New CHIME Board Chair is Passionate About Transforming Care
ANN ARBOR, MI, January 5, 2017 — Sitting in a busy and chaotic emergency department when she was about 10-years-old, Liz Johnson watched in awe as nurses, physicians and other hospital staff rushed around to treat victims of a plane crash. Johnson, who was there to get an infected cut treated, was mesmerized.
“It was very graphic, but I remember making up my mind at that point that I wanted to be like the doctors and nurses who were such a significant part of the scene.,” said Johnson, MS, FAAN, FCHIME, FHIMSS, CHCIO, RN-BC, chief information officer of acute care hospitals and applied clinical informatics at Tenet Healthcare. “In spite of all the scurrying, the disorganization and the chaos, nurses and doctors were making a difference. They were helping these significantly injured people.”
Whether it was caring for patients at the bedside or ensuring that technology systems aid clinicians in providing better care, Johnson has spent more than three decades working to fulfill those early ambitions. She is certain to bring that same commitment and passion for improving patient care to her tenure as 2017 chair of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives board of trustees.
Johnson noted that in 2017, CHIME is expected to announce the winner of its National Patient ID Challenge – a $1 million crowd-sourcing competition aimed at finding a national solution for ensuring that patients are correctly identified.
“We have long known as leaders in the healthcare industry that the inability to identify patients with confidence across multiple venues of care and data exchange leads to medical errors, unnecessary use of healthcare resources and less than the outcomes our patients should expect,” she said. “Providing a viable solution for identifying patients will provide our members and nation the first giant step toward resolution of this issue.”
With a new administration and Congress coming into power, Johnson said that CHIME is well positioned to help policymakers understand the powerful role that information technology plays in improving care delivery. She said that CHIME and its members must articulate the need for policies that advance rather than hinder such key issues as interoperability and cybersecurity. Johnson has long been active in public policy matters, including serving on CHIME’s policy steering committee and the federal Health Information Technology Standards Committee.
From a professional development standpoint, Johnson said CHIME will spend time in 2017 building out programs that seek to improve mentoring and diversity across the health IT sector.
“Many of our members are well respected, seasoned professionals who have extraordinary wisdom to impart to their colleagues earlier on their CIO journeys,” she said. “CHIME also recognizes that the diversity of our membership, as well as our emerging leaders, provides opportunities to offer forums to promote diversity and offer networking opportunities to benefit all.
Johnson’s term as CHIME board chair runs from January 1 to December 31, 2017.
About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,000 CIO members and over 150 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.
Contact
Matthew Weinstock
Director of Communications and Public Relations, CHIME
734.249.8917
[email protected]