People in the News

FCG Appoints McConkey SVP

McConkey will report to Tom Watford, FCG's chief operating officer and interim chief financial officer.

The Health Plan Practice serves national and regional health plans in the areas of business and technology strategy, business process design, key metric improvement, technology implementation and integration, and business process and technology outsourcing.

McConkey has worked in information technology and professional services for more than 20 years and has focused on the health insurance industry during most of that time. McConkey joined FCG in 1995 and was promoted to vice president in 1998. At FCG he has served in various roles, including client services and practice management; his most recent role being the national vice president of the client services organization for FCG's Health Plan practice.

HIMSS Invades Gallagher's Privacy

At HIMSS, Gallagher manages initiatives related to privacy and security including technical standards, architectures, frameworks and other tools necessary to achieve secure, interoperable health information. She brings 20 years of experience to HIMSS with expertise in systems engineering, hardware design and software development.

Before joining the society, Gallagher served as the certification development director for the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), where she helped develop a product certification program for ambulatory electronic health record products.

AHIMA Elects Mangin

Mangin will serve as president-elect in 2007 and will assume the office of AHIMA president on Jan. 1, 2008.

Director of Medical Records at Good Samaritan Hospital in Vincennes, Ind., Mangin has a 30-year health information management (HIM) background. She helped lead implementation of an electronic health record and serves as a privacy officer for Good Samaritan. Among her credentials, Mangin has served on AHIMA's Board of Directors from 2003 to 2005 and has chaired its Council on Certification and RHIA Construction Committee.

Thierry Sheridan is president of Care Communications, Inc. She has held volunteer roles in state and national HIM organizations including participation in AHIMA e-HIM Standards Task forces.

Grissom Joins Broward

Arthur Grissom has joined Broward General Medical Center in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., as chief support services officer.

In his new position, Grissom will provide direction to support services operational programs including project management, facilities maintenance, internal and external construction, security and environmental services.

Prior to joining Broward General, Grissom was the team leader of facility operations at Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Mo. He has over 30 years of combined experience in engineering and maintenance, power plant management and construction.

Draper Joins HSC

Debra Draper, Ph.D., MSHA, former assistant director of the healthcare team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), has joined the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) as director of site visits and senior researcher.

Draper's research focuses on private health insurance markets, managed care, Medicaid, Medicare, prescription drugs and other health policy issues. Before joining the GAO, Draper was a senior researcher at Princeton, N.J.-based Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., and a consulting researcher for HSC's site visits.

HSC is a nonpartisan policy research organization funded principally by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Princeton, N.J.).

Illinois QIO Seeing Success

Through the national Doctor's Office Quality-Information Technology (DOQ-IT) initiative, the Oak Brook, Ill.-based Illinois Foundation for Quality Health Care (IFQHC) has signed up 225 physician practices in an effort to help them prepare for, and successfully implement, electronic health records.

As the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization in Illinois, IFQHC has been tasked with engaging 5 percent of all physician practices in the state.

According to IFQHC, DOQ-IT tailors its implementation approach to match each practices' specific needs.

BCBS to Create Claims Database

Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS, Chicago) has created a database of claims information (with no personal identifiers) covering 79 million people.

Called Blue Health Intelligence (BHI), it is designed to help improve healthcare quality through sharing critical health information initially with employers and, in the future, with consumers and providers, according to BCBS.

The organization stated that it hopes the HIPAA-compliant database, which is larger than existing healthcare databases, will strengthen the movement to greater healthcare transparency by providing details about trends and best practices.

BHI is currently being pilot-tested and, according to BCBS, will be operational by 2007.

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AHIMA, AMIA Provide PHR Guidance

Personal health records (PHRs) can help individuals manage their healthcare, but consumers should closely examine the privacy policies of the organization supplying the PHR and the source of the data stored in it, according to the Chicago-based American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the Bethesda, Md.-based American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA).

In a statement, the associations recommend that consumers look for the following policies and procedures when selecting a PHR: privacy and security; the ability of the individual, or those they authorize, to access their information; control over accessibility by others; and sources of the data stored in the PHR.

The position statement also includes the following basic principles for guiding PHR adoption and use:

• Every person should have access to his or her complete health information. Ideally it should be consolidated in a comprehensive record.

• Every person should have control over how their PHR information is used and shared.

• The operator of a PHR must be accountable to the individual for unauthorized use or disclosure of personal health information.

• A PHR may be separate from, and does not normally replace, the legal medical record of any provider.