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Management Team

David Winn, MD, FAAFP

Founder, Chairman of the Board

Dr. David Winn founded e-MDs in 1996.  Today, e-MDs is rated highest overall among ambulatory electronic health record vendors by multiple medical societies including ACP, AAFP and ACP.  Dr. Winn programmed the prototype EMR software used it in his medical practice, which contributed to phenomenal efficiency and profitability. He also has been active in the community with 15 years of service to the Hill Country Medical Ministries as volunteer physician and medical director and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Service to Mankind Award by Sertoma for the southwestern United States. He has also served on the board of a publicly traded technology company, Computer Language Research.  He graduated from Baylor College of Medicine in 1981, and completed his residency in Family Medicine at the Southwest Memorial Hospital in Houston, Texas. Dr. Winn is board certified and a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Dr. Winn is very active nationally in EHR promotion and technical specifications development. He is a founding member of EHRVA (Electronic Health Records Vendors Association), and was appointed to CCHIT for 2005 (Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology), an organization tasked by HHS to establish EHR standards. Dr. Winn has also been very active in promoting semantic interoperability between vendors, first with his involvement with CCR and second with e-MDs planned release to the open source community of e-MDs Medicapaedia, an interface terminology designed for electronic health records and mapped to SNOMED CT, LOINC, ICD-9, and other codified medical vocabularies.  Dr. Winn notes, “patient medical information today resides on ‘proprietary’ islands and is largely inaccessible outside of a specific hospital networks or geographic areas.  Until government legislation forces proprietary vendors to comply with ‘open’ HIE standards, this information will continue to be inaccessible to many medical providers.  Compromising patient care for the sake of protecting a proprietary system from lower cost solutions is morally reprehensible”.  Patient care MUST take precedence.

Michael Stearns, MD, CPC, CFPC™

President and CEO

Dr. Stearns is a board certified neurologist and one of the more experienced physician health care informaticists in the nation. He has won several teaching awards and has 15 years of experience in clinical and academic medicine where his responsibilities included educating medical students and neurology residents. With more than 10 years of experience in the health information technology sector, Dr. Stearns has provided leadership to several high profile projects at the National Library of Medicine, the National Cancer Institute, and the College of American Pathologists. Dr. Stearns played a key role in the development of SNOMED Clinical Terms, an evolving standard for the electronic transmission of clinical information being adopted worldwide. He also has over 8 years of direct experience with the design and implementation of electronic health records. Dr. Stearns is a Certified Professional Coder and Certified Family Practice Coder.

He has given numerous presentations at national and local venues on a diverse array of topics related to health information technology including electronic health records, health care information technology standards, health information exchanges, coding, clinical terminology, structured data capture, data integrity in information systems, the history of ICD-9-CM, SNOMED CT, quality of care improvements related to technology, clinical efficacy research, practice optimization, and genomic medicine. He is a member of the American Society of Health Information Managers Health IT Industry Advisory Panel, the Health Information Technology Standards Panel, and the American Association of Professional Coders’ Family Practice Steering Committee.

Patrick Hall

Executive Vice President, Business Development

Patrick Hall has worked in the healthcare software industry since 1996. He has significant exposure to ambulatory practice management and clinical software. He currently oversees the development of all business partnerships and opportunities related to ARRA activities and related initiatives at e-MDs. Patrick directed recent major industry changes to ANSI X.12 HIPAA EDI formats and the NPI transition. He also participates in sales and marketing, product development, and customer support efforts for the company. Prior to working at e-MDs, Patrick served as the Sales and Marketing Director for EasyWare, a practice management software development firm. He joined e-MDs in 1997 when the company purchased EasyWare. Patrick is a graduate of The Cape Technikon in Cape Town, South Africa where he was a recipient of the Marketer of the Year award.

Christine Warner

Executive Vice President, Client Services

Christine focuses on meeting the needs of e-MDs customers through refinements of professional services and offerings.   Coordinating and directing activities surrounding Implementation, Training and Support, Christine has more than 20 years of leadership experience in client services, resource and operational management in the high tech sector and previously served as Chief Operating Officer at e-MDs. Chris attended Lamar University majoring in computer science and business management.

Chuck Frederick, RPh

Vice President, Clinical Applications

Chuck Frederick has worked in the healthcare software industry since 1998. In his capacity as Vice President of Clinical Applications he is responsible for the design, development and lifecycle of the clinical applications, and oversees the Clinical Product Management department, Clinical Content department, CCHIT Certification and Interface and Interoperability strategies for e-MDs. Chuck is a member of the Surescripts Prescriber Vendor Advisory Council (PVAC) as well as a member of the CCHIT (Certification Commission for Health Information Technology) Electronic Prescribing workgroup for 2009-2010. Prior to coming to e-MDs, he was Director of Pharmacy for the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department in Austin, Texas. Chuck holds a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from the University of Texas College of Pharmacy.

David Respass

Chief Technology Officer

David Respass, as Chief Technology Officer, is responsible for leading e-MD's software development initiatives and information technology infrastructure. David has over 20 years of experience in software development, most recently serving as VP of Product Engineering at Dun & Bradstreet. Prior to his years at Dun & Bradstreet, David served as Director of Service Management Systems for XO Communications, and Director of Financial Systems at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. David received his undergraduate degree in Social Science at Radford University and his master's degree in Information Systems at the George Washington University.

Michael DeMuth

Executive Vice President, Sales

Mike brings over 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry to e-MDs. He is responsible for overall management, direction and coordination of the sales efforts at e-MDs. Mike brings a strong track record of successfully managing the Eastern Regional Sales teams at NextGen Healthcare. Prior to NextGen, Mike served as a Sales Executive, Regional Vice President of Sales and National VP of Sales at ChartOne. Mike has an undergraduate degree in Biology from Hartwick College and a MS degree in Biomedical Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Ted Pakes, CPA

Chief Operating Officer, CFO

Ted Pakes joined e-MDs from Dell Financial Services, where he was the Director of Business Development for the Public Sector. Ted was instrumental in the growth of Dell Financial Services, which grew from a start-up to $3.5 billion in revenue within a four year period. Ted spent the first six years of his career in public accounting with Price Waterhouse where he reached the level of Audit Manager. Ted obtained a B.B.A in Accounting from Texas A&M University and is a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Texas.

N. West Short

General Counsel

N. West Short advises e-MDs on legal matters. West received his Juris Doctor degree with Honors from the University of Texas School of Law and his Bachelor of Arts from Southern Methodist University.  He is licensed to practice law before the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the United States District Courts for the Northern and Western Districts of Texas, and all courts of the State of Texas.  He is also the former Chief Litigation Counsel for Power Computing Corporation.