NQF Hires New Vice President for Health Information Technology 

The National Quality Forum (NQF) welcomes Rosemary Kennedy as its new vice president for health information technology (IT). Dr. Kennedy joins NQF from Siemens Medical Solutions, where for nearly seven years she was the chief nursing informatics officer. 

Dr. Kennedy will provide leadership and strategic direction to NQF’s expanding portfolio of health IT work, including efforts to promote eMeasure development and implementation, new versions of the Quality Data Model, and enhancements to the Measure Authoring Tool, a web-based tool for building standardized eMeasures.

“NQF recognizes the potential that health IT can play in improving healthcare, and is committed to an array of initiatives designed to make care safer, more affordable, and better coordinated,” said Janet Corrigan, president and CEO of NQF. “Rosemary’s extensive knowledge of healthcare practice and vast experience in the health IT field, especially in integrating technology into nursing care, will have a significant, positive impact on our work.”

During her time at Siemens Medical Solutions, Dr. Kennedy shaped the organization’s vision and provided leadership to ensure the development and implementation of clinical information solutions met the needs of practicing nurses. Prior to serving as chief nursing informatics officer, Dr. Kennedy held numerous positions within the company, where she focused on integrating nursing practice requirements into information solutions for patient care, managing clinical implementation projects that demonstrated positive patient outcomes, and designing applications and architecture for electronic health records, among other responsibilities. Previously, Dr. Kennedy held senior health IT positions at Franciscan Health System and Shared Medical Systems.

Dr. Kennedy is currently an associate professor in Thomas Jefferson University’s School of Nursing. She also holds several leadership positions through her work with the American Medical Informatics Association and the Technology Informatics Guiding Educational Reform Board. She earned her PhD at Loyola University Chicago, and earned her MBA and BSN from Widener University. She has published extensively in medical journals, focusing on the relationship between nursing practice and health IT, and is a frequent presenter at leading health IT conferences around the world.

“NQF is committed to advancing healthcare quality by bringing together key stakeholders in the health IT community,” said Dr. Kennedy. “I am thrilled to join this mission-driven organization at such a pivotal time in healthcare.”

The National Quality Forum operates under a three-part mission to improve the quality of American healthcare by: 

• Building consensus on national priorities and goals for performance improvement and working in partnership to achieve them; 
•  Endorsing national consensus standards for measuring and publicly reporting on performance; and 
•  Promoting the attainment of national goals through education and outreach programs.