UC Davis Health’s Melissa Jost Earns the 2022 Stoltenberg Future Fund Health IT Leadership Scholarship

Scholarship program helps advance health tech leaders through CHIME continuing education  

Bethel Park, PA., November 3, 2022.  Stoltenberg Consulting Inc., a leading healthcare IT consulting firm, today named Melissa Jost, who serves as both the Director of Informatics and Director of Clinician Health and Wellbeing at UC Davis Health, as the recipient of the 2022 Stoltenberg Future Fund Scholarship for College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) education.

The Stoltenberg Future Fund awards scholarships annually through the CHIME Education Foundation for recipient use at any of CHIME’s events, including the Healthcare CIO Boot Camp, CISO Boot Camp, Clinical Informatics Boot Camp, Fall CIO Forum and ViVE Conference. By supporting emerging health IT leaders, the scholarship channels industry-leading best practices for digital health advancement and interoperability into hospitals and health systems, enabling them to optimize IT systems for cross continuum care alignment. Scholarship demand has risen as pandemic recovery financial concerns have forced many hospital IT departments to cut funding for user group meetings, conferences and continuing education opportunities.

CHIME has provided valuable mentorship and connections with leaders around the nation facing similar challenges, who I frequently rely on to develop new ideas and share lessons learned. The CHIME community has taught me not only how to address the challenges of health IT usability, adoption, and change management, but also how to become a better clinical informatics leader,” Jost said. “The gracious gift from Stoltenberg Consulting will allow me to further develop my skills through CHIME to prepare for future leadership positions with UC Davis Health.

As the inaugural Director of Clinical Informatics at UC Davis Health, Jost piloted and led the nationally-recognized Practice Experience Program (PEP) to decrease EHR burden and boost physician efficiency and satisfaction. Focusing on individually tailored EHR training, system optimization and workflow redesign, Jost deployed the PEP to over 1,800 physician faculty, residents and fellows, lessening physician time spent working after hours. She also oversaw the creation of a MyChart Message Response Team consisting of RNs, which manages 23,000 Primary Care messages per month across the UC Davis Health enterprise — improving turnaround time with 97% of messages being handled within 48 hours and reducing messages requiring physician intervention by 70%. Directly addressing the qualified IT staffing shortage plaguing healthcare, she also oversaw the creation of the Clinical Informatics Externship Program to provide a more diverse candidate pipeline into clinical informatics and health IT positions.

Prior to her current role, she served as a Senior Clinical Applications Analyst and Clinical Applications Project Manager at UC Davis Health, where she managed Epic implementation initiatives across all phases for revenue cycle, OR, anesthesia, patient access, radiology and referrals. She received the UC Davis Health Employee Excellence Team Award in 2020 and the STAR Award in 2019, along with the 2020 Josie King Hero Award. Jost plans to utilize the Stoltenberg Future Fund Scholarship toward her CHIME22 Fall Forum attendance in San Antonio.

Stoltenberg Consulting committed to hosting the annual CHIME Education Foundation scholarship over a span of 25 years. Jost is the 13th scholarship recipient of the Stoltenberg Future Fund program since its inception in 2009. To be eligible for this scholarship, applicants must be CHIME members in good standing, express need for financial support for continuing education and describe their professional accomplishments and aspirations in the healthcare IT industry. Previous recipients include IT leaders from Ascension Saint Thomas, Dayton Children’s Hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital, UNC Health Care, Brooke Army Medical Center, UPMC Chautauqua and Jackson Health System.

To learn more about the Stoltenberg Future Fund Scholarship, visit https://www2.stoltenberg.com/Scholarship.

About Stoltenberg Consulting

For over 27 years, Stoltenberg Consulting has exclusively served the healthcare industry by providing customizable IT support solutions. FlexSourcing, Stoltenberg Consulting’s three-time Best in KLAS Partial IT Outsourcing program, delivers day-one ROI through a versatile, certified health IT support workforce — including Tier 1+ help desk services — that can scale up at any time. Averaging 15 years of experience, Stoltenberg analysts are skilled in both financial and clinical systems with best practice expertise for Epic, Oracle Cerner, MEDITECH, NextGen, Allscripts and eClinicalWorks systems. To see how Stoltenberg simplifies healthcare technology, visit stoltenberg.com.

Media Contact
Shana Tachikawa
Stoltenberg Consulting
[email protected]