BWHC Names VanRooyen Chair of Department of Emergency Medicine

Michael VanRooyen

Interim Emergency Medicine Chair Michael VanRooyen, MD, MPH, has been appointed chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Health Care (BWHC), effective Jan. 1.

VanRooyen has been serving as interim chair since Jan. 1, 2015, when Ron M. Walls, MD, assumed the role of BWHC executive vice president and chief operating officer. As interim chair, VanRooyen and the Emergency Department (ED) team have launched several new initiatives, including the integration of Partners eCare, the expansion of global partnerships and the design of an expanded ED with a new Oncology Emergency Care Unit, a plan set for completion in 2017.

VanRooyen, who joined the Brigham in 2004 as an emergency medicine physician, is a professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor of Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He co-founded and directs the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), the largest academic and research center of its kind, focused on improving humanitarian strategies for relief in regions affected by war and disaster. He also founded and directs the Humanitarian Academy at Harvard (HAH), a Harvard-wide educational effort designed to advance humanitarian professionalism and develop the next generation of humanitarian leadership.

VanRooyen’s commitment to humanitarian work began long before he joined the Brigham family. Upon completing his residency in 1991, he began working with non-governmental organizations in conflict settings, such as Somalia, to advance emergency medical care. For the next two decades, he worked in some of the world’s most active conflict zones and disaster settings, including Sudan, Bosnia, Rwanda, North Korea, Iraq and Haiti. Through his work abroad, VanRooyen became further convinced that the field of humanitarian aid must create an evidence base and a professional pathway to advance quality and efficiency in the field.

Domestically, he has worked with the American Red Cross to provide relief assistance at the site of the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. He also helped to coordinate the American Red Cross public health response to Hurricane Katrina and worked with the Navajo and Apache tribes in Arizona and New Mexico.

“Dr. VanRooyen’s leadership and experience in the fields of global health and emergency medicine are unparalleled,” said Betsy Nabel, MD, BWHC president. “He is recognized by his colleagues as an outstanding leader with an unwavering commitment to emergency medicine, training the next generation of emergency medicine clinicians and providing superb compassionate care to patients and families. I look forward to a continued tradition of service to our mission in the department under his guidance.”

VanRooyen earned his MD from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit and his MPH from the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Mark Andersen

Andersen Joins BWHC as Interim CIO

Mark Andersen, MHA, MS, has been appointed interim chief information officer (CIO) for Brigham and Women’s Health Care (BWHC), as of Jan. 4. The appointment will ensure continued progress of Partners eCare implementation while the search for a permanent CIO continues.

Andersen joins BWHC from the University of Virginia (UVA) Health System in Charlottesville, where he served as interim chief technology and health information officer. A skilled and collaborative leader, he has a proven track record in health care information technology consultation and management, and brings extensive experience in integrating IT and innovation to support clinical operations. He joined UVA as interim chief technology and health information officer shortly after the launch of Epic at UVA’s 700-bed hospital. He led the organization through a successful stabilization effort, effectively resolving issues related to resource management, training and data mining.

As senior vice president and chief information officer at Yale New Haven Health System, Andersen led the selection, contract and implementation process for the transition to Epic from multiple legacy systems. Prior to that, he held roles as vice president of Management Systems and Technology at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center and director of Revenue Management for the Dallas-based Epic Healthcare Group.

“Mark is a superb choice for this role,” said Ron M. Walls, MD, executive vice president and chief operating officer of BWHC. “We look forward to him joining the BWHC leadership team and collaborating with Partners leadership to bring stabilization and optimization to our Epic system and to ensure we are well-positioned to support our mission going forward.”

Andersen earned his MS in hospital administration at The Ohio State University and his MS in industrial engineering/health systems engineering from the University of Missouri. He began his health care career as an occupational therapist, and his commitment to patients and the highest-quality patient care has been a driving force throughout his career.