ICLOPS Founders

Thomas Dent, M.D

President and Medical Director

Creating the tools for quality medicine has been the life work for Tom Dent. In his years of practicing family medicine, he considered his biggest success to be a method of communicating with patients that resulted in lifestyle changes and better outcomes than the norm. Tom taught new physicians and directed two major Family Medicine residency programs. Since each was a collaboration between community hospitals and an academic medical center, he became comfortable in both environments. His residency programs became laboratories for testing quality tools and education of physicians. Dr. Dent has been a champion of physician involvement in quality data and the creation of a physician "voice" in the market. He developed two physician organizations, including the 700 Physician-Hospital Organization of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Health Associates, where he was the President and CEO for eight years. During that time, he challenged the notion that the academic center couldn't get contracts because of its prior relationship with an HMO, and he successfully built strong contracts with physician involvement. He is still actively involved in the Department of Family Medicine at Rush University Medical Center. Tom maintains his board certification in Family Practice. ICLOPS has given Tom a base for affecting the quality movement nationally as well as a way of helping physicians to thrive in the new environment. Tom is an expert on the Registry as a physician quality approach, and he participates and speaks in national forums and conferences on this topic. Tom is the President of ICLOPS.

Theresa Hush

Chief Executive Officer

Theresa "Terry" Hush is a heath care strategist and change expert with experience across the spectrum of health care. After being grounded in public policy and finance, Terry took on the transformation of Blue Cross Blue Shield regulation in Illinois, resulting in a change of the Illinois regulatory model. She published monographs on payers' responsibility in reducing health care costs. Terry moved into the employer arena to direct the largest employee benefit program in Illinois outside the federal government. She developed data standards for payers participating in employee benefit plans, negotiated contracts with unions to create incentives for employees, and created the first employer-based PPO network. In what she dubbed as a "make-it-or-break-it" career move, Terry's next post was being director of the Illinois Medicaid program, Working with the provider community, she had a plan for better access to care for clients and the financing for it, and achieved the initiation of a major primary care case management system. She must have made it, because she then became vice president for a major national HMO that competed with her program. However, she was eager to work more directly in the provider side of the health care market, and joined Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago. In her first provider experience, Terry was COO of the Rush PHO and Executive Vice President of the Rush System for Health, the 5-hospital network. She and Tom Dent worked together on building the physician organization and negotiating contracts with payers, and Terry also developed a system-wide MSO with practice information systems, billing and managed care services for physicians. Terry's expertise is to help create consensus for desired change through education and collaboration, and then to facilitate its implementation through data and technology. Terry is the Chief Executive Officer of ICLOPS.

George Hernandez

Web & Applications Developer

George develops the ICLOPS website and applications, with an emphasis on applications that are beautiful in power, reliability, and appearance while easy to manage and use. George also emphasizes communication that is prioritized, accurate, and simple. George graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He has had experience in a wide range of IT systems in various fields such as fashion modeling, industrial laundering, airline ticketing, NASCAR racing, and martial arts. On the side, George currently does these websites: GeorgeHernandez.com (his personal site and blog which surprisingly gets around 10,000 visits daily) and ChicagoSwordplayGuild.com (a Chicago-based club that provides organized instruction in the serious study and practice of historical European swordplay). George is the Senior Programmer at ICLOPS.