Janelle Wapola

Janelle Wapola, MA, RHIA, REACH health information technology consultant for Minnesota and North Dakota, provides support to ensure electronic health record (EHR) technology is implemented effectively for REACH clients.

REACH consulting expertise

• Provide project management and decision support
• Develop technology strategies and implementation plans
• Provide training for EHR use
• Assist in change management with implementation of EHR
• Assist in policy/procedure development

The experience you need

Janelle brings a wealth of practical experience to health IT. At Children’s Hospital, she was an assistant manager for the operations team and assisted with implementing the EHR, managed clinical workflows and was engaged with internal process improvement efforts. As technology lead for an academic EHR system at the College of St. Scholastica, she spent seven years extensively building its backend to meet the needs of the organization and individual users. She also trained hundreds of users to learn and navigate the system.

Janelle is a faculty member in the College of St. Scholastica’s Health Informatics and Information Management Department, and teaches courses related to EHR and HIT implementation and use, including Project Management, Clinical Data Management, HIS Strategies and Applications. She has been engaged in research related to the selection, implementation and use of a personal health record within an academic institution.

REACH clients benefit from her ability to train and lead staff through EHR implementation as well as develop and modify EHR templates and documents to improve clinic efficiency.

Education and additional experience

• MA and BA Health Information Management, College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, MN

• American Health Information Management Association
• Minnesota Health Information Management Association
• Northeastern Minnesota Health Information Management Association