Consultant Profiles
Sandra Hudak MS RN, Principal
“Ms. Hudak has over 25 years in healthcare, with experiences in clinical care delivery, clinical information system implementation and software design and development. She has extensive IT implementation and project management experience coordinating performance improvement efforts, and clinical workflow redesign for acute care, physician practices, and long term care provider IT projects.
For over ten years her focus has been in clinical informatics, serving as liaison between clinicians and vendor in acute care system implementations, information planner to facilitate system selection projects in acute care, product manager for IT vendor to coordinate and manage new product development for web-based clinical applications for hospital and physician practices. She has in-depth experience in collaborating with physicians, nursing, and ancillary staff to elicit system requirements for large and small multidisciplinary clinical and ancillary implementation projects and software development initiatives.
She has 14 years experience in critical care nursing and has served on organization wide committees to redesign the patient care delivery model for multiple hospitals. In addition, she has contributed to numerous task force teams to develop Critical Pathways for cardiac patients and a Professional Practice model in critical care.
Previous experiences include Director of Product Development for an Internet-based health care technology business focused on physician practice clinical system and Manager Information Planning for multi-facility hospital where she coordinated and managed clinical system selection projects.
Ms Hudak received her BSN and MS in Nursing Informatics from the University of Maryland School of Nursing.
Project experience includes project manager of NextGen EMR implementation in a 60 provider orthopedic practice whose services included: orthopedic clinic, rehab medicine, behavioral health, physical therapy; 9 sites; 250 users . As project manager, responsible for m anaging the project plan, clinical content definition, workflow redesign, and template development for physical therapists and multi-specialty physician group. Conducted extensive EMR product research, coordinated selection team process, provided vendor comparative analysis, and managed contract negotiations to lead client to successful system selection. Additional experience in IT system selection includes Long Term Care, Acute and Sub-acute Care, Emergency Services, OBGYN, Home Health, and Ambulatory Care systems.
Currently Project Director for 3 AHRQ-funded projects in long term care led by Dr. Susan Horn (Partnerships in Quality, Transforming Health Care through IT, and AHRQ – QIO Collaboration). Major objectives of the projects include: standardize data element requirements, incorporate standardized data elements into clinical documentation processes (CNA and entire care team); redesign clinical workflow to support process improvements initiatives, develop and design clinical reports for multiple disciplines, develop strategy to integrate use of real-time reports into care planning, serve as facility liaison to vendor, and implement technology solutions for RN and CNA documentation. Results to date include 30% reduction in pressure ulcer incidence and 50% reduction in CNA documentation forms.
In the acute care setting, experience includes patient flow analysis and redesign for large multi-hospital system. Coordinated multi-disciplinary teams, led process analysis and redesign effort, and tracked and analyzed data to assess impact of process changes. Impacted the flow of inpatient critical care admissions and transfers to optimize bed utilization by patient type and acuity, unit census and nursing staffing patterns; performed data analysis of patient flow processes for problem identification and resolution. Participated in the development of new admission flow processes to improve Nursing and Admitting Department communications and enhance patient flow throughout critical care division.