Staff

Jeffrey L. Wajda is currently a professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine, with an appointment to the Department of Pathology at the University of California at Davis School of Medicine, having completed residency training in Emergency Medicine, Graduate training in Medical Management and a Graduate Degree Program in Health Informatics. He serves as both the Health System Chief Health Information Officer and as the Program Director for our Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education accredited Clinical Informatics Fellowship program. Jeffrey L. Wajda's clinical and informatics interests drive improvement of the patient experience, quality and safety.

Scott MacDonald is a primary care physician who has had lifelong interest in using computers to improve people’s lives. As the physician leader for the Electronic Health Record at UC Davis Health, he works to improve the tools physicians, nurses, and other care team members use to care for patients in the hospital and the clinics. This includes ensuring that people know how to use the available tools. This impacts quality of the care they provide and their own professional lives. The PEP program directly addresses this and is one of initiatives he’s most proud of. Outside of work, he knows all about riding/building/fixing just about any kind of bike.

Melissa Jost is the Director of Clinical Informatics and Program Manager for the Practice Experience Program. Melissa grew up in Sacramento and has worked at UC Davis Health for 10+ years. She has served in a multitude of roles supporting, developing, and managing Epic Applications deployments. Melissa is an alumni of the UC Davis Masters of Science Health Informatics program and started the Department as a result of her graduate thesis, aiming to use innovative processes to improve provider’s experience with Electronic Health Record technology. As the Practice Experience Program Manager, Melissa works to streamline the technology so that doctors can spend more time with their patients and less time with their computer. She believes that, when utilized to its full potential and optimized for each particular specialty or clinic, Epic can help physicians provide high quality patient care and be a joy to use.

Jessie has been a member of the team since its inception. From theater stage manager and technical director to Epic implementation and support supervisor, Jessie brings over a decade of leadership experience across multiple domains. Jessie was one of the first few employees in his division at Sutter Physician Services to become credentialed in Epic modules such as EpicCare Ambulatory, Cadence and Prelude. He supported the implementation process for Sutter Community Connect from the ground up, moving from analyst to supervisor, for both the implementation and support teams respectively. After seven years at Sutter, he took his love for growing teams and joined the Practice Experience Program to help expand the Department. As Supervisor, Jessie is able to step back and look at system-level processes from a birds eye view. He serves as a bridge between what the system can offer and what physicians need. He can help determine how to get on the best path to achieving workflow optimizations and improving the electronic health record experience for providers. 

Hannah joined the Practice Experience Program in 2022 as a Supervisor. A Midwest native, she currently resides in Chicago, IL. Hannah brings over 10 years of Healthcare IT experience to the team, including working at Epic as a Technical Services lead supporting ongoing optimization efforts for multiple large hospital systems and aggregating Epic community feedback to improve standardized workflows in the Epic Foundation system. Prior to joining the PEP team, she spent 3 years working on the Epic Ambulatory Team at UC Davis Health and led the technical roll-out of several efficiency-based features across outpatient clinics, including Widescreen View and Storyboard. Throughout her career, Hannah has partnered closely with physician and nursing leadership in both inpatient and outpatient settings to identify and implement solutions that drive better patient outcomes and improve clinician efficiency in the electronic health record. As a Supervisor, Hannah is committed to expanding the definition of Practice Experience at UC Davis Health to best serve our inpatient clinicians and patients.

Lynnette grew up in the small mining town of Grass Valley. She joined the team in 2022 as a Project Manager. Before joining UC Davis Health, Lynnette worked for CommuniCare Health Centers as the Director of Clinical Informatics and Training. While there, she led a team that managed the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system and implemented initiatives targeted to improve the electronic health record experience. Lynnette also has expansive healthcare operational knowledge from holding various roles throughout her career, including serving as a Director of Operations for ten health centers in Northern California and Nevada. Lynnette finds clinical informatics fulfilling as it allows her to solve problems, optimize systems, and improve the end user's experience. Outside of work, Lynnette enjoys traveling, running, quilting, and cuddling with her two dogs.

Connecticut native, Leah earned a master's degree in Higher Education Administration from The George Washington University. Upon graduating, Leah attended a national conference where she was recruited and offered a position with UC Davis. After spending three years on main campus running large-scale programs and developing curricula, Leah learned of an opening with UC Davis Public Health Sciences which mirrored her background in academic and career advising as well as illuminated her passion for public health from her AmeriCorps experience. As a Graduate Program Coordinator, Leah ran the Public Health graduate programs for three+ years and built up her project management skills. Seeking to expand her portfolio beyond public health, Leah joined the team in September 2020. In the project manager role, Leah serves as the team's Logistics Guru! She helps streamline processes and keeps the team on track of deadlines. As a lifelong learner, Leah loves that her work is constantly changing. She always wants to find new ways to provide better service to our clients.

As a native New Yorker, Elsie lived on the East Coast all her childhood. She moved to Sacramento with her parents as a young adult. Elsie worked at UC Davis Health in Food & Nutrition Services for 20+ years serving in a multiple roles to provide high quality nutrition and healthcare services to meet the needs of our patients, guests, staff, and our community. Elsie is an alumni of the UC Davis M.S. Health Informatics program, who passionately believes in optimizing Epic to its full potential, in order to improve the delivery of healthcare services, the safety and quality of patient care, and to provide better patient outcomes. Outside of work, Elsie likes to cook, listens to classical music and enjoys going on cruises.

Ali was born and raised in Sacramento and has worked at UC Davis since 2012 as a Certified Medical Assistant II. She was a core team member at the UC Davis Spine Clinic, supporting clinics for Neurosurgery, PM&R, and Ortho Spine. Ali was pivotal in helping to create and implement new workflows and electronic questionnaires that focused on collecting pre- and post-operative patient data. This data focused on patients’ disability rating secondary to pain and their mental well-being.  As a Clinical Applications Trainer, Ali provides clinicians with the tools and training necessary to not only reduce their time in the EMR, but to ensure that clinicians have more hands-on care with patients.  You can hear Ali’s laugh a mile away!

Shikha is from the San Francisco Bay Area and has lived in California for over 20 years. Passionate about community health, she went abroad to study medicine in India. Upon returning to the United States, she developed an interest in clinical informatics. Shikha wants to further explore her passion for healthcare and information technology while interacting with like-minded people at UC Davis Health. In her free time, Shikha enjoys singing, hiking, dancing, comedy shows and baking vegan desserts.

Kristin joined the team in 2019. Prior to UC Davis she excelled as a Principal Trainer for Sutter Health. Kristin has 7+ years of electronic health record training implementation experience after supporting 10 Sutter affiliate hospitals. As a training analyst on the team she observes ambulatory clinic workflows, which allows her to see the documentation challenges providers are experiencing. She provides tips and tricks to reduce time spent on documentation which improves a providers overall Epic experience.

Josh has an associate degree in Information Technology and has worked at UC Davis Health system for several years. Prior to joining the team, Josh worked in the Information Technology Help Desk at UC Davis Health. Intrigued by the Practice Experience Program and the positive impact on providers, Josh joined the team. As an Epic trainer, Josh optimizes Epic workflows so that he can reduce pajama time for providers and help them get their lives back. He also works on the analytics side in documentation preparation and system updates. Josh loves when he can save someone’s time. He enjoys engaging with providers, hearing their positive feedback and excitement when he has helped them. Outside of work, Josh likes to disc golf, and enjoys cooking.

Catherine is a Northern California native raised in the foothills of Nevada County. Before joining the PEP team, she worked as a pharmacy technician in a variety of settings including teaching an accredited pharmacy technician associate degree program. In 2016 she transitioned from vocational training to EHR support and implementation focused on medication processes in Cerner at Adventist Health. Catherine enjoys solving problems and figuring out how to make processes and application of technology as seamless as possible. In her spare time Catherine can be found enjoying the Sacramento food and music scene, performing with her dance troupe at local venues and DIY’ing everything she can get her hands on.

Trent is a native of Brookhaven, Mississippi and currently resides in the Jackson Metro area. He has over 20 years of healthcare experience, both clinical and technical, with the last 11 being in Healthcare IT as an Epic Analyst/Builder for the University of Mississippi Medical Center. His first 12 years were deeply rooted in the clinical environment as an ICU and postoperative registered nurse. He then accepted an opportunity to join the Epic Team where he first gained experience as an Optime/Anesthesia analyst working closely with perioperative leadership to enhance and maintain the Epic application. After this, he transitioned to a newly established Epic Optimization team as an analyst where he gained an additional 7 years of experience with multiple applications including: Ambulatory, Optime, Anesthesia, and Clinical Documentation. Experience gained from the Optimization Team includes meeting the needs of ambulatory clinics by optimizing provider efficiency, revamping tools to meet Epic’s recommended workflows, and learning new applications and technology on the go to meet the needs of end users. Trent has a passion for continuous improvement of the Epic experience.

Robert (Bob) is a builder on the IP PEP team with 10+ years of experience in Healthcare IT. He grew up in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado and consequently he can never be quite certain which direction is which without the Rocky Mountains looming in the west to point the way. Bob worked at Epic in the Implementation Services division, where he oversaw several projects at large multi-hospital organizations. A passion for helping providers succeed in a rapidly changing environment led him to be one of the pioneering Epic Physician Trainers, who developed training programs to improve knowledge retention and to share valuable efficiency tips in the Thrive After Go-Live program. Post-Epic, Bob worked as a consultant across the US before settling down as a Physician Liaison at El Camino Health. While there, he helped physicians with onboarding, efficiency and optimization. He views himself as a Digital Chaplain, providing general spiritual counseling in the face of an ever-changing EMR. He is certified in 11 Epic application modules and is constantly and insatiably curious. Bob lives in Santa Clara, California with his wife, Niccole and two very needy cats. His hobbies include travel, acting, hiking (very casually), languages, reading, tabletop gaming, and video games. He studies two martial arts: Katori Shinto-Ryu and Shinkendo. Bob speaks two languages and can eavesdrop in eight or nine more.