Dr. Nancy Hutnak, an emergency room physician in Baker City, became president of the Oregon Medical Association last Saturday, succeeding Dr. Sylvia Emory of Eugene.
At its annual meeting, Dr. Robert Orfaly, became the president elect and is an orthopedist and surgeon at Oregon Health & Science University.
Dr. Sharon Meieran, an emergency physician at Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center and the medical director for the Oregon Foundation for Reproductive Health received the OMA’s doctor-citizen of the year.
This annual award honors a physician who has made outstanding contributions to the community, the practice of medicine, and to health care policy in Oregon.
Meieran is an active board member of the Oregon Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, and has worked promoting two very important projects in the past year. One is improving psychiatric care for Oregon patients by adopting the successful model created in Alameda County, California. Her visit there inspired her to help create the same model starting in Multnomah County. She is also promoting the Emergency Department Information Exchange (EDIE), a system of communication between emergency departments about patients with a noticeably high number of emergency room visits.
Dr. Glenn Rodriguez also received the Dr. George E. Miller Patient Safety Award at the association’s 141st annual meeting. He was the chairman of the first board of directors for the Patient Safety Commission, and has served on multiple state workgroups and committees on quality, metrics and outcomes. He speaks to national audiences on quality improvement issues and has implemented clinical improvement programs in a variety of health care settings.
As Providence’s Chief Quality Officer since 2010, Rodriguez led the charge for Providence hospitals to achieve top positions in the Oregon Leapfrog Group Hospital Safety Score rankings in 2014. Four Providence hospitals received “A” grades—more than any other health system in the state. The Leapfrog score rates how well hospitals protect patients from errors, injuries and infections.
Rodriguez was instrumental in establishing the Providence Milwaukie Family Practice Residency. He is on the OMA Board of Trustees and was previously on the OMA President’s Taskforce on Governance. He is also a former president of the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians.
