in gastroenterology enabled the Richmond Veterans Affairs Medical Center to be an initial federal site for the Pill Cam® procedure whereby she wrote the department guidelines for this procedure.

Dr. Garbutt’s educational journey has endured the rigors of time and testing through obtainment of multiples degrees:

1. Associate’s Degree in Nursing (ADN) – J. Sargent Reynolds Community College, 2000
2. Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) – Virginia Commonwealth University, 2006
3. Master’s in the Science of Nursing and Master’s in Health Administration (MSN & MHA) – University of Phoenix, 2014
4. Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) – Old Dominion University, 2019
5. Sigma Theta Tau International membership – 2012 – present
6. Certifications in nurse executive leadership, coding, coaching and mentorship

Dr. Garbutt is a licensed and ordained minister with international credentials by the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship International. Her faith-based community initiatives include health promotion and education sessions, outreach programs for sex-trafficking, partnering with local women’s shelter for victims of abuse, and an annual health fair. Her aspirations include making an impact on health care policy reform and positively influencing global health care from the
nursing perspective.

Jayme Strauss MSN, RN, MBA, SCRN is the Executive Director of the Neuroscience Service Line at Piedmont Healthcare. She is responsible for the clinical and business development for the Neuroscience service line across the 11-hospital health system.

She previously served as the Assistant Vice President of Neuroscience & Oncology Services at Baptist Health South Florida located in Miami, FL. She supported the neuroscience service line throughout the organization as Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplant Services.

Jayme is also the founder of Neuroscience Strategic Solutions which is a consulting firm that focuses on Neuroscience program and service line development. She has consulted on several neuroscience strategic initiatives throughout Latin America and the Caribbean including Panama, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.   She recently worked on a project consulting to help establish comprehensive stroke services for Joint Commission International Certification in Panama.

She received her BSN from Cedar Crest College in Allentown Pennsylvania, and her MSN and MBA at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. Jayme also served as an adjunct clinical professor of Nursing at Barry University in Miami shores, FL. She holds her Stroke Certified Registered Nurse.

Dr. Tom’s major strengths are process, program, and systems redesign, integration, and restructuring for efficiency, efficacy, and sustainability based on high reliability concepts and practices . His previous accomplishment in the VA includes the establishment of a patient safety-aid sitter program with marked reduction in patient falls and elopements for high risk patients.

Dr. Tom has 15-years of business, banking, and financial management experience prior to his healthcare career. He held various titled positions to include Senior Margin Analyst, Assistant Operations Manager, Assistant Vice President, Vice President, Senior Vice President, and Consultant in the areas of Trading, Legal and Compliance, Corporate Investigator, Foreign Exchange Investigator, and Risk Management with different financial institutions like Shearson Lehman Brothers, Prudential Bache Securities, Reich & Co., Fahnestock & Co., Bank of America, National Westminster, and Citibank/Citicorp to name a few. Dr. Tom finds his prior experience in corporate Wall Street useful in his healthcare career; providing him with diversified experience in financial stewardship, resource utilization review and evaluation, program and systems designing, planning, development, training, implementation, management, and integration; program metric benchmarking, performance indicators, outcome evaluations, sustainability, policy development, service-line realignment, merger and acquisitions, and infrastructure reorganization.

John Reynolds is the Executive Director of Operations at Kennestone Regional Medical Center, the 633-bed flagship hospital of the Wellstar health system. There he leads several of the hospital’s support service departments and co-chairs the hospital’s throughput committee.

Prior to joining Wellstar, John spent fifteen years with the safety net health system of Indianapolis leading in a variety of roles within inpatient and nursing support services. There he partnered with hospital leaders to introduce an Acuity Adaptable inpatient model maximizing the hospital’s ability to care for complex patients, introduced a telesitter program, and worked collaboratively with emergency department leaders to implement cultural and operational changes to significantly improve throughput for admitted patients. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business management and a master’s degree in management with a healthcare specialization. He is passionate about improving systems and processes that result in higher quality care and better outcomes for patients and communities.

development and operations of patient access centers. She is experienced in working with predictive analytics, data intelligence and integrating data for improved operations and outcomes for patients.  Colleen is a published author in the area of patient throughput.  Colleen is involved at a state level with the Indiana Center for Nursing with past work on leadership and patient safety committees and also serves as adjunct faculty at the University of Indianapolis.  Colleen is a member of American Organization for Nurse Executives, American College of Healthcare Executives, Sigma Theta Tau and Executive Women in Healthcare. ​ 

In her current role, Colleen is the Administrative Director for the Patient Logistics Center at Franciscan Health, for 12 Franciscan acute care facilities across the state of Indiana & Illinois.  Colleen is responsible for the strategic planning and start-up of department.  Colleen has led transformation of patient flow through her leadership in the Executive Capacity Management Committee which was a multi-disciplinary committee to improve patient throughput.  In her role at Franciscan, Colleen has improved revenue, expanded bed capacity, positively impacted collaboration and quality patient care as well as improved measures in patient satisfaction.  Colleen’s passions are to change the current model of healthcare so patients are receiving unified, collaborative and timely care. 

Under the guidance of Dr. William (Tex) Landis and Dr. MaryEllen Pfeiffer, he developed a passion for patient logistics, transfer processes, and hospital throughput. In 2015, he assumed the role of Director and Project Champion of the Active Bed Management (ABM) program at WellSpan. In 2016, WellSpan’s ABM program received the Society of Hospital Medicine’s “National Excellence in Teamwork in Quality Improvement Award”, driving quality improvement for transitions of care in and out of the hospital. In 2017, Dr. Yaz took the position of Hospitalist Medical Director of UPMC Pinnacle Harrisburg, allowing him to work for one of his former mentors, Dr. Steven Lilie. As the hub of a local 7-hospital health system in south central PA, UPMC Pinnacle Harrisburg had an urgent need to develop a true command center for patient movement. In 2018, Dr. Yaz accepted the role of Medical Director of UPMC Pinnacle’s Transfer Center, with a goal to drive system standardization, process improvement, and decrease leakage. UPMC Pinnacle implemented Central Logic as its transfer solution in December of 2019, and continues to reap the benefits as they grow their command center.

Dr. Yaz is married to his residency sweetheart, Tarin (an ED physician at UPMC Pinnacle). They have 1 son and 3 dogs. In their “copious” amounts of free time, they enjoy golf, food, travel, and cheering on the Eagles, Sixers and Phillies. This is his 3rd Patient Flow Summit he has attended, first as a speaker.

American Organization for Nursing Leadership Advocacy Committee, and is in pursuit of the American College of Healthcare Executives Fellowship (FACHE). Charley holds national certifications as a Nurse Manager and Leader (CNML) and Nurse Executive – Board Certified (NE-BC).

Charley joined Banner Health in 2007 in a clinical support role and upon graduation worked bedside in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit at Banner University Medical Center Phoenix, a major metropolitan quaternary academic medical center. Charley began his leadership journey as a RN Manager of the Cardiovascular ICU and the level 1 Trauma ICU and has progressed his way through leadership to his current executive role of RN Senior Director. 

Charley led the charge from the Banner Health perspective in the partnership with Central Logic and is the operational owner of the program. Banner Health Transfer Services is situated across two offices with the primary being a 40,000 sq. ft. medical office building in Mesa Arizona and an ancillary office located in Greeley, Colorado. Banner Health Transfer Services facilitates the transfer of over 70,000 patients across 23 acute care facilities annually. 

In early 2020, Charley was lent to the Arizona Department of Health Services to stand up the state Surge Line in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Arizona Surge Line is a first of its kind, collaboration between public and private healthcare in which all major organizations in the state came together to respond to the anticipated patient volume surge. This program has been highly successful and a model for implementation nation wide as a CDC outlined best practice.  

care management activities for the system that focus on promoting standardization, improving patient safety, formulary management, and drug utilization practices. His involvement in opioid efforts including leading the Opioid Oversight Committee which has assisted in providing guidance on facilitating key stakeholder engagement for clinical practice development and provided support for policy development to comply with new opioid-related regulations. 

Dr. Brown also serves as CMO for Banner Health Transfer Services, who receives approximately 65,000 requests for medical transfers each year to their Acute Care Hospitals. He works collaboratively with leaders across the system to provide clinical support as well as facilitates the creation of processes and protocols to improve clinical care, outcomes, and patient safety for patients requiring transfer.

Dr. Brown received his MD from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and completed a combined Internal Medicine and General Pediatrics Residency at Banner University Medical Center-Phoenix and Phoenix Children’s Hospital. He practiced as a primary care physician and hospitalist and has previously served as the Physician Lead of a Hospitalist group as well as a Hospital Chief Medical Officer. He is a graduate of Banner Health’s Advanced Leadership Program for Physicians.

patient throughput for a 633-bed tertiary trauma center –the flag-ship hospital of an 11-hospital system, with one of the busiest emergency rooms in the state and a very active transfer center.  She has been recognized for improving throughput by 20%, reducing OR hold times by 15%, and managing patient placement during disaster responses for Hurricanes Matthew (2016) and Irma (2017).

Since coming to Wellstar in 2006, Schiara designed and led the building of their Patient Logistics Center.  This design is now being replicated at other hospitals within the system.  She played a key role in developing, and now leads a nationally recognized, model Discharge Center that has achieved benchmark levels of performance for throughput, readmission and transitional care.  Among her system-wide responsibilities, she serves as a Co-Lead for the WellStar Inclusion Council, and as a subject matter expert in the SOGI Initiative. 

Schiara received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Georgia State University in 2003, a Master of Business Administration in 2016, and is currently working on her Master of Science in Nursing.  She holds a Green and Silver belt in Lean Six Sigma.  Additionally, Schiara plays an active role in Magnet and Baldrige work, and serves as an examiner for the Florida Sterling Council. 

Carol Walker has been a registered nurse for 17 years, serving the entire time at OHSU. She came to nursing as a second career after spending more than ten years in the high-tech arena. During her time at OHSU Carol has held several positions in adult acute care including seven years on neurology, neurosurgery, ENT floors and another seven years in the acute care float pool, serving as charge nurse as needed on fourteen different acute care floors. Carol was one of the first nurses hired into the OHSU Transfer Center and continues to be very involved in the evolution of both the transfer center and the role of the transfer center nurse.

Rachel Adair has worked in healthcare for over 18 years, with the last seven as a registered nurse. Her career includes nursing at the Knight Cancer Institute in Radiation Medicine, charge nurse on the largest intermediate medical/surgical unit at a tertiary and quaternary care center, and as one of the first Transfer Center nurses at the only academic health system in the state of Oregon. She has assisted in the implementation and practice of the Transfer Center nurse role for OHSU Health. Special interests include systems-level nursing and throughput, with an emphasis on patient-centric care during the transfer process.

Regine Thigpen, MSN, RN, NE-BC is currently the Director of Hospital Outpatient Operations at Wellstar Kennestone. She also serves in several nursing departments within Wellstar Health System. Regine has worked for Kennestone hospital for 10 years and has been in nursing for over 20 years.

Stephanie G. TenBarge is the System Nursing Director for the Patient Logistics Center at Franciscan Health.  The Patient Logistics Center is the centralized patient placement and transfer center for the Franciscan Alliance, a 12-hospital system in Indiana and Illinois.  

Stephanie has 25 years of healthcare experience that includes Nursing Administration, Staffing Resource, Nursing Operations and Critical Care.  Stephanie has been instrumental in building and managing a Staffing Resource pool of over 100 employees as well as the startup of centralized Patient Placement with a focus on patient throughput and capacity management.  Stephanie created and manages a successful Emerging Nurse Leader Residency at Franciscan Alliance that mentors and prepares nurses for future leadership positions.  Stephanie has presented Succession Planning at the AONE national conference, highlighting the successes of her Emerging Nurse Leader Residency. 

Stephanie has a Master of Science in Nursing Administration from Ball State University.  Stephanie has been recognized by Franciscan Alliance for her ability to emulate patient and family centered care by encouraging, motivating and inspiring teams with joyful service and for her transformational leadership.

Center.  In her role, she utilizes Lean Six Sigma business strategies, data analytics, strategy planning and deployment, and people development to drive value, growth, and performance improvement.

Shannon has more than fifteen years of health care experience in Nursing Leadership and Lean and Six Sigma process improvement, Shannon has been instrumental in successfully leading business transformation within a 12-hospital system. Her previous projects include decreasing inefficiencies in ED throughput, creating a “pull” process to create flow, and decreasing length of stay for observation patients using visual management. She has experience of not only working in busy healthcare environments but also creatively rolling out Lean principles strategically throughout departments that have had no prior experience with them.

Shannon has a Master of Science in Nursing Administration, she is board certified in nurse executive through the AACN. She has received her Black Belt Certification in Lean Six Sigma through ASQ credentialing. These experiences enriched Shannon understanding of respect for people and driving associate engagement within the organization.