AHIMA Selects its Leader

The American Health Information Management Association has named Alan F. Dowling, PhD, as its new chief executive officer, effective Jan. 13, 2010.


The American Health Information Management Association has named Alan F. Dowling, PhD, as its new chief executive officer, effective Jan. 13, 2010.

He will succeed Linda Kloss, who announced in July she would leave the organization after more than 14 years at the helm. The 55,000-member Chicago-based association represents health information management professionals, such as those working in medical records departments.

Dowling is president of Global Health Associates, LLC, a consulting firm, and since 1981 has been an adjunct professor of information systems at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. His previous experience includes 14 years at the Ernst & Young consulting firm; president of personal health records vendor HealthMagic Inc., senior vice president at Covansys; and executive director of the Noblis Center for Health Innovation, a research firm.

He served as a member of the White House Task Force on Health Care Reform under the Clinton Administration. In recent years, he served on one of two workgroups established by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology that developed consensus definitions for five common health I.T. terms.

--Joseph Goedert