory panel for their grant to Assess Pay for Performance Options for Medicare Physician Services. Ms. Rabson serves on the Board of the Massachusetts eHealthCollaborative (eHc) and co-chairs the eHc Quality Measurement Workgroup. She co-chairs the Performance Measurement and Reporting Workgroup, and is a member of the Steering Committee of the Eastern Mass Healthcare Initiative.

Ms. Rabson brings broad-based experience from the managed care, hospital, and health care arenas to her collaborative role at MHQP. She received her Masters in Public Health from Yale University and her undergraduate degree from Brandeis University. Back

Marc Roberts, PhD

Marc Roberts, PhD, is professor of Political Economy at the Harvard School of Public Health. In recent years, Professor Roberts has focused much of his work on health sector reform around the world. Working with The World Bank, he has offered training sessions for senior leaders and managers from many countries--both in then U.S. and overseas (including sessions in Beirut, Budapest, Beijing, and Bangalore). With three colleagues he is completing a handbook on how to think about health sector reform that will be published by Oxford Press next year.

In the U.S. context Professor Roberts continues as an active consultant helping organizations adjust to changing market conditions. He is also a co-leader of a new school of Public Health initiative on the role of trust in the health care system and how managers can build trust to reinforce their market position.

Roberts also has continuing interest in the clinical and philosophical basis of health care policy. Recent papers in this area include an essay offering a framework for thinking about health ethics, and an analysis of the ethics of public- private partnerships in international health. Back

Eileen Sampanes, MBA, RN

Eileen Sampanes, MBA, RN is the Clinical Excellence and Patient Safety Officer at CHRISTUS Health. Ms. Sampanes joined the former Sisters of Charity in 1998 as System Director for a new department called Clinical Performance Support. Shortly after that date, two Catholic health care organizations merged their holdings to form CHRISTUS Health. As an RN with extensive quality, care management, and managed care experience, Ms. Sampanes created the infrastructure and reporting flow for quality management for the new organization. In response to changes in the health care environment and emphasis on patient safety, the department's name was changed to Quality and Patient Safety Improvement (QPSI).

With responsibility for clinical redesign, Ms. Sampanes directs the QPSI team in the development of clinical standards of care, clinical operation improvement, case management, clinical informatics, research, and reporting initiatives. QPSI also supports the Quality Management and Patient Safety Committee of the Board of Directors and produces the Balanced Scorecard, tracks CORE measures and provides a variety of custom reports with comparatives from national data bases. In addition to these ongoing activities, as a 2006 Baldrige Examiner, Ms. Sampanes is leading the preparation for submission of an application for the Baldrige Award by FY 2009.

Ms. Sampanes completed her undergraduate work at Aquinas College and received her Masters in Business Administration at Arizona State University. Back

Manisha Shah

Manisha Shah is the Director of Patient Safety at HCA, the Hospital Corporation of America. Ms. Shah migrated from India to the United States in 1991. She began her healthcare career as a Respiratory Therapist in 1995. She has managed departments of over 100 employees as well as worked in medical infomatics. In 2000, she joined the HCA Patient Safety team. She came from Sunrise Medical Center where she created an integrated Respiratory Therapy department focusing on enhancing, improving and standardizing the RT practices. She developed and implemented an RT-specific information system leading to cost savings and effectiveness.

Ms. Shah has presented the HCA eMAR & Bar Coding success story to groups at the national and international level. Manisha is currently responsible for progressive implementation of an Electronic Medication Administration Record, Respiratory Therapy tools and resources for patient safety technologies, phlebotomy and blood transfusion process improvement projects, as well as the oversight of the utilization and optimization of eMAR & Bar Coding for all 190+ HCA facilities. She represented HCA at the Department of Health & Human Services Tsunami Relief Council. She is an active member of the American Association of Respiratory Care and an honored member of the Lambda Beta Society. Currently she represents HCA as a member of the Patient Safety and Quality Steering committee at HIMSS. Back

Charlotte S. Yeh, MD

Charlotte S. Yeh, MD is the CMS Administrator for the Boston Region. Dr. Yeh is board certified in emergency medicine, and is responsible for guiding and coordinating policies in the region, which includes the six New England states.

Dr. Yeh has received numerous awards and honors for her efforts on behalf of patients, including the areas of injury prevention and access to care. She received in 1995 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Public Service Award and in 1999 the American Association of Women Emergency Physicians Leadership Award. For her strong advocacy on access to emergency services, Dr. Yeh received in 1999 the John Mills Award for Outstanding Contributions to Emergency Medicine.

Dr. Yeh received a bachelor's degree in 1971 from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and her medical degree in 1975 from Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago. She did an internship in general surgery at the University of Washington at Seattle and a residency in emergency medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. Back

Participants