The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) announced the election of Laurie Darst as chair and Jay Eisenstock as chair-elect of the board of directors.
The Reston, Va.-based organization is a national not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder organization that promotes the use of information technology to improve healthcare information exchange. WEDI’s membership includes a broad coalition of organizations, including: hospitals, providers, health plans, vendors, government agencies, consumers, not-for-profit organizations, and standards development organizations.
In the role as the 2017 chair of WEDI’s board, Darst, revenue cycle regulatory advisor with the Mayo Clinic, will help lead the multi-stakeholder board as the organization moves forward in its efforts to promote the use of health IT to improve healthcare information exchange – enhancing quality of care, improving efficiency and reducing costs.
“WEDI’s broad and diverse membership, comprised of providers, payers, vendors, standards organizations and state and federal government, has a long history of leveraging consensus-building and collaboration to identify solutions to the challenges facing our industry,” Darst said in a prepared statement. “In this year of turmoil and change to the nation’s healthcare system, as a named advisor to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in the HIPAA legislation, WEDI is uniquely positioned to have a significant impact on critical data exchange issues.”
Jay Eisenstock, senior director of provider eSolutions for Aetna and the WEDI board chair-elect for 2018 said in a statement: “Healthcare will continue to be a dominant topic now that the new administration has come into power. WEDI, as the respected voice of all stakeholders participating in healthcare information exchange, will be actively engaged in the discussion.”
Darst is a regulatory advisor for the department of finance at the Mayo Clinic. For the past fifteen years, she has served as a consultant to Mayo Clinic’s three large group practices in Rochester, Minn.; Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Jacksonville, Fla. and to the Mayo Clinic Health System sites which encompass 72 communities in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.
Eisenstock is a seasoned professional with more than 30 years of management and technology consulting experience. He currently heads the Provider eSolutions Organization at Aetna where his responsibilities include supporting the full spectrum of electronic interactions between Aetna and the provider community. In previous roles at Aetna, Eisenstock led the company's efforts to achieve HIPAA compliance for electronic transactions.
Eisenstock served as a director for WEDI in 2005 and then from 2012 to the present. While a director, he was elected to two terms as vice chair of administration and operations. He has been honored with several industry accolades including the WEDI Leadership in Technology award in 2007.
