Tim Vaughan

CEO and Co-Founder

Tim brings over 20 years of software-industry product development and sales experience to TruthPoint. Nearly a decade ago, Tim realized there was a need in healthcare for a more effective solution to help health care providers improve the patient experience. It was this realization that caused him to form TruthPoint as a new business unit under the parent company, Vertical Systems, Inc. where Tim has been CEO since 2007. With a keen understanding of cutting edge software technology and his passion for improving the patient experience, Tim focuses on continuous product innovation, technology operations and educating the market on the benefits of TruthPoint Performance Excellence solutions.

Tim Travis

President and Co-Founder

Prior to co-founding TruthPoint in 2007, Tim held various sales, marketing, product development and general management leadership positions with Vickers LTD, Hill-Rom and Universal Hospital Services.  With a desire to achieve a more direct impact on the patient experience, Tim joined Vertical Systems, Inc., and with Tim Vaughan, established TruthPoint with the purpose of positively impacting patient experience and staff engagement through the effective use of point-of-care, real-time patient feedback.  As the TruthPoint team has grown, Tim now oversees the Performance Improvement Coaching team and continues to play an active role in educating the market on the benefits of TruthPoint Performance Excellence solutions.

Micah Benson

Senior Performance Improvement Coach

Micah has over 14 years of healthcare experience.  His coaching spans the health care continuum from pediatrics to geriatrics and across nearly all care settings, helping his clients achieve material improvements in patient experience scores.  Micah was the system lead for patient experience measurement and performance improvement at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota for 10 years before joining the TruthPoint team.  Micah enjoys partnering with leaders and front line staff in multiple care settings and helping them improve patient care and service.

Tracie Clang

Performance Improvement Coach

Tracie has 30 years operational and management experience in the healthcare industry, with the last 10 in healthcare consulting. Tracie specializes in organizational engagement and leadership development; assisting organizations to improve the patient experience and then to sustain that improvement over time. Tracie’s work encompasses a broad array of healthcare organizations, from single practitioner clinics to large health care systems.  She is a trained public speaker with expertise in process management and organizational redesign.

Tina Gaskell, MA, CPHQ

Executive Partner, Performance Improvement Coach

With over 25 years of healthcare experience, Tina has served as an authority and trusted advisor to healthcare executives in architecting cultures of excellence and journeys for sustained high performance. Having served in leadership roles in both healthcare and organizations such as Press Ganey and Studer Group, Tina excels at driving high performance and cultural change by connecting the unlimited passion in healthcare to research driven best practices. The results are accelerated and powerful world class patient, employee, physician outcomes. In addition to her experience, Tina has a positive and infectious personality that transcends itself into everything she does.

Joel High, MDiv, MBA

Performance Improvement Coach

Joel has more than 15 years of healthcare experience. He has worked in a variety of care areas including acute, trauma, long-term and hospice care. For the last 4 years, Joel has been working nationally with healthcare organizations to improve patient experience. Prior to coming to TruthPoint, Joel spent 3 years with the Planetree organization. His work with Planetree included assisting in the establishment of the Veterans Health Administration’s Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation.

Mary Jo Brueggeman, BSN

Performance Improvement Coach

Mary Jo has 42 years of operational and management experience in the healthcare industry, with the last 25 as a Nursing and Healthcare Executive. Mary Jo is an energetic strategic thinker and has worked in a variety of hospital and clinic environments. Mary Jo has special passion for Clinical excellence as Clinical quality and Patient Satisfaction. She is a mentor and a teacher, who has a deep understanding of the work and the people in the healthcare environment.

Melissa R. Thornburg, MA

Performance Improvement Coach

Melissa has more than 10 years of healthcare leadership experience in acute, outpatient, mental health, long-term and hospice care settings. She is a successful mentor, and coach with outstanding relationship-building and empowerment skills, leading to great partnerships and better client outcomes. Previously, Melissa worked as a Patient Experience Advisor and Project Management and Consultation Services Specialist with the Planetree organization. In her roles there, Melissa worked with healthcare organizations across the country and internationally to improve patient experience and performance on outcome measures. Melissa was also instrumental in establishing Veteran Centered Care across the VHA with the Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation. Prior to her work at Planetree, Melissa held the role of Director, Patients First (Patient Experience) in the Cleveland Clinic Health System, where she also served in a system-wide role as a Patient Experience Champion.

Greg Heilman

Director of Software Development and Practice Lead

Greg joined the Vertical Systems’ team in 1998 as a software developer and truly enjoys delivering innovative solutions for solving organizational challenges. For him, there’s an unmatched satisfaction when we’re able to say “we made that” after software is successfully delivered. Greg has a passion for working with clients to deploy high-value software solutions.  In 2006, this same passion drove him to be the primary architect of our TruthPoint platform which enables healthcare providers to not only measure, but also improve, patient experience metrics.  Becoming Director in 2012, Greg and his team share a commitment to proven methodologies and best practices.  Greg leads the Vertical Systems project business as well as the TruthPoint IT team.

Darrell Atkin

Vice President of Marketing

Darrell brings the highest regard for transformational technologies—especially in healthcare—that can make dramatic improvements in the way care is delivered plus quality outcomes for patients and families.  As TruthPoint’s vice president of marketing, he provides strategic marketing leadership to grow the business for our automated rounding solution.

Prior to TruthPoint, Darrell spent over eight years at Skylight Healthcare Systems and was part of the executive team that helped establish Skylight as a leader in the patient engagement market.  Darrell continues to be active in organizations committed to keeping patient experience movement at the forefront of the national healthcare conversation.  Darrell is a member of the Resource Advisory Council of the Beryl Institute and is president-elect of the San Diego Chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE).

Darrell is a magna cum laude graduate from the University of New Mexico through their General Honors program.

Amy Vanderscheuren, MHA

Performance Improvement Coach

Amy brings nearly a decade of healthcare experience in improving safety, quality, and patient experience. Prior to joining TruthPoint, Amy spent 8 years with a large, integrated health system, where she served as the Director of Patient- and Family-Centered Care, Director of Volunteer Services, and Program Manager of Corporate Strategy and Process Excellence. She specializes in partnering with administrative and clinical leaders, as well as patients and families, to provide better patient experience and improve staff satisfaction; achieve the best patient health outcomes; and lower healthcare costs. Amy is skilled at developing effective partnerships, engaging and motivating staff, and leading teams to success.

George Scarborough

Vice President of Business Development

For the past 10 years George has worked exclusively with hospital and health system senior leaders to assess where their organizations have opportunities for improvement with patient experience, safety and quality performance indicators, where he would use that information to recommend Evidence-Based tools, resources and  coaching to train and develop and improve engagement with their leaders.  Most of that time was spent with Studer Group as a C-Suite Relationship Specialist, where he built hundreds of successful partnerships that provided the framework, tools and coaching to help those organizations achieve and sustain Clinical, Service and Operational Excellence. Prior to his work with Studer Group, George had a twenty-five year career as an entrepreneur and marketing consultant. George often shares best practices to move performance in healthcare organizations on LinkedIn and Twitter.