At the heart of our services and solutions are industry recognized experts in the areas of health information management, patient data integrity, enterprise master person indexes and HIPPA Privacy and Security. All of our projects are managed by credentialed HIM professionals with extensive experience working within HIM departments and with the technology solutions deployed throughout the healthcare facility. Our consultants have worked with every major health information system including Cerner, Siemens, McKesson, Meditech, Initiate, QuadraMed, Eclipsys, Epic and others.

 Following is a listing of some of our consultants and their backgrounds:

Beth Haenke Just, MBA, RHIA
CEO

A business entrepreneur, consultant and technology general manager, Ms. Just has a diverse background of skills and experience. Her strengths include project management, business development, health care business and operations management, product management and financial management. Her use of pragmatic business techniques, technology know how and her strong knowledge of the health care industry bring a unique value and quick return on investment to the clients she serves.

Beth has completed over 100 consulting engagements including MPI clean ups, Patient Access assessments, MPI assessments, HIM operational reviews and EMPI needs assessments and RFP development as well as software development, testing and implementation projects for healthcare organizations ranging in size from small, single facilities to large multi-facility IDNs and RHIOs. Her services have been sought after by numerous healthcare software vendors who value her expertise in the areas of data management, patient data integrity and the electronic linking of patient records. She has served in several officer, board and chair positions for the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the Colorado Health Information Management Association (CHIMA) including contributing to the "HIM Principles in HIE" and "Patient Identity in RHOs" workgroups. She has recently been appointed as Co-Chair for AHIMA's Health Information Exchange Practice Council for 2008. Beth has been a featured speaker at numerous State and National professional meetings including AHIMA, HIMSS and TEPR as well as software vendors' user group conferences (Cerner, Microsoft, IDX). She has authored and has been quoted in articles published in The Journal of AHIMA, For The Record, Healthcare IT News and Modern Healthcare. She was the lead author on AHIMA's recently published Practice Brief: HIM Principles in Health Information Exchange.



Barbara Demster, MS, RHIA, CHCQM
Senior Consultant

Ms. Demster has over 25 years experience in healthcare management and information systems in a wide range of healthcare settings. She holds a B.A. in languages from the University of Georgia, an M.S. in Health Data Analysis from St. Louis University with extensive doctoral work in health services research. Barbara's client work has spanned the healthcare continuum including large provider corporations, hospitals, health plans, physician practices, ambulatory clinics, long-term care, home health, rehabilitation, clearinghouse, regulatory agency, eHealth, private and public sector companies. She has developed an enterprise master person index for a major health system comprised of 11 hospitals and 61 clinics with 2.8 million clinic visits, 1 million hospital outpatient visits, and over 100,000 inpatient admissions per year.

Barbara serves as the Chair of the Privacy and Security Steering Committee (HIMSS), she is a member of the EHR Practice Council (AHIMA), and previously served as the Chair of the HIPAA Preemption Subcommittee assessing privacy regulations in fifty states. She has authored several articles about health information privacy and security for the Journal of AHIMA.

Linda Bock, RHIA

Senior Consultant

A senior health information management professional, Ms. Bock’s background demonstrates a diverse blend of skills and expertise. Her strengths include project management, process development and execution and health care operational management. Her belief in delivering value to clients is the focus that provides exceptional results in a myriad of settings. Ms. Bock’s experience includes management level positions in QuadraMed, and Pyramid Health Group, as well as management of health information management departments within the acute care setting. Her experience includes software development for person management tools. She has worked with all of the leading patient identification and matching algorithms including Initiate (Madison), QuadraMed and Cerner.

Linda has been active in both state and regional Health Information Management professional organizations, serving as the Secretary of the Northern Colorado Health Information Management Association, and has served on the board of directors and various committees for the Colorado Health Information Management Association. She has presented at various state professional organization conferences.

Lori Youngberg, RHIA
Consultant

Ms. Youngberg is a Health Information Management professional who has supervised numerous projects for Just Associates. Her HIM experience includes release of information and chart completion responsibilities at acute rehabilitation hospitals. Lori brings strong project management skills to the Just Associates team. Lori has had a keen interest in software and has developed an expertise in analyzing and illustrating work and data flows for various business and professional projects. She completed the comprehensive flowcharts that can be seen in AHIMA’s HIM Principles in Health Information Exchange (Practice Brief) and in the Health Information Exchange Use Case Scenarios both currently in AHIMA’s Body of Knowledge (BoK).

She is a member of AHIMA (American Health Information Management Association) and a charter member in CHIMSS (Colorado Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society). Lori earned a Bachelor of Science in Health Information Management from Regis University and is currently working on her Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems (CPHIMS) credentials.

Emilie Paternoster, RHIA
Consultant

Ms. Paternoster has over 30 years experience in healthcare management in a variety of healthcare environments. Emilie has held HIM management positions in large university hospital settings as well as community hospitals. Emilie’s experience includes working with the data consortium in Maryland, one of the programs that was a forerunner for Medicare PPS. Her experience also includes sales and sales management positions with large health care IT vendors providing solutions to healthcare providers ranging from encoding solutions, MPI solutions, consulting services for outsourced HIM services and e-learning systems.

Over the course of her career, Emilie has served the HIM industry in a volunteer capacity at both the national and state level. Her service includes Chair of AHIMA’s Ad-Hoc Task Force on PPS, President of the Maryland HIM Association and Chair of numerous committees on the state level. She holds a B.S. in Health Information Management from York College of Pennsylvania.

Donna Andrews, RHIA
EMPI Consultant

Ms. Andrews is a Health Information Management professional with over twenty years of progressive, results-oriented experience, including HIM Department Management, Corporate Compliance, EMPI Analysis and Clean-ups. She currently has an Adjunct Faculty role in the HIM Program at The University of Tennessee. She was responsible for developing the curricula for Health Information Technology/Systems and Legal Concepts in Healthcare at the University of Tennessee. Donna manages Just Associates Patient Identity Expert certification program and has worked on large scale data integrity and EMPI implementation projects at large healthcare organizations

Donna is a member of AHIMA, THIMA, MHIMA, and sits on the University of Tennessee Advisory Committee. She has sat on the University Medical Center Alliance EMPI Task Force and previously served as Treasurer, Secretary and Committee Chairperson for the Memphis Health Information Management Association. She has completed presentations at several professional association meetings.