Michael Stearns, MD, CPC, CFPC, is a physician informaticist, certified professional coder (CPC), certified family practice coder (CFPC). He is the CEO and Founder of Apollo HIT, LLC, an Austin-based company that provides consulting services in the areas of healthcare information technology and compliance. His company assists organizations with meeting their documentation, coding, EHR optimization and program goals, including their performance in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System and Alternative Payment Models. During his career, Dr. Stearns has received several awards for teaching and contributions to patient safety and patient privacy initiatives. He played a central role in the design and development of vocabularies at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and provided a lead to the development of the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). He has served in a leadership capacity for two leading EHR vendors and as an advisor to several emerging HIT organizations. He is a cofounder and lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin Health Information Technology Certificate Program, a nationally recognized model for HIT workforce development. He has been invited to testify in Washington, D.C. before federally sponsored HIT policy and standards organizations on five separate occasions. He served as the founding board president of the Texas eHealth Alliance, an organization that provides stakeholder input related to health information technology policy matters to state legislators. He is also an accomplished author and lecturer on a range of health care quality, health information technology, coding/compliance and quality-based performance initiatives. He can be reached at: michael@apollohit.com