CHITA Board
The CHITA Board serves as the Management Committee of CHITA, and is responsible for the policy making and strategic planning of the program. Management of day-to-day operations and general administrative or resource management issues are handled by the Staff of the Foundation for Health Care Quality which houses and supports the program.
Board Chair
Don Lewis
Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer, Group Health Cooperative
Prior to joining Group Health Cooperative, Don was the President of Strategic Intersect, Inc. (SII), an Information Technology strategic advisory firm that provided Interim CIO services and CIO-level expertise to organizations. Don’s focus is on aligning IT with business goals by addressing the people and process challenges that accompany times of significant change in organizations. An executive with experience in turnaround situations and rapid-growth organizations, Don brings 19+ years of healthcare IT experience to the table. Prior to SII, Don was Chief Information Officer at several organizations, including a large multispecialty, multi-site physician group and a 260-bed hospital. In addition, Don worked for three years for a healthcare IT outsourcing company managing an outsourcing account. Don serves on a number of Executive or Advisory Boards for non-profit organizations and is active in Washington State’s efforts around allocating Federal stimulus funds to health information projects within the state. Don is also involved with Health Information Exchange (HIE) efforts in Washington State. Don has experience managing other operational areas in addition to IT—a business leader as opposed to a “technology guy.” An accomplished public speaker, Don has presented on many topics in numerous forums during his career, and currently resides in Seattle, Washington.
Randy Apsel
Healthcare Engagement Lead, Revel Consulting
Randy has 20+ years of project leadership, management consulting and software development experience. He has worked in healthcare, telecommunications, geosciences, and energy and has focused primarily on health information technology services since 1997. Randy is responsible for growing Revel Consulting’s healthcare practice and leading strategic healthcare projects. Outside interests include classical piano, home remodeling, and travel.
Linda Blankenship
Camray Consulting Group, LLC
Linda has thirty years experience managing healthcare information technology and organizations in both the provider and payer arenas. She has consulting experience serving healthcare entities across the US and management experience in Washington State. She has extensive experience in information technology strategy, systems selection and implementation, best practices, project management and service delivery. She has first-hand knowledge of healthcare systems and processes from the perspective of the different healthcare industry stakeholders and understands the information sharing needs. She has experience working with diverse groups to accomplish common goals. Linda has been an active participant in many statewide healthcare initiatives.
Linda has specialized experience working with multiple organizations to form new corporate entities to serve their healthcare information technology and service requirements. She is experienced with successful cost sharing models, business planning, and organization implementation.
John R. Christiansen, JD
Christiansen IT Law
John is an attorney with Christiansen IT Law, where he focuses on the implementation and management of information technologies for healthcare uses, with an emphasis on privacy and security regulatory compliance and risk management. John works with a variety of Pacific Northwest and national healthcare organizations in this field, including hospital systems, health plans, clinicians and services providers. One of his major projects for 2005 – 2007 is service as one of the leaders of the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration, a team partnering with the National Governor’s Association to develop solutions for legal and practical obstacles to Regional Health Information Organizations (“RHIOs”) under a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
John is a frequent national speaker and regularly publishes on healthcare technology issues; his most recent book is An Integrated Standard of Care for Healthcare Information Security: HIPAA, Risk Management and Beyond (2005), the definitive legal treatise on security obligations applicable to healthcare information.
John participates in a number of national organizations and boards. He is a current Co-Chair of the American Bar Association's Committee on Healthcare Privacy, Security and Information Technology and past Chair of its Healthcare Informatics Committee, and is a member of the Executive Board of the Evergreen State InfraGard Members Alliance, an association including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and private sector security professionals. John is also a past Chair of the King County Bar Association Law and Technology Section, and past member of the Board of Trustees of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce.
Christa Dahlke
Account Mgr - Healthcare Technology, Kforce Professional Staffing
Christa has been focused exclusively in the Healthcare Technology industry since 2001 and has been in the professional staffing industry since 1997. Her clients include organizations within the provider, payer and healthcare technology sectors in Washington State.
Christa has a strong understanding of the specific technology initiatives taken on by her health care clients. Examples of this include developing payer self-service portals, migrations from legacy claims systems to new vendor products, HIPAA code transactions compliance, Hospital CIS implementations including EPIC, Cerner, McKesson, and Meditech implementations, ICD 10. Based on her many successful consulting and full-time placements, Christa has developed strong relationships with over 20 healthcare clients in the Seattle area. Her clients include Providence Health System, Multicare Health System, University of Washington Medicine, The Regence Group and Community Health Plan of Washington, Olympic Medical to name a few.
Christa currently holds the position of Account Manager for Kforce’s Healthcare Technology Practice. She oversees all of the Seattle-based, healthcare accounts to ensure the right match is made with each and every consulting and/or full time placement. She has been a board member of the CHITA organization for over 6 years and enjoys providing a level of exceptional service and connections to all her endeavors.
John Dwight, John Dwight Consulting
John has been in the healthcare industry for over twenty two years focused on health care administration, business development, software development, consulting, and management supporting various healthcare organizations and their information management environments. John most recently served as the Chief Information Officer at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle where he helped lead the implementation of Computerized Physician Order Entry. Prior to joining Children’s, John worked for an outsourcing firm initially as the Director of IS at Providence – Everett and then as CIO at Providence – Seattle.
Originally from Baltimore, John moved to Wisconsin attending high school and college before joining a start-up software firm in Madison in 1982. The firm developed software for healthcare, including general and patient accounting applications on microcomputers. As the firm grew nationally, John’s travels included a customer in the Seattle area. Numerous visits to the Pacific Northwest lured John to move to Seattle in 1990 where salt water, mountains and the city were attractive. John has led user groups, served as a board member including chair on the Microsoft Healthcare Users Group (MS-HUG), is a member of CHIME and very active with the Child Health Corporation of America (CHCA).
Mark C. Gary
Assistant General Counsel, MultiCare Health System
Mark’s experience focuses on the representation of hospitals, provider organizations, health plans and health care businesses in transactional, regulatory, business formation and general corporate matters. Prior to taking on his position at MultiCare, Mark worked at Bennett Bigelow & Leedom, counseling clients and was a frequent speaker before healthcare industry groups on compliance issues and strategies related to the emerging health information privacy and security regulations arising under HIPAA. Mark is a 1990 graduate of the University of Washington School of Law, and is a member of the Washington State Society of Healthcare Attorneys and the American Health Lawyers Association.
Rob Jablonski
Beacon Partners
WA - Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS)
Rob is Regional Director for Beacon Partners, a health care consultancy based in Weymouth, Massachusetts. He has 20 years of experience in all aspects of information technology planning, selection and implementation, clinical and business process redesign and systems-enabled process reengineering. Rob has authored papers and presented at national conferences and symposia on the topics of process redesign and systems integration in healthcare. He has worked with numerous organizations to improve performance and optimize technology usage and is an experienced project and program manager, meeting facilitator and management engineer.
Rob has worked with physicians, nurses, managers and executives in all areas of healthcare, including community hospitals, academic medical centers, physicians’ practices, health plans, insurers and other payors. He has also provided interim executive staffing, having served clients as interim Chief Information Officer and interim Director of Materials Management.
In addition to his technology and process redesign expertise, Rob has also written and presented papers on supply chain management and logistics for HFMA, AHRMM and other healthcare organizations and publications.
Prior to joining Beacon, Rob developed and led healthcare consulting practices for several large and small consultancies, including Ernst & Young, Arthur Andersen, Hamilton KSA and RoPat Associates, LLC.
Susan Kanvik
Consultant, Point B Solutions
Susan is the Healthcare Practice Leader for Point B, a Management Consulting Firm specializing in Strategic Execution. Susan has a 30-year-plus track record in healthcare—specializing in healthcare informatics and health promotion programs. She has helped numerous healthcare organizations with a wide-breadth of clinical information system selections and implementations, process redesign efforts and has filled interim leadership roles. Point B is an employee-owned management consulting firm that specializes in helping clients execute their strategic initiatives and deliver business results that create transformational change and competitive advantage.
Susan has been a Consultant with Point B since 1999. Before joining Point B, she worked at Group Health Cooperative for 16 years in a variety of leadership positions in both Health Promotion and Information Technology. Earlier in her career, she worked in a diverse set of healthcare project management roles in rural Kentucky, the state of Utah and several regional community health programs. Susan holds a BS in Community Health Education, cum laude, from the University of Utah, a Master of Public Health, cum laude, from the University of Illinois, and a Certificate in Information Systems Management from City University. She has contributed to several clinical publications and has spoken both at the national and local level on a variety of clinical and information technology topics for organizations such as TEPRA, CHITA, and HIMSS. Susan resides in the Seattle area.
Kristi Korolak
Compliance Officer, Public Health - Seattle & King County
Kristi brings to the Board her many years of experience working with health care providers, hospitals, health plans, public health, medical systems and government entities. Specific activities include working with various stakeholder and customer groups to gain support and buy-in; leading cost-efficient work teams; developing and implementing operations across different functional teams; organizing; advertising; managing community outreach and educational/sales seminars; leading public relations, media relations and graphic design efforts. She currently serves as Compliance Officer for the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health and has been with the department in various capacities since 1990. Kristi Received the 2003 Public Health Director’s award for leadership, managed the project and team that received the 2003 Public Health Director’s award for cross-divisional team, and managed a project and team that received the 2001 governor’s award for efficiency.
Kelly Llewellyn, MHA
Senior Health Policy Analyst, Washington State Health Care Authority
Kelly has served in a variety of roles during her 28 year career in the health care industry. Currently, she is a senior health policy analyst at the Washington State Health Care Authority focusing on health information technology legislation. She is currently involved with several programs, including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act provisions to advance statewide health information exchange, the Washington Health Information Collaborative – an electronic medical record grant program for providers in Washington State, electronic health record banking pilots, and AccessMyHealth.org – a consumer and provider educational website for online personal health information.
Kelly’s other roles in the health care industry include 17 years with Weyerhaeuser Company - as both a purchaser and payer of health care providing administration and management of various health cost containment programs for the company’s self-administered, self-insured health and dental care programs for employees, retirees, and their families. Prior to joining Weyerhaeuser, Kelly worked for Providence Health & Services as a nurse, specializing in neurological health care.
Kelly holds a Master’s Degree in Health Administration and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, both from the University of Washington. She is very active in the White River Plateau communities and founder and current president of the White River Education Foundation.
Richard A. Meeks, CCEP, CHP
Director, Privacy, Identity Theft Prevention, and Clinical Research Billing Audit Programs, UW Medicine
Richard developed and directs the Privacy and Identity Theft Prevention Programs for UW Medicine. Having worked at UW Medicine for the last 20 years, Richard has used his Health Information Management background to specialize in HIPAA compliance for large Health Care Systems. Richard is a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional, Certified HIPAA Professional, and a member of Health Care Compliance Association and the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. Additionally, Richard directs the Research Billing Auditing Program for UW Medicine.
Gretchen Murphy, M.Ed., RHIA, FAHIMA
Director, Health Informatics and Health Information Management Program, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington
Gretchen has worked in health informatics and health information management practice in a variety of healthcare settings, including work on clinical information systems, electronic health record projects and on institution wide programs for patient confidentiality and security. She has taught for many years at the University of Washington and in regional and national forums. She was awarded the American Health Information Management Association Distinguished Member award in 2004. She publishes in the field and has co-authored textbooks in health information management and electronic health records. Current projects focus on health informatics standards, curriculum development for Electronic Health Records courses for baccalaureate and master’s degree levels at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine and the School of Nursing. She has been active in CHITA Forums and served on the CHITA Board since 2003, including time as the Board Chair.
Bill Thieleman, RHIA, CHP
Senior Policy Analyst, Health Information Management, Group Health Cooperative
In his current role, Bill focuses on electronic medical records and healthcare documentation standards and quality. His experience includes policy compliance for privacy and security, coding and documentation quality, utilization management, quality assurance, systems implementation, and consulting. Bill has served as a board member for AHIMA’s Foundation on Research and Education, a delegate to AHIMA and president of the Washington State HIMA. He has represented Washington State physicians in community health information network projects, participated in the Washington HISPC solutions workgroup, and served on the CHITA Forum planning committee since its inception in 2000.
Jerry Tonkovich
OTB Solutions
Lisa Trigg, PhD, ARNP
Manager of Inpatient Medical Services and Manager of Clinical Informatics, Navos
Lisa has worked in the mental health care field as a nurse and an advanced registered nurse practitioner for 25 years. Lisa is currently employed by Navos Mental Health Solutions in the inpatient setting as a psychiatric nurse practitioner as well as Manager of Inpatient Medical Services, and Manager of Clinical Informatics. While completing her PhD in Nursing at the University of Washington, Lisa also completed the coursework for a master’s degree in biomedical and health informatics and studied social justice and clinical informatics as her PhD research.
Cherbon VanEtten, BA
Systems Analyst, MultiCare Health System
MultiCare Health System
Cherbon VanEtten has ten plus years of healthcare information technology experience and is currently employed by MultiCare Health System. She received a BA in Psychology from the University of Washington and is enrolled in the Master of Biomedical Informatics program at Oregon Health and Science University. Ms. VanEtten has extensive knowledge of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules and has participated in several electronic health record implementations. Ms. VanEtten is passionate about data quality and optimizing the use of technology in support of high quality, affordable care.
