Barbara B. Frink, PhD, RN, FAAN, is vice president and chief nursing information officer for MedStar Health. She is responsible for strategic and operational nursing leadership in the development, deployment, re-engineering, optimization, and integration of clinical information systems to support clinicians and patient care. This encompasses leading nursing in the adoption of technology-enabled process change that maximizes patient safety, quality of care and operational efficiency. Key relationships include working in close partnership with colleagues and MedStar Health leadership and the organizational roles of chief information officer, chief nursing officer, chief medical officer, and chief medical information officer to ensure clinical multidisciplinary leadership of all clinical IT projects and maintenance of clinical IT systems.
Frink is a lecturer and associate faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
Before joining MedStar in December 2011, Frink served as vice president of Clinical Excellence and Informatics at the Main Line Health System, an affiliate of the Jefferson Health System in Philadelphia, where she was responsible for nursing clinical informatics and formal liaison between Quality and Informatics. She maintained an independent consulting practice for many years, working with nonprofit healthcare firms on strategic health and informatics-related issues. She also served as senior associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, where she was a member of the global health team providing health informatics and evaluation consultation to both federal agency and private sector health clients. Frink was also nurse executive with Cerner Corporation where she focused on the critical strategic relationships between hospital clinical, financial and information system leadership relative to electronic health records. She also has served as director of Nursing Systems and Research at both The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Frink holds bachelor’s degree in nursing from Simmons College, a Master of Science in Community Health/Community Mental Health Nursing from Boston College, and a Doctorate in Nursing Administration from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She is an elected fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and the National Academies of Practice. Frink has appointments on the American Medical Informatics Association Task Force, Chief Clinical Information Officer Role Development, Zynx¬Health Strategic Advisory Council, and TIGER Initiative Foundation Board. She has served on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Technical Expert Panel for E-Quality Measures, National Advisory Council for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Sigma Theta Tau International Foundation for Nursing Corporate Committee. She has also been a reviewer for the Robert Wood Johnson Nurse Executive Scholars Program and a special expert in Nursing Systems for the National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health.
Frink presents regularly at local, national and international venues, and writes for professional publications on topics specific to healthcare delivery, policy and clinical informatics.