The Nurses of Lantana
The American Nurses Association has chosen “Nurses Make the Difference” as this year’s Nurses Month theme to honor the compassion and care that nurses provide in all healthcare settings. While the nurses at Lantana no longer practice bedside care, our work remains patient-centered by directly supporting both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Data Modernization Initiative (DMI) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) National Quality Strategy. Here’s a look at our current team and the great work they’re doing:
Angela Flanagan leads the development and maintenance of electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) and digital quality measures (dQMs) for CMS quality reporting programs and other non-government projects. She also provides eCQM training and support for clients and Lantana staff. She is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems (CPHIMS®) and Fellow Member (FHIMSS).
Ben Allaire is the newest member of our team working on CMS eCQM and dQM development and maintenance. He is Board Certified in Informatics Nursing (NI-BC).
Dawn Beard is the Star Ratings Lead for the Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating Program on the CMS Hospital Quality Initiative (HQI) for public reporting.
Karen Hansen-Rojas supports the CDC’s DMI at National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) by managing the development of the NHSNLink application – an open-source Healthcare Level Seven International (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR®) application that uses NHSN dQMs with integrated informatics, standards, and analytic support for automated extraction of patient-level data from EHRs for public health reporting.
Kim Figueroa supports the NHSN digital quality measures, a part of CDC’s DMI. She develops FHIR®-based dQMs that allow automated reporting using HL7® FHIR® application programming interfaces (APIs).
Kris Done develops and maintains CMS eCQMs and dQMs and provides validation support to CMS’s Value Incentives & Quality Reporting Center (VIQRC) for their Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program. She is a CPHIMS® and Board Certified in Informatics Nursing (NI-BC).
Lynn Perrine manages Lantana’s Quality Measurement Department and supports NHSN’s dQM development.
Marla Throckmorton is the Director of Health Informatics. She provides executive oversight on multiple projects and supports CMS quality reporting programs focused on improving patient outcomes.
Mary-Margaret Richter supports NHSN by developing standards-based solutions that transition clinical quality measures to dQMs. She also maintains and develops the Home Health and Hospice patient assessment instruments used for CMS quality reporting programs. She is a Certified Nurse Practitioner (NP-C), Board Certified in Nursing Informatics (NI-BC), and a Certified Scrum Master (CSM).
Ming Dunajick develops and maintains HL7 implementation guides (IGs) for clients as well as FHIR to Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) and CDA to FHIR bidirectional transforms. She also authors dQMs using clinical quality language (CQL) and the FHIR data model. Ming is board certified in Informatics Nursing (RN-BC).
Olga Kogan supports clinical quality measure maintenance and endorsement of multiple CMS quality reporting programs with a special focus on the Outpatient Quality Reporting (OQR) Program and Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) measures.
Paula Farrell manages the measure endorsement process, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) packages, and other smaller projects for NHSN. She is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ) and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt (LSSGB).
Robin Williams maintains and develops the Home Health and Hospice patient assessment instruments used for CMS quality reporting programs and validation support to CMS’s VIQRC for the Hospital IQR Program.
Zabrina Gonzaga directs Lantana’s dQM team as the product owner for NHSN dQMs. She develops and publishes CDA-based standards through HL7 and serves as a co-chair for the HL7 CDA Management Group. Zabrina is also a Certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner-Primary Care (CPNP-PC) and HL7-certified in CDA.
Whether at the bedside or behind the scenes, nursing requires compassion and a commitment to serving others. Nurses Month is a time to publicly acknowledge and thank nurses for the difference they make every day.