Chad Eckes, MBA
CIO
Cancer Treatment Centers of America

Chad Eckes is the Chief Information Officer of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, a national healthcare organization leading in cancer treatment. The CTCA treatment team helps fight cancer on many fronts, through an integrated combination of medical, nutritional, physical, psychological, and spiritual therapies. As part of this team, Mr. Eckes is responsible for leading a top notch IT department in providing leading technology solutions that improve patient care and assist in winning the fight against cancer every day.

Prior to CTCA, Mr. Eckes completed implementing Wisconsin’s first all-digital hospital. A combination of personal and professional events resulted in Mr. Eckes deciding to devote his career to healthcare, where a direct line could be drawn to helping others.

Previously Mr. Eckes held Vice President, Senior Director, and Director positions within insurance and consulting companies. As a Project Manager by trade, Mr. Eckes has been responsible for over 2.3 million project hours and has earned the distinguished Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

Bill Fera, MD

Executive Director

Ernst & Young

Bill Fera is an Executive Director with E&Y and serves as the Clinical Transformation leader for Health Care Advisory Services. Dr. Fera has provided over a decade of clinical and information technology leadership at academic, community and ambulatory medical centers and has consistently worked to redefine the model of healthcare delivery through deployment of state-of-the-art information technologies to produce superb clinical and financial outcomes.

Prior to joining E & Y, Dr. Fera founded and developed an international professional services consulting firm specializing in clinician engagement and adoption of healthcare information technology through change management and advised vendors on product management and sales strategies. Dr Fera has also served as the Vice President of Medical Technologies at UPMC where he lead UPMC’s ambitious semantic interoperability project, as well as international consulting opportunities and identification of emerging technologies and health care trends.

Jana Gill is a renowned compliance coding professional with a bent for ingenuity and innovation. Her pursuit of leading technological health care solutions in addition to her 18 years of experience in medical coding and compliance led her to form Gill Compliance in 2010. Jana’s prior positions include the Director of Coding and Compliance for Medical Management, Inc. and Manager for Hooper Cornell. Her expertise in health care consulting leads physicians and hospitals—regionally and nationally—through the complex world of compliance to accurately report and monitor coding practices. Along with her team, Jana also assists providers with government payment appeals, offering risk assessments, performing due diligence for hospital physician integrations and conducting revenue analysis for hospitalist and other physician-specialty services.

Jana was a Rotary International Scholar, is a national speaker for chapters of the MGMA, AAPC and Wolters Kluwer, and has been CPC certified as a Professional Coder since 1998. As a leader in the field, she is also passionate about compliance education. Jana has been a Professional Medical Coding Curriculum Approved Instructor since 1999 and continues to provide AAPC approved educational seminars. 

Leslie Kelly Hall’s experience as a former hospital administrator and vision as a consumer/patient advocate fuels the successful integration of patient engagement and shared decision making in Healthwise products. Her first role at Healthwise was Senior Vice President for Products, where she spearheaded efforts in provider products, data standards and interoperability. As senior vice president of policy, Hall guides policy efforts for HIT and patient engagement.

Hall is widely recognized as a leader in health care information technology. As a health system Chief Information Officer her achievements in the provider market have made a significant impact on patients and physicians and on the health care system in the state of Idaho. 

Hall’s efforts in policy include appointment by HHS Secretary Sebelius to the Health Information Technology Committee, where her efforts have expanded to: Chair, Patient Engagement Power Team, member Meaningful Use Power Team; Patient Engagement Meaningful Use Sub-team, Care Coordination Meaningful Use Sub-team, Privacy and Security, and recently she was part of the Patient Access Summit at the White House.

Don Imholz

CIO
Centene

Don Imholz has over 30 years of experience in information technology (IT), the majority at the executive level.  He has also worked outside of IT with executive positions in finance, manufacturing, and supplier management among others. He has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer for the Centene Corporation since September 2008.  His current focus is on implementing several major strategic information system projects and extending the use of the Internet to support Centene’s growth.

From January 2008 to September 2008, Imholz was an independent consultant working for clients across a variety of industries.  From January 1975 to January 2008, Imholz was with the Boeing Company and served as Vice President of Information Technology from 2002 to January 2008. Assignments during that period included being Chief Information Office for all of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems.  

Don Imholz holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Missouri in St. Louis, and was recently honored with the UMSL College of Business Administration Distinguished Alumni Award.  He also holds a master’s degree in information systems management and an executive master’s degree in business administration, both from Washington University in St. Louis. 

Chad Nestman, PhD

Healthcare Visionary

Mark Woodward recently joined Merge Healthcare in the summer of 2012 as their Senior Vice President of Sales Enablement. At Merge he has broad responsibility including managing the technology consultants, hardware office, channel enablement and learning and education divisions. Prior to Merge, Woodward was appointed EMC’s Healthcare Chief Technology Officer after serving various roles for EMC including their Healthcare Field Director and Solutions Operations strategist. In these roles, he developed solutions focusing around PACS vendor neutrality, cloud preparation and virtualization solutions for integrated delivery networks, payers, and regional health networks. He also led EMC’s healthcare strategy in integrating EMC’s vast portfolio of products and building vertical solutions for healthcare clients including their virtual patient strategy and document management initiatives. He has extensive knowledge in storing, protecting and leveraging clinical, financial and operational information for broad scale advancements in IT operations. As CTO, Mark was responsible for EMC’s healthcare technical strategy and direction, solution development /product positioning and working with customers on their IT challenges.