Chris Paravate is Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Northeast Georgia Health System (NGHS) where he oversees the information technology, clinical informatics and telecommunications departments for the systems’ four hospital campuses, as well as more than 100 ambulatory clinics and a variety of outpatient locations. Chris has served as CIO for NGHS since October 2014.
Early in his tenure, Chris began an enterprise system selection process for the health system. In October 2017, after 18 months of planning, building and training, NGHS went live with Epic, its new electronic health record. In 2018, Chris led NGHS’ first Community Connect project, as the system extended its Epic tools to Longstreet Clinic’s urgent, primary and specialty care clinics.
Prior to joining the NGHS team, Chris served as Director of Portfolio Management for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) where he was responsible for coordinating operational decision-making processes associated with redesign, process improvement and automation across the organization. While at CHOA, Chris led its enterprise EMR system selection, implementation and support delivery.
Chris holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Operations from DeVry Institute of Technology and is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems (CPHIMS) as well as a CHIME Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO). He received his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Brenau University and earned his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification in 2001. Chris has over 20 years of health care process improvement and information systems implementation and support experience.