Valita Fredland most recently served as chief privacy officer and counsel at IU Health. In her new post, Fredland will serve as vice president, general counsel and privacy officer.
The HIMSS Innovation Center is presenting a display to Florence Nightingale on the anniversary of her birthday, May 12, which is also Nursing Informatics Awareness Day. She was born in 1820.
Nightingale is considered to be the founder of modern nursing, and many people in the field of healthcare look to her as having built the foundation for nursing informatics.
The display features a letter signed by Florence Nightingale, as well as a book she owned, donated by Maureen Mitchell, RN, associate professor, graduate program director, School of Nursing, Cleveland State University. The items are on loan to HIMSS for two years. Learn more about Nighingale’s life and contributions to nursing:
"Florence Nightingale’s focus on hygiene and cleanliness was vital to patient safety," said Joyce Sensmeier, RN, vice president, informatics, HIMSS North America.
"Her methods resulted in drastically lowered mortality rates, and improved overall hospital performance. Her ideas and reforms changed healthcare on a global scale. HIMSS strives to emulate Nightingale’s dedication to patient care and the advancement of healthcare."
Learn more about the background of the artifacts donated by Mitchell.
Listen to Mitchell’s discussion about Florence Nightingale and nursing informatics.
Patricia Flatley Brennan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a former practicing nurse with a Ph.D. in industrial engineering, will take the lead as director at the National Library of Medicine.
The NLM is the world's largest biomedical library and the producer of digital information services used by scientists, health professionals and members of the public worldwide.
National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins, MD, announced the pick today.
Brennan is expected to begin her new role in August 2016.
"Patti brings her incredible experience of having cared for patients as a practicing nurse, improved the lives of homebound patients by developing innovative information systems and services designed to increase their independence, and pursued cutting-edge research in data visualization and virtual reality," Collins said in a statement.
For seven years, Brennan worked in both critical care and psychiatric nursing.
As Collins sees it, Brennan's combination of skills makes her ideally suited to lead the NLM in the era of precision medicine.
She will take charge of the library as it becomes the epicenter for biomedical data science, not just at NIH, but across the biomedical research enterprise, he noted.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she is a professor at the School of Nursing and College of Engineering. She also leads the Living Environments Laboratory at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, which is developing new ways for effective visualization of high dimensional data.
Brennan is recognized as a pioneer in developing information systems for patients.
She designed ComputerLink, an electronic network to reduce isolation and improve self-care among home care patients. She directed HeartCare, a web-based information and communication service that helps cardiac patients at home to recover faster, and with fewer symptoms.
Brennan also directed Project HealthDesign, an initiative designed to stimulate the next generation of personal health records. She also conducts external evaluations of health information technology architectures, and works to repurpose engineering methods for healthcare.
She received a master of science in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Following seven years of clinical practice in critical care nursing and psychiatric nursing, Brennan held several academic positions at Marquette University, Milwaukee; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland; and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
NLM Acting Director Betsy L. Humphreys led the NLM over the past year, after Donald Lindberg, MD, retired having served more than 30 years.
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
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Female CEOs are doing better than ever on the compensation front, with median pay figured at $15.9 million, 21 percent higher than last year.
That compared with median pay for male CEOs of $10.4 million, which was down 0.8 percent from 2013.
Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo is at the pinnacle of the top 10 women CEO list, with a salary of $42.1 million.
The numbers come from executive compensation benchmarking firm Equilar and the Associated Press.
However, there remains a large gap between the number of female CEOs and male CEOs. The study of 340 CEOs included only 17 women.
Also, numbers can be tricky. Once they are sliced and diced, the picture comes into better focus.
Released along with the list of highest paid women CEOs, was another list – one that ranked highest paid CEOs, regardless of gender.
Mayer was the one woman to make that list – at No. 5.
As Fast Company pointed out after it crunched the annual paychecks every which way: The top two highest-paid male CEOs make more than all the top-paid female CEOs combined.
David Zaslav, the top executive at Discovery Communications, took in $156.1 million in 2014. Leslie Moonves, the CEO of CBS, made $54.4 million. Combined, that's about $210 million.
Here are the top 10 women CEOs by compensation:
Marissa Mayer: Yahoo, $42.1 million
Carol Meyrowitz: TJX Companies, $23.3 million
Meg Whitman: Hewlett-Packard, $19.6 million
Indra Nooyi: PepsiCo, $19.1 million
Phebe Novakovic: General Dynamics, $19 million
Virginia Rometty: IBM, $17.9 million
Marillyn Hewson: Lockheed Martin, $17.9 million
Patricia Woertz: Archer Daniels Midland, $16.3 million
Irene Rosenfeld: Mondelez International, $15.9 million
Ellen Kullman, DuPont, $13.1 million
Other key findings from Equilar:
For the first time since 2011, a female executive (Marissa Mayer of Yahoo!) made the list as one of the top 10 highest-paid CEOs with a total compensation of $42.1 million.
The four highest paid executives – David Zaslav, Leslie Moonves, Philippe Dauman, and Robert Iger—have all appeared in the top 10 since the study was first published.
For CEOs in the current study, median pay increased 0.8 percent between 2013 and 2014 from $10,521,653 to $10,611,031.
On average, pay packages in 2014 were composed of 61 percent equity, 36 percent cash and 3 percent other compensation.
Female CEOs are outpacing their male colleagues in pay, although they remain vastly outnumbered in the top echelons of American companies.
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
New findings from hospital watchdog the Leapfrog Group shows many hospitals across the country are failing to meet national performance targets for quality of maternity care.
The study comes on the heels of Leapfrog's twice-yearly Hospital Safety Score, which assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their adherence to various safety standards. According to the report, 798 hospitals earned an 'A,' 639 earned a 'B,' 957 earned a 'C,' 1162 earned a 'D' and only 15 earned an 'F,'
[See also: Leapfrog out with troubling hospital safety numbers.]
When it comes to maternity care, facilities were deficient in a number of different areas, such as the rate of episiotomies. A once-routine incision made in the birth canal during childbirth, it's now recommended only in a very narrow set of cases; Leapfrog's target for all hospitals is to perform the incision in 5 percent or less of all cases. Yet the rates were too high among 68 percent of hospitals.
Too many C-sections were also being performed, the data showed. At 60 percent of reporting hospitals, the rates surpassed Leapfrog's target rate of 23.9 percent for all hospitals, and the variation was dramatic -- ranging from as low as 10 percent to as high as 54 percent in one unidentified east coast city.
Not all of the findings were dour. Four out of five hospitals meet Leapfrog's target of 5 percent for early elective deliveries, which are medically unnecessary inductions or C-sections performed at 39 weeks. That, the report said, means the facility is taking steps to minimize risks to the mother and child be delivering too soon.
[See also: Leapfrog Group: Rate of serious, even fatal, hospital infections still too high.]
Additionally, the early elective delivery rate has shrunk dramatically, with the national average at 2.8 percent, compared to the 17 percent reported in 2010.
But the study also shows many hospitals don't have adequate experience with high-risk deliveries. Low-weight infants born with complications are more likely to survive if the hospital has an experienced neonatal intensive care unit on-site, yet 78 percent of hospitals performing high-risk deliveries don't meet the Leapfrog standard.
"This report underscores the importance of understanding the risks associated with specific delivery choices and of improving the quality of care during birth for the wellbeing of both mothers and their babies," said Kristin Torres Mowat, senior vice president of plan development and data operations at Castlight Health, in a statement.
As the country celebrates National Women’s Heath Week this week, women at the University of California, San Francisco’s National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, have double cause to celebrate.
It was 20 years ago the center was founded. The founding director, Nancy Milliken, continues to lead the enterprise today.
“Women were vulnerable to harm from undertreatment, overtreatment and mistreatment due to the lack of rigorous research on women's unique experience of health and disease,” Milliken said in the May 8 UCSF article.
Before launching the center, Milliken was a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at UCSF.
UCSF was designated in 1996 as one of the nation's first six National Centers of Excellence in Women's Health, sponsored by the Office on Women's Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The quest has always been for health equity.
“My dream would be that the need for UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health would be eliminated because sex and gender approaches to research, clinical care, education are in the DNA of UCSF, and inform health care and policy across our nation and the world,” Milliken said in the UCSF article.
The other five National Centers of Excellence in Women’s Health designated by HHS in 1996 are located at:
– Allegheny University of the Health Sciences, Philadelphia
– Magee-Womens Hospital, Pittsburgh
– Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio
– University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
– Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Read the article here.
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
This Mother’s Day, Janet Schijns, vice president, global channels, at Verizon Enterprise Solutions, pays homage to her trailblazing mother, who continues to inspire her today.
“I’ve noticed that over the past few years that fewer and fewer women are staying in tech long enough to mentor others or trail blaze for the next generation,” writes Schijns in a May 4 LinkedIN post.
“Instead of lamenting, I’ve taken action,” she writes in "The Critical Role That Mothers Play."
Read Janet’s column here.
A new survey of more than 1,500 women revealed that they frequently encounter obstacles that impact salary and career advancement, according to Women Who Code.
Seventy five percent of jobs in the U.S. will require technology skills within the next decade, according to Women Who Code CEO Alaina Percival.
“It’s imperative that the industry as a whole become a more welcoming and inclusive place for women who have been drastically underrepresented to date,” Percival said in a statement. “Providing women every available opportunity and resource to succeed is crucial – both for their well being and for the stability of the economy.”
Highlighting challenges women face once they enter technology careers, the study also looked at what needs to be done to attract women to technology fields in the first place.
Nearly 80 percent of women indicated flexible work hours as critical, and one in four respondents said flexible work hours was the most important factor when considering a career in tech. Half of all respondents, in fact, agreed that balancing their career and personal life is challenging.
Women Who Code, a global nonprofit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers, conducted the research with developer training company Pluralsight.
When asked to rank the biggest challenges in their careers, respondents listed lack of opportunities for advancement first, followed closely by lack of female role models and lack of mentorship at work. More than 60 percent of female leaders agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that having more women on their teams would be beneficial.
Respondents also cited a lack of confidence and male-dominated work environments as top issues holding back their careers. And while 20 percent of respondents in their 20s and 30s aspire to a vice president or C-level position, more than 50 percent felt uncomfortable asking for a raise and nearly 50 percent felt uncomfortable asking for a promotion.
What’s more, women in leadership roles reported being held back by male-dominated work environments at more than twice the rate of women in mid-level positions or below (19 percent vs. 8 percent), while nearly half of respondents ages 21-49 feel that male colleagues are more likely to get promoted than female colleagues.
When it comes to salaries, the latest HIMSS Compensation Survey, released at the 2016 HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition, found big gaps between men and women holding positions with the same title in the healthcare IT field. Men, on average, earned $126,262, compared to $100,762 for women.
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
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When Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump accused his presumptive Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, of playing the 'woman's card' in the race to the White House, it backfired.
Clinton was the first to respond, unleashing many other retorts from both women and men – and an extra $2.4 million in campaign fundraising.
"If fighting for women's health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in!" Clinton shot back.
One of our favorite commentaries came from Kirsty Styles, writing on thenextweb.com: Styles writes about a deck of cards in production now by a creative sister and brother team which is celebrating famous women, such as Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Cassatt and Beyonce. Clinton is the ace in this deck, which is due on the market in July.
While enamored of the idea, in her column Styles points out that the Woman Card deck doesn’t reference any female tech innovators who've made America great.
[See also: HIMSS compensation survey: Big salary gap between men, women healthcare pros.]
Styles suggests three to get the creators of the card deck fired up for tech: Pioneering computer programmer Grace Hopper, Radia ‘don’t call me the Mother of the Internet’ Perlman and women in tech champion Anita Borg.
Hmm, maybe someone should create a Women in Health IT card deck.
Or maybe it’s enough with the cards already.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes in his April 30 column, "Trump Plays the Man's Card," that Trump is missing point.
"This is the card that in the United States earns women just 92 cents to a male worker’s dollar, less than one-fifth of the seats in Congress, a bare 19 percent of corporate board seats, an assault every nine seconds — and free catcalls and condescension! Frankly, I’ll stick with my MasterCard," Kristof writes.
That 92 percent earnings figure stands in contrast with the findings published in a HIMSS compensation survey released this past January.
The HIMSS survey reveals that men, on average, earned $126,262, compared to $100,762 for women in the survey of 1,900 healthcare professionals that includes CEOs, CIOs, IT project managers, sales professionals and those with clinical titles such as CMIO and Clinical Systems Analyst. It means that women in health IT make about 80 percent of what men earn in the same positions.
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
The results of a 2015 HIMSS survey of 20,000 women in health IT on workplace, job satisfaction, recognition and opportunities to move up – coupled with another on salaries for women in this field compared with compensation for men – spoke clearly to HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith.
Both surveys revealed pressing needs for resources and community for women in health IT.
Men, on average, earned $126,262, compared with $100,762 for women in the HIMSS Compensation Survey of 1,900 healthcare professionals that included CEOs and CIOs.
Moreover, women landing their first executive positions make just 63 percent of what men make in their first executive role.
"I firmly believe sunlight is the great disinfectant: It's a great way to start conversations and help people be more informed," Smith said at a HIMSS16 session where she presented the findings of the compensation survey.
She saw the disparity, but also recognized the opportunity to do something about it – to change the status quo.
Not one to procrastinate, Smith gathered together a roundtable of some of the most powerful women in the industry. They met at HIMSS16 to better define the situation, build a community and create an awards program, all to provide women support, recognition, concrete solutions, share ideas, offer resources and content.
Content is where Healthcare IT News comes in. Today we launch a dedicated section of the website – "a room of one's own," so to speak – exclusively focused on news, career advice, profiles, success stories and recognition of women in health IT and the issues that are most pressing to us.
We are also launching a Women in Health IT newsletter, which will be emailed the fourth Tuesday of each month.
Virginia Woolf's slender masterpiece "A Room of One's Own," which explores themes related to women writers and female fictional characters, was published in 1929, at a time when male authors dominated the literary world even more than they do today.
It's much the same in the realm of healthcare IT. The disparities may not be as wide as they once were, but they persist. As we see it, closing those gaps and achieving parity – both in opportunity and compensation – will elevate the entire healthcare IT industry.
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