'Ginger' Price joins Open Health News

We have some great news for our readers. Virginia ("Ginger") Price has joined Open Health News (OHNews) as a partner and senior editor. Ginger is one of the most respected and well recognized health IT expets in the US. She has over 30 years experience in designing, building, implementing, and managing complex standards-based Health IT solutions, including driving adoption strategies to increase clinician and person centered use of those solutions.

Ginger has worked in Federal service at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and served as a health IT management consultant for a number of companies, e.g. Booz Allen Hamilton, Baxter Healthcare, and Nitor Group. We are extremely pleased to announce her addition to the organization.

Amongst some of her more notable roles and achievements during her long federal career:

• Early in her career, Ginger worked on the VA Decentralized Hospital Computer Program (DHCP) that was implemented in 172 hospitals, several hundred clinics, and 120 nursing homes across the country within an 18-month period. DHCP eventually evolved into the world reknowned Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) enterprise-wide electronic health record (EHR) system.
• As the Deputy ACIO for Enterprise Systems Services, she helped manage VA activities related to implementing the standards-based VA/DoD federal health information exchange (FHIE/BHIE) designed to support the goal of creating a life-long, comprehensive electronic health record for our nation's veterans.
• Ms. Price also served as the Director of the My HealtheVet program, the VA’s award-winning personal health record (PHR) system. She oversaw the growth of the program from a limited pilot test at nine VA medical centers to the nation-wide implementation of the system which now has over 1 million users.
• From 2008 to January 2010, Ms. Price served as the Program Director for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s National Health Information Network (NHIN) initiative.  Under her leadership, the NHIN Cooperative (20+ public & private sector organizations) worked through the technical and policy implications of interoperable health information exchange and moved on to implementing the first pilot systems.

All of us here at Open Health News (OHNews) are pleased that she chose to join us. Welcome Ginger!