The Washington Perspective: A Fireside Chat with the ONC National Coordinator

HHS Office of the SecretaryDr. Don Rucker, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, comes to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) from the Ohio State University where he was Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine and Biomedical Informatics and Premise Health, a worksite clinic provider, where he served as Chief Medical Officer.Dr. Rucker started his informatics career at Datamedic Corporation, where he co-developed the world's first Microsoft Windows based electronic medical record. He then served as Chief Medical Officer at Siemens Healthcare USA. Dr. Rucker led the team that designed the computerized provider order entry workflow that, as installed at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, won the 2003 HIMSS Nicholas Davies Award for the best hospital computer system in the US. Dr. Rucker has served terms on the Board of Commissioners of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology and Medicare's Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC) and has extensive policy experience representing healthcare innovations before Congress, MedPAC and HHS.He has practiced emergency medicine at Kaiser in California, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he was the first full-time Emergency Department attending, the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Presbyterian and Pennsylvania Hospitals and at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.Dr. Rucker is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine with board certifications in Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine and Clinical Informatics. He holds an MS in Medical Computer Science and an MBA, both from Stanford.