The HCI Group Names Chief Medical Information Officer and Senior Vice President of Delivery Operations to Lead New Service Lines

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The HCI Group names Chief Medical Information Officer and Senior Vice President of Delivery Operations to lead new service lines focused on reducing the cost of healthcare and improving patient care

Jacksonville, FL (PRWEB) March 11, 2014

The HCI Group, a leading provider of health care information technology strategy and enterprise consulting services to health care organizations, has named Dr. William Bria as its chief medical information officer and Robert Steele, formerly senior director of applied clinical informatics at the corporate level for Tenet Healthcare, Dallas, Texas, as its senior vice president of delivery operations.

As CMIO, Bria will bring 30 years of applied medical informatics leadership and experience to today’s HIT challenges to improve patient care. He will evaluate healthcare organizations’ IT systems; design and apply EMR/EHR software and applications; convert and analyze medical and health data; ensure quality of care across multiple information systems; leverage medical and health data to improve services and daily operations; and train physicians and other medical professionals in IT systems and applications, especially EMR/EHR and computerized physician order entry.

“Bringing Dr. Bria on as our CMIO adds significant depth to our thought leadership team and ability to tackle the ever-growing challenges facing healthcare,” said Ricky Caplin, CEO of the HCI Group. “His more than 30 years of experience in clinical informatics gives him a vast and unique insight that will serve our clients well.”

Bria’s career began at Baystate Medical Center, where he managed the selection of an institution-wide, integrated results reporting/CPOE system. He then served as CMIO for Shriners Hospitals for Children in Tampa, Fla., directing the medical informatics plan (Cerner) for the 22-hospital system across the US, Canada and Mexico. This included implementation of an integrated EHR in each hospital and formulating and implementing clinical decision support and business intelligence for the system.

Prior to joining SHC, he was medical director of clinical information systems and clinical associate professor of medicine for the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich. In this role, he planned and implemented the organization’s enterprise-wide clinical information systems including development of CareWeb, the core clinical information system at the university, which is used by more than 4,000 physicians and nurses each day for inpatient and ambulatory patient care information, dictated document editing and e-signature.

Bria is a sought-after and influential industry expert, contributing to countless publications and presentations addressing the relationship between physicians and informatics. In 2013, Modern Healthcare named him to its list of 50 Most Influential Physician Executives. Additionally, he is the co-founder and chairman of the board for the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems.

Bria earned his bachelor’s degree in biology, pre-med, and his masters and doctorate degrees from Georgetown University. He interned at Emory University, and then concluded specialty training in pulmonary critical care medicine for two years at Harvard University-Massachusetts General Hospital Fellowship.

As senior vice president of delivery operations, Steele will focus on delivering oversight and strategic guidance on The HCI Group’s current service lines.

“Bob has helped lead some of the largest IT initiatives in health care and he possesses a deep understanding of the business issues facing hospitals,” said Ricky Caplin, CEO of the HCI Group. “There are few clinicians of his caliber who understand the growing complexities of health care information technology. The diverse background and seasoned experience that Bob brings to the company is rare, and we are pleased to have someone of his caliber on our team as we expand our services and operations in the U.S. and around the world.”

Bob’s background includes serving in a senior leadership role where he was responsible for health care EMR application standardization, build and integration testing, pre go-live training, readiness assessment, implementation/ go-live command center operations, optimization adoption and sustainment and optimization. Additionally, he has strong finance and budgeting experience related to system implementations and national certification as a CPC. He also brings extensive clinical, managerial and informatics skills in all levels of health care institutions including major academic medical centers, multi-facility health care systems and some of the top pediatric hospitals in the country. In 2012, Steele led his team at Tenet Healthcare Inc. in achieving the “Best Hospital IT/Implementation Department,” as awarded by Healthcare IT.

He has a proven track record serving as an integral part of executive teams that have successfully undertaken EMR implementation and received ARRA incentive funds for more than 100 facilities. His professional appointments include senior clinical director emergency/trauma services at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and interim CNO/admin director of emergency/trauma services at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. Steele is an active member of the American Academy of Certified Professional Coders and a voting Council Member of the National HealthTech Council.

About the HCI Group
The HCI Group is a health IT company with headquarters in Jacksonville, Fla. and international headquarters in the United Kingdom, with activities across the U.S., U.K. and Middle East. It offers a broad scope of IT solutions, helping hospitals plan, implement and sustain enterprise information technology systems over the long term. Its services include enterprise IT system implementation and training, specialty service lines in optimization, clinical adoption, integration and testing, go-live and advisory services. The HCI Group’s clients include Johns Hopkins, Tenet Healthcare and UMC Health System (Texas Tech) in the U.S., as well as health systems in the United Kingdom and the Middle East.

Inc. Magazine recognized the HCI Group as the fastest-growing private health care company and the third fastest growing company overall in the nation on its 2013 Inc. 500 list. Learn more about the HCI Group by visiting http://www.thehcigroup.com.

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