Track 1: Fast Tracking Digital Data Collection and Exchange
Fast Tracking Digital Data Collection and Exchange: Connecting Providers, Payers and Others
About This Track
Enhanced person-centered care is the primary goal of digital quality measurement programs. The learning objectives of this track focus on opportunities and challenges organizations face to achieve this goal:
- Understanding definitions of digital data, digital quality measures, and how they come together for various uses (e.g., quality reporting, care gaps, person-centered measurement)
- Facilitating burden-reduced data exchange between payers and providers. What activities are organizations doing now to improve the sharing and use of clinical data and how are these affected by measure reporting and audit requirements?
- Update on what NCQA is doing to potentially reduce data validation burden (e.g., CCDAs for use in quality reporting programs).
- How do we leverage data standards (e.g., FHIR, CQL) and technology to rapidly advance to a fully connected health system?
- The ROI (for payors and providers) of having better data and exchange of data. How to start the conversation.
Track Lead
Vandna Pandita, MPH
Vandna Pandita, MPH is the Vice President of HEDIS® Strategy and Analytics for the AmeriHealth Caritas Family of Companies (ACFC). In her role, Vandna oversees the full continuum of performance measurement from the acquisition of data to reporting and analytics for the enterprise. In her role, she works collaboratively with internal and external partners to ensure that the AmeriHealth Caritas Family of Companies is best positioned within the marketplace at the state and national level.
Prior to AmeriHealth, Vandna has worked for several national health plans, including Aetna, several Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and Centene. She has successfully led several health plans through NCQA Accreditation, managed HEDIS® reporting, improvement and outreach, and helped develop and implement a successful provider profiling and performance measurement program. In addition to her health plan experience, Vandna managed Risk Adjustment Client Operations for Evolent Health, is a former certified HEDIS® Compliance Auditor and led project management and client solutions for a retrieval, abstraction/coding and analytics vendor supporting health plans and provider groups in their efforts to optimize revenue and improve quality within their populations.
Vandna attended the University of California at Berkeley as an undergraduate and received her Master’s in Public Health from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Vandna has moved from coast to coast, and although she has spent the last 20+ years working on her southern drawl in Atlanta, these days you will find her running the streets of her new hometown, Philadelphia.
Emily Morden, MSW
Emily C. Morden, MSW, is the Director of Electronic Measurement Strategy in the Performance Measurement Department at NCQA. Emily leads projects on the development and maintenance of health care performance measures primarily addressing geriatric and behavioral health care. Her areas of interest and expertise include health care quality measurement and improvement, leveraging health information technology for measurement, health care data analytics, delivery system transformation, integration of behavioral health care, medical social work services and care for vulnerable older adults. Prior to coming to NCQA, Emily was an Associate Program Officer at the Institute of Medicine and worked on studies examining the quality of health care for military service members and veterans. Prior to this, Emily worked in clinical roles as a medical social worker for hospice programs and as a counselor in both adult and adolescent mental health treatment facilities. Emily holds an M.S.W. degree from Portland State University and a B.A. in sociology from the University of Oregon.
Track Faculty
Linda Michaelson, CPC, HL7 CDA FHIR
Linda Michaelsen is Optum’s Director of Healthcare Interoperability Standards. She has over 25 years of experience in the healthcare industry. Linda is the key voting member representing Optum’s HL7 membership and leads our organization’s HL7 Interoperability Center of Excellence.
Since 2008, Linda has worked with Optum Data Exchange(ODX). She is HL7 CDA certified and FHIR Proficient. Additionally, she has experience with HL7 v2 transactions and IHE transactions. Linda is a member of the HL7 CDA Management Linda is co-lead on several Da Vinci Project Implementation Guides, member of Argonaut Steering Committee and a member of the ONC’s P2 FHIR Ecosystem Taskforce’s Coordinating Committee.
Before working with clinical healthcare data, Linda was a part of the Claredi startup which created the HIPAA X12 validation products. She has worked with all HIPAA and several non-HIPAA X12 standards including the X12 275 attachment transaction.
Prior to her career with Optum, Linda was part of the Healtheon/WebMD startup as a data mapping consultant. She has also worked for a clearinghouse, an insurer, and was part of a startup practice management system company purchased by Alcon Laboratories. Her career started working for a pathologist during high school and college and later worked for a world-renowned spine surgeon.
Additionally, Linda is an AAPC Certified Professional Coder (CPC) and a Certified Toastmaster.
Wendy Talbot, MPH
Wendy Talbot is the Assistant Vice President for the Measure Collection and Audit departments with the National Committee For Quality Assurance (NCQA).
She is responsible for NCQA’s HEDIS® Compliance Audit program. The Audit program maintains the HEDIS licensure and certification contracts for nine audit firms and over 70 individual auditors. She is also responsible for NCQA’s Data Collection Department that maintains and support the Healthcare Organization Questionnaire (HOQ) and the Interactive Data Submissions System (IDSS). Receiving over 2,400 audited data submissions annually.
Wendy has 18 years of industry experience working with federal, state and local government, managed care and behavioural health organizations, and physician groups. Prior to working with NCQA, she worked as the Director of Performance Measure Validation and Audits for an External Quality Review Organization (ERQO) and one of NCQA’s HEDIS Licensed Organizations. While there, she was an NCQA Certified HEDIS Compliance Auditor and performed over 150 HEDIS, AMP and Performance Measure Validation audits. Before her time at the EQRO, she was an Epidemiologist at the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Wendy completed her undergraduate education in Health Sciences at the University of Nevada, Reno. She also holds a Master of Public Health, Epidemiology degree from the University of Arizona. She has been a Certified HEDIS Compliance Auditor since 2007.
Lisa Anderson, MSN, RN-BC
Lisa Anderson is currently an Assistant Director, eCQM Validation, in the Department of Measure Certification at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). In this role, she manages NCQA’s eCQM certification program for Promoting Interoperability measures. Ms. Anderson also collaborates with peers in the development of emerging standards for quality measurement and interoperability by representing NCQA on the HL7 Clinical Quality Information and Structured Documents Work Groups, and representing NCQA at LOINC Committee meetings, in which she serves as the co-chair for the Nursing Subcommittee.
Ms. Anderson is a member of the CMS eCQM Governance Group. She is contracted through Mathematica Policy Research to support both the maintenance of inpatient hospital eCQMs, and the development and testing of new measures under the CMS Measure Instrument Development and Support (MIDS) contract.
Prior to joining The Joint Commission, Ms. Anderson served in a variety of positions in the Chicago area including a project director at The Joint Commission, clinical informatics specialist, a clinical systems analyst-specialist, an informatics nurse educator, a pediatric intensive care unit/staff nurse, and an adult critical care/staff nurse.
Ms. Anderson is a member of Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS). She has Yellow Belt and Change Agent certifications from The Joint Commission, and Nursing Informatics RN-BC certification from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).
Ms. Anderson received a Master of Science in Nursing, Health Systems Management from the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing at Loyola University Chicago, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, IN. She also holds a certificate in Healthcare Informatics from Loyola University Chicago.