Deborah has a long career in health information management and healthcare IT leadership. She has been with AHIMA since June, 2012 and is its chief Operating Officer. AHIMA is the premier association for health information (HIM) professionals, servicing 52 affiliated component state associations and more than 67,000 members, it is recognized as the leading source of “HIM knowledge”. AHIMA is a respected authority for rigorous professional certification and one of the industry’s most active and influential advocates in Congress.
Prior to joining AHIMA, Deborah served as CIO for LaVie Care (formerly Centennial Healthcare), Deborah drove the alignment of IT with operations and enabled major applications, platform and infrastructure changes during a time of significant economic challenge for the industry. LaVie Care is a multi-facility, multi-state skilled care organization with over 120 facilities. The company has over 19,000 employees, revenues of over $1B, 16000 beds, and over 9000 systems users. She has over 20 years of health information management experience, most of that with multi-facility organizations. Prior to joining LaVie and its predecessor organizations, Deborah led system's strategy and enterprise-wide initiatives for Mariner Post-Acute Network (now Sava Senior Care). Deborah worked in the acute care industry with AMI (now Tenet) where she led divisional and ultimately corporate support services for Health Information Management, Quality Improvement, Utilization Management and Accreditation. Deborah’s experience includes working with the CDC on an extensive national data collection and analysis effort, to support more effective nosocomial infection prevention and control measures.
Deborah has an MBA from Georgia State University’s Executive MBA Program and a BS in Health Information Management from the University of Texas Medical Branch. She is a Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA) with the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and is a member of HIMSS, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), the Georgia CIO Leadership Association, and on the Governing Body for the CIO Summits. She has been active at the national level over her career with AHIMA, AHA, the Long Term Care CIO Consortium, and with other healthcare and data quality initiatives. She was recognized by AHIMA in 2000 when she was awarded the National Visionary Award. In 2004, she was nominated for Georgia Woman of the Year in Technology. Over her career, Deborah has spoken and written extensively for industry professional organizations.
Speaking topics include, but are not limited to:
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AHIMA Updates
- IT and HIM Alliance
- Health Information Technology for LTPAC
- The Roadmap for HIT in LTPAC
- Planning and Implementing EHRs in LTPAC
- Role of LTPAC Providers in Meaningful Use for Eligible Providers