Meet the HealthPort Alliance Faculty
Speakers:
Lori Brocato
Luane Currence
April Fritz
Lynn Kuehn
Jan McDavid
Keith Olenik
April Robertson
William Walker
Lori Brocato is the Revenue Cycle Management and RACPro Product Manager for HealthPort. She is a seasoned professional with over 15 years experience in the health care technology industry and is accomplished in creating product lifecycle plans and executing product market strategies for leading edge health care Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) applications. Lori frequently serves as HealthPort's resident Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) expert, sharing RAC educational information and best practices with health care facilities via Webinars and media interviews.
Starting her health care information technology career as a release of information field representative, Lori moved on to represent and help build The SSI Group's ClickON® Revenue Cycle Management applications. More recently, Lori comes from HTP, Inc. (recently acquired by Relay Health) where she worked as a Product Manager for the RevRunner® suite of products which includes tools for the Scheduling, Registration and Access Management areas of health care facilities and practices. Lori is currently the RCM and RACPro Product Manager for HealthPort and a monthly co-contributor in Advance Magazine for Health Information Professional's e-newsletter, RAC ready column, that serves as a "monthly RAC survival guide."
Additionally, Lori has the distinction of being RAC certified by the Medicare RAC summit and a member of the Health Information and Management Systems Society and the Healthcare Financial Management Association.
Louanne Currence, RHIT, CTR, has worked in healthcare more than 30 years and been a hospital-based registrar for over fifteen years. Several years ago, the Missouri Cancer Registry recognized her skills as a trainer and she became the Education Coordinator for the statewide registry.
In addition, she is a popular speaker among registry professionals in many states. Her sense of humor and depth of registry knowledge keep her in demand for presentations to beginner and experienced groups on a wide variety of topics. She is active in regional and state professional associations and the National Cancer Registrars Association. Louanne believes the greatest attribute of a good registrar is curiosity and she enjoys learning about new things so she can share with others.
April Fritz, BA, RHIT, CTR has been a teacher and trainer of cancer registry professionals for more than thirty years. Until the spring of 2006, she was the Manager of Data Quality for the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland. Prior to her federal service, she was employed by several hospitals and a cancer registry software vendor.
April developed the Principles of Oncology for Cancer Registry Professionals training program in 1992. She has made presentations to dozens of cancer registry organizations and has been a consultant to many cancer organizations, including the Commission on Cancer, the American Joint Committee on Cancer, SNOMED International, International Agency for Cancer Research, and the American Veterinary Medical Association.
April combines her registry technical knowledge with skill and experience as a writer. She has served on the editorial committees of numerous international standard registry references, including the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology, third edition, AJCC Cancer Staging Manual, sixth edition, AJCC Cancer Staging Atlas (published 2006), Collaborative Staging and Coding Manual, SEER Summary Staging Manual 2000, Cancer Registry Management: Principles and Practice, first edition (NCRA textbook), Workbook for Staging of Cancer (NCRA), and Notes on Anatomy and Oncology
In addition to the standard registry references, she has developed a variety of tools for cancer registrars, such as
- SEER*Rx, the cancer registrar’s interactive antineoplastic drug database
- Abstracting and Coding Guide for the Hematopoietic Diseases
- The Brain Book, Abstracting & Coding Guidelines for Primary Central Nervous System Tumors
- Single versus Subsequent Primaries of Lymphatic and Hematopoietic Diseases
- The Registrar's Key to Abstracting
- Professional Review for Cancer Registrars (Florida Cancer Registrars Association CTR exam preparation manual)
A former president of the National Cancer Registrars Association (NCRA), April is active in state and national professional organizations. Professional honors include the Distinguished Member and Education awards from the National Cancer Registrars Association, the Distinguished Service Award from the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, and service awards from the National Cancer Institute.
Lynn Kuehn is a health care consultant with more than twenty-five years of experience, including professional fee coding and reimbursement systems, data quality, operational assessment, and management of both independent and hospital-based clinic practices.
Lynn has authored numerous publications for the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) including Procedural Coding and Reimbursement for Physician Services, now in the 9th Edition, The Coding Manager’s Handbook, and the CCS-P Exam Preparation Guide. Her newest publication, A Practical Approach to Analyzing Healthcare Data, was recently published by AHIMA.
In her volunteer role with AHIMA, Lynn has served as a member and chair of various national committees, as a member of the AHIMA Board of Directors and is currently a member of the Board of Directors for AHIMA's Foundation for 2008-2010. Additionally, Lynn is a member of the faculty for the ICD-10-CM/PCS Train-the-Trainer Academy for AHIMA.
Ms. Kuehn holds a M.S. degree in Health Services Administration from Cardinal Stritch University and a B.S. degree in Health Information Administration from Viterbo University. She is a Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA), a Certified Coding Specialist for Physicians (CCS-P), a Certified Healthcare Audit Professional (CHAP) and a Fellow of the American Health Information Management Association.
Jan McDavid is a seasoned attorney with over 18 years experience in corporate law. Jan has served as the compliance officer and general counsel for HealthPort since 1998, handling the corporate litigation obligations of the company and managing the regulatory compliance of the company's business. Jan serves as legislative chair for the Association of Health Information Outsourcing Services (AHIOS) where she lobbies within the United States Congress and the states for increased awareness of the value of health information management service providers and the importance and complexity of the services they provide.
Before joining HealthPort, Jan was the senior attorney and assistant vice president for Equifax, Inc. and served as an adjunct instructor of business law at Gwinnett Technical College. Jan has been a member of the State Bar of Georgia since 1990 and holds membership in the American Corporate Counsel Association.
Keith has 25 years of experience working with healthcare delivery systems as a member of senior management and as a consultant. He specializes in methods to streamline business operations, evaluate and implement information technology solutions, and enhance productivity through process improvement. Keith has also recently assisted many organizations in the development of legal health record and electronic discovery strategies. He is also a Visiting Professor for the University of Cincinnati Health Information Program.
Keith holds a B.A. in health information management from the University of Kansas and an M.A. in Health Services Management with an emphasis in Computer Resources Management from Webster University. He is member of AHIMA and is currently Chair of the AHIMA Foundation Board of Directors and Co-Chair of the EHR Practice Council. Keith was Director on the AHIMA Board of Directors from 2004 through 2006.
In addition to these activities Keith has been a speaker at various conventions and educational seminars on HIPAA, project management, legal health records, and electronic health records. He has also authored several health information management books on ethics and legal health records. Keith has participated with the AHIMA EHR Practice Council to develop several best practice guidelines for legal health records and electronic discovery.
April Robertson, MPA, RHIA, CHPS, FAHIMA is Vice President of Customer Advocacy for HealthPort, a leading national healthcare technology company, with corporate offices in Alpharetta, Georgia. Before joining HealthPort, April was the Corporate Compliance Officer for ChartOne and has been HIM director for a number of California healthcare organizations, including the Golden Gate Service Area of Kaiser Permanente, and Vice President of Ambulatory Services for the QuadraMed Corporation.
April holds RHIA, RHIT and CHPS credentials and is a Fellow of AHIMA, in addition to a Master's degree in Public Administration and Health Services Administration. Ms. Robertson speaks nationally on the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, Best Practices for Regulatory Compliance, AHIMA's E-HIM® Vision and the Legal Electronic Health Record, and other topics as required. April is the recipient of AHIMA's 2009 Legacy Award, CHIA's Distinguished Member Award and Literary Award, and the Outstanding Service Award from the state of Maine's HIMA. Ms. Robertson is past president and director of the California Health Information Association and has just completed a 3-year term as an AHIMA Director. Ms. Robertson is also an adjunct professor for DeVry University Online – teaching Healthcare Law and Accrediting Agencies.
William V. Walker, MD, FACP, is a board certified internist practicing in the intensive care unit setting. As a hospital employed physician, he was often asked to assist with appropriate translation of clinical concepts to reporting code sets. Recognizing clinical and administrative functions intersect in the coding department, he understood physicians are not adequately involved in this final step of patient care. Accurate, complete and compliant databases are necessary for meaningful clinical and administrative evaluation.
Focusing on medical records as the crucial link, he came to understand the scope and complexity of translation errors and shortcomings. His desire to clarify communications and establish equity in this vital area led him to found Midwest Healthcare Coding (MWHC) with the premise fluent translation requires physician involvement.
Dr. Walker is a graduate of Washington University at St. Louis. During his residency at the University of Missouri – Columbia, Dr. Walker was named 'Resident of the Year' each year, but his most treasured awards are for 'Excellence in Education' received from the Medical Student Affairs Council and 'Best Bedside Manner' from the ICU staff where he currently practices. Memberships include AHIMA, American College of Physicians, Society of Critical Care Physicians and Alpha Omega Alpha. He has made numerous national / regional and local presentations to physicians, coders and administrators. Dr. Walker has presented his communication concepts to the medical students at his alma mater. He also holds CCS and CHC credentials.