Robert S. Kitts has over 20 years of experience within the healthcare industry working with providers, payers and technology companies to help them increase the value they can attain from utilizing appropriate technology. His expertise includes multiple engagements where he has performed comprehensive assessments of an organization's Information Technology function, established IT Roadmaps based upon strategic business direction, negotiated and lead the procurement process of large complex relationships with software and services vendors and developed and managed sales teams for many different healthcare suppliers.

Mr. Kitts' experience has really been focused around the unique needs of the independent, not-for-profit, community-based healthcare organizations. He has spent the past 7 years working with these types of organizations focused on realizing the value obtained from Information Technology and the business trends associated with remaining independent. He also spent many years working with the physician community in the sharing of clinical information between physician offices, hospitals and payers.

Robert's healthcare background in working with payers, hospitals and physicians has provided him with the unique insight to understand what impact technology can have on each constituent within a particular healthcare system. Some samples of projects that Robert has worked with in the past:

• Developed IT Roadmaps for large, university health systems and several independent, not-for-profit, community-based hospitals
• Lead the procurement and contracting process of several multi-million dollar transactions (average transaction size of $40m - $50m) for software and services-based relationships on both the buyer and seller sides
• Developed detailed IT budgets and cost analysis for numerous hospitals and technology companies
• Re-negotiated several software and services contracts for many healthcare organizations resulting in substantial savings and increased benefits to the buying entity
• Developed one of the first operating models for community health information networks and worked with the various healthcare constituents (hospitals, physicians, payers) to proactively share clinical information
• Worked extensively with payer and provider systems on HIPAA transaction sets and what the impact would be to the various constituents

Mr. Kitts serves on the board of a software company and is an active member of the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, with a minor in Computer Science, from Wagner College.