The Collective Voice of Health IT, A WEDI Podcast

Responding to the commonwealth's public health and workforce needs, George Mason University (Fairfax, VA) launched the first and only College of Public Health in Virginia.  Michael chats with Dr. Melissa Perry, Dean of the College, on her early motivations and inspirations, the school's importance in teaching, learning, innovation and community involvement and its importance to the state's future health. 

This is an excerpt from a discussion from WEDI's Health Equity Forum earlier this year on how payers are leveraging data to address health disparities, prevent disease and promote health and digital literacy. His guests are Dan Rivas, Senior Manager at Blue Shield California and Kurt Johnson, Vice President Operations with UnitedHealth Group.

We chat with Elevance Health Chief Technology Officer Geeta Wilson about how her company is embracing artificial intelligence to improve and enhance the patient experience. 

To commemorate our 100th episode, WEDI welcomes our founder, former HHS Secretary Dr. Louis Sullivan. 30 years ago, Dr. Sullivan founded WEDI in an effort to identify opportunities to improve the efficiency of health care data exchange. After 3 decades, we ask Dr. Sullivan if the industry is on the right path, his thoughts on improving health equity in the country and how can organizations like WEDI continue the good fight toward reducing burden and establishing more efficient data exchange.  Purchase Dr Sullivan's book, "We'll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity", co authored by Dr. David Chanoff, on Amazon

Michael spends some time with Kristy Dickinson, founder of Chronically Simple, a healthcare app that hopes to end the fragmented healthcare experience and allows patients and caregivers to proactively manage their health data.  Find out about Chronically Simple on the app store or visit https://www.chronicallysimple.com/

This week we hear from Angie Bass, Chief Strategy Officer with Velatura Public Benefit Corporation, an industry leader in providing HIT and HIE consulting, development, implementation and operation services across the nation. Angie offers insight on Health Data Utilities (HDUs), the differences between HDUs and HIEs, and why it's the next step towards interoperability and better public health. 

A WEDI Spotlight from December 2022 featured a panel of health care cybersecurity SMEs discussing how to strengthen cybersecurity in the industry. The panelists: Denise Anderson, President and CEO, H-ISAC, Chris Lodico, Sr Director, Information Safety, HCSC, Dr. Stephen Leffler, President and COO, and Dr. Douglas Gentile, Sr VP Information Technology, both with the University of Vermont Medical Health Network

WEDI's continues to discuss the real world experiences regarding telehealth this week. We welcome Jill Dominic, Public Policy Director with Elevance Health and the co-chair for WEDI's Telehealth Workgroup. Joining Jill is Samantha Holvey, WEDI's Director of Workgroups & Communication and Robert Tennant, WEDI's Vice President of Federal Affairs. 

Millions of patients nationwide embraced the benefits of virtual health over the past 4 years. Telehealth is poised top play a large role in the coming years. In conjunction with WEDI's Telehealth Workgroup, we welcome WEDI leadership to share their unique experiences with telehealth. This week, Ed Hafner, WEDI's board chair and Nancy Spector, WEDI's most recent former board chair visit the podcast. Ed is the Associate VP, Payer Strategy with Change Healthcare and Nancy is the Coding and HIT Advocacy Director with the American Medical Association. 

In a season of "Raining Regulations" our attention turns to data exchange initiatives from the state level that sometimes occur in spite of or in absence of federal initiatives.  Matthew speaks with David Haugen, Administrative Simplification Program Director with Minnesota's Department of Health (https://www.health.state.mn.us/facilities/ehealth/auc/index.html) and Denny Brennan, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium (www.mahealthdata.org). The 3 discuss the significance of state data exchange operations, the importance of states learning from each other, the huge topic of prior authorization and how focusing on the patient can help "stabilize the stool" that is healthcare data interoperability.