 Bruce Bayley, Ph.D.
Regional Director, Clinical Information and CORE
Dr. Bayley has 20 years of experience in health care planning, research and evaluation. His expertise is in outcomes measurement, program evaluation and patient safety research. As Providence Health & Services’s regional director of Clinical Information and director of CORE, he is responsible for the development of accountability measures, quality-improvement measures and quality-improvement information systems. His work focuses on implementing guidelines and performance measures that help translate research into clinical practice. He also participates on the quality councils of Providence’s hospitals, health plans and medical groups.
Dr. Bayley has designed and conducted studies of patient satisfaction and outcomes, has evaluated service delivery programs, and has designed and implemented programs for fostering innovative pilot projects in managed care. His ongoing research interests include patient safety, chronic disease care, electronic medical record systems and decision analysis. Prior to joining Providence Health & Services, he worked with Kaiser Permanente and as a private consultant.
 Caroline Amann
Research Assistant
Caroline joined the CORE Staff in 2003 and has worked on a variety of projects such as; Medicare and Oregon Health Plan Surveys, Grant submissions and the NICHE (Nurses Improving Care for Health System Elders) project. Now a member of the Clinical Information team most of her time is spent on the Home Health Quality Initiative, Quality and Patient Safety Reporting, CAPSI / PSO Data and upkeep of the CORE intranet website.
 Andrew Bennett
Director, Clinical Information Systems
A member of the CORE team since 1990, Andy is responsible for managing the center’s clinical information activities. In this capacity, he supervises a team of analysts, manages the development and deployment of information strategies and systems to support Providence initiatives, and provides access to clinical information to Providence clients in Oregon.
Andy offers years of experience in the field of medical outcomes and health services research, with an emphasis on information systems development and health-care-related hardware and software applications. Prior to joining CORE, Andy worked with the Oregon Health and Science University departments of Medical Psychology and Psychiatry. His areas of interest and expertise include the uses of various microcomputer, client/server, database and internet/intranet technologies for health services research, program evaluation, and quality improvement and monitoring.
 Charles Bentz, M.D., FACP
Medical Director, Health Services Research
As medical director of Health Services Research for CORE, Dr. Bentz is responsible for developing a research plan for tobacco cessation and other health services research, submitting grant proposals, publication of research results in peer-reviewed journals, and contributing to CORE’s overall department strategic planning in the area of health services research.
In addition to his work with CORE, Dr. Bentz is the medical director of Providence Health & Services’s award-winning Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Program. He has spent 10 years in this role, building a multi-faceted approach to addressing tobacco addiction. His programs have won first place awards on three separate occasions from the Managed Care Achievements in Tobacco Control program, sponsored by the American Association of Health Plans (AAHP). The Providence program as a whole has been called the "Platinum Standard" for health system tobacco-cessation efforts by Dr. Steven Schroeder of the UCSF Smoking Cessation Leadership Center.
Dr. Bentz has received several grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s “Addressing Tobacco in Managed Care (ATMC)” initiative. He serves as a member of ATMC’s National Technical Assistance Office, and has consulted with many health systems in developing and implementing systematic approaches to tobacco control. In addition to his contributions to tobacco cessation, he serves as a clinician-teacher on the faculty of the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center Internal Medicine Residency Program.
 Allen Brown
Senior Research Analyst
Allen joined CORE in 1996 after working as a research assistant for Science Applications International Corp. His forte is statistical analysis. In his nine years with CORE, he has worked on research projects covering such topics as asthma, stroke, mental health, continence problems, and maternity and perinatal care.
Allen holds a B.S. in computer science and a B.A. in psychology from Trinity University. He also has completed graduate-level coursework in clinical psychology and system science.
 Faith Cauthorn
Clerk/Receptionist
Faith has worked for Providence Health & Services since February 1989. She has worked in transportation, courier services and admitting. She has been with CORE since 2000 and has worked on a variety of projects, such as employee surveys, Quality of care surveys, and employee exit surveys. Most of her time is spent processing Medicare and OHP surveys, as well as assisting the directors and department staff.
 Joyce Cole
Research Assistant
Joyce has worked for Providence Health & Services since 1984, and has been with CORE since 1990. She works on a variety of projects, including the Behavioral Health Project, the NICHE project, and the Medication Reconciliation Measurement. Before joining CORE, she worked in the Anesthesia Department in the OR at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center.
 Nick Drew
Senior Research Analyst
Nick joined Providence in 1998. His work continues to focus on evaluating the health services outcomes of older adults. He provides reporting and analytical support for Providence Center on Aging, the Nursing Center of Excellence and the NICHE (Nurses Improving Care for Health System Elders) project. His work-related interests include statistical graphing and programming using R.
Erin Giltner, MS
Research Analyst II
Erin Giltner joined CORE in 2005. Her main area of focus is assessing patient, family and physician satisfaction through surveys. Prior to joining CORE, Erin worked in healthcare quality improvement in the physician office, nursing home and home health settings. She holds an MS degree in Statistics from Oregon State University.
Kathy Bukovi-Hauck, RHIT
Senior Clinical Information Analyst
Kathy has worked in healthcare for more than 35 years, 19 of which have been with Providence. She works directly with administrators, program managers, nursing executives, department directors and physician leaders to provide data needed for quality and process improvement, program evaluation and business strategies. She has been involved in program evaluation for Providence's Portland service area; clinical/financial profiles; and developing dashboards. She is proficient in Eclipsys, the hospital clinical/financial database; CompData, a statewide database; and CareScience, the health system outcome-measurement tool. Prior to coming to CORE, Kathy spent 25 years working in quality improvement. She is registered in health care information technology, and has completed additional coursework in health care management.
Marla London, M.A.
 Operational Excellence, Six Sigma Black Belt
In her 16 years with CORE, Marla London's research has focused on several clinical areas including heart valves, orthopedics, back pain, asthma, aging and palliative care. She has worked with physicians, nurses and other clinicians to address the needs of patients in all types of care settings, from ambulatory and hospital settings to long-term care and hospice. Her current focus is on operational improvement. Marla is a trained "black belt" and "change facilitator." She combines her research and methodological expertise with her facilitation skills as she pursues operational improvement activities. Marla has spoken at national and regional conferences and has published articles in numerous peer-reviewed publications, including Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Medical Care, and Journal of Healthcare Quality.
Kris Loudon
Research Assistant
Kris joined CORE in 2004 as an on-call clerk working on Employee Opinion surveys. In 2005 she was hired to full time status as a Research Assistant. She continues to work on Employee Opinion surveys as well as the Quality of Care surveys. She provides the content analysis for the patient satisfaction surveys for the Portland area teaching clinics. She also works on the Employee Exit and New Hire surveys, and assists with other CORE projects where needed. Kris has a B.S. in Health Promotions/Fitness Management from Southern Oregon.
Avis Ostrem, RHIA
Quality Information Analyst
Although Avis is a relative newcomer to CORE, she has been employed by Providence Health & Services for nearly 35 years. She brings a background in data management and reporting to her current role, where her responsibilities relate to the core measures of congestive heart failure and pneumonia.
Avis joined Providence in 1971 as a temporary coder/abstractor in the Medical Records Department, which is now called Health Information Management. She also has held a position as an assistant director responsible for ICD-9-CM coding and abstracting, and as a data systems manager responsible for database accuracy and reporting, monthly statistics, and coder production reports. In these roles she worked with administrators, physicians, nurses, department heads, state agencies and other outside agencies who requested information.
 Andrew Paradis, MBA
Senior Clinical Information Systems Analyst
Andy has worked at CORE for five years, primarily in the areas of Medicaid research, home health quality reporting and patient safety. He contributes to these areas by analyzing and developing databases used for health care research and for process improvement. Recently he has been involved in Web application development, data warehousing, and quality and business process improvement projects.
 Vickie Skakel
Research Analyst
Vickie has been with Providence for 16 years. Her last nine years have been with CORE, where she has been involved in a number of different research areas. She currently splits her time between project management and other project responsibilities, including project design, analysis and reporting. Her most recent work has focused on the Providence Women and Children's Program.
Bryan Steinweg, B.S.
Senior Clinical Information Systems Analyst
Bryan has worked at CORE for 12 years. His academic background was in health science, with an emphasis on lifestyle change and prevention. Prior to joining CORE, he helped start and coordinate a cardiac rehabilitation program for a county hospital in North Central Washington. His first position with CORE was in the area of cardiac surgery follow-up, where his database development skills were invaluable. Since then, Bryan has contributed to many projects, including Medicare and Medicaid health risk assessment, the Oregon Stroke Registry (OScPRey) database, and the Unusual Occurrence Reporting (UOR) system. He is responsible for submitting data from Providence’s Oregon hospitals to CareScience and to the National Perinatal Information Center.
Bryan’s areas of expertise include database development using VBA scripting and advanced SQL queries; automated forms processing and data capture using TeleForm; and clinical data capture from several Providence systems, including HBOC/Star, DSS/Eclipsys and PHP/Facets.
April White
Office Supervisor
April has been with CORE since 1999. In addition to her office management responsibilities, she works with a team of staff members on the employee Opinions surveys every fall. During the course of the year she assists CORE staff members on other projects, where needed.
Bill Wright, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Since joining CORE in 1999, Bill has worked extensively with health care satisfaction surveys, and has designed a number of studies spanning multiple dimensions of the health care setting. The focus of his work currently includes research on transferring medication information between care settings; a study evaluating a health plan benefit for doctor/patient e-mail communication; and a major, ongoing panel study of how Medicaid recipients are affected by policy changes in the Oregon Health Plan.
Bill received his Ph.D. in sociology from South Dakota State University. His principle training is in research methodology, including quantitative and qualitative methods, with a focus on survey design and program evaluation. Before he joined CORE, Bill taught undergraduate sociology courses and worked as an evaluation research consultant in the Midwest.
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