Our Staff
- Professor Richard Madden
- Professor Ric Marshall
- Vera Dimitropoulos
- Megan Cumerlato
- Linda Best
- Nicola Fortune
- Julie Rust
- , Administrative Assistant
- , Administration Officer
Professor Richard Madden
Richard has been at the University since January 2006. Prior to that, he was Director of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare for 10 years. From 1992 to 1995, he was Deputy Australian Statistician. He has had wide experience across the Australian health and community services sectors, including as Deputy Secretary of the NSW Health Department and as head of the Disability Programs Division in the then Commonwealth Department of Health and Community Services. He was also Head of the Treasuries of the Northern Territory (1983-86) and the Australian Capital Territory (1989-92).
Richard was Co-chair of the WHO Family of International Classifications Family Development Committee until October 2012 and has been involved in developing the International Classification of Health Interventions. Richard is a member of the ICD Revision Steering Group.
In 2002, he was Australian Actuary of the Year, and has been awarded the Public Service Medal in 2003 and an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Sydney in 2005.
For further information click here
Professor Ric Marshall
Dr Ric Marshall has an adjunct Professorial appointment with the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. He specialises in Health Management Information Development. In 2011, he worked with the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority and the cross-jurisdiction working groups in Australia establishing the Activity Based Funding (ABF) mechanisms for public hospitals. He currently provides consultancy advice to Australian jurisdictions and international clients in ABF readiness.
He is also Chief Expert on Casemix and Activity-Based Funding and Payment of China National Health Development Research Centre. Ric has a long history as an international consultant in casemix classifications development, health information systems design and funding reform implementation. In addition to his work in Australia, he has managed and advised on health information development and funding reform projects in both the public and private sectors in Azerbaijan, Canada, China, Egypt, FYR Macedonia, Georgia, Germany, Indonesia, Kosovo, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mauritius, Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey and UK.
Vera Dimitropoulos
Vera commenced her career as a Health Information Manager (HIM) in 1986. Prior to her joining The University of Sydney in 1997, she had over ten years experience working as a HIM in both the public and private health sectors in Australia. In her lecturing capacity, within The University, she has constantly been involved in developing curriculum and teaching health information management and health informatics students in health classifications and health information systems. Vera has also educated Australian and International clinical coders as part of her role at the Health Information Management Association of Australia (HIMAA). During her time at HIMAA, Vera was responsible for developing the Advanced Coding Course and the Australian National Clinical Coder Certification Process.
Since joining the National Centre for Classification in Health (NCCH) at The University of Sydney in 2006, she has continued her teaching role in classification and as Assistant Director, managed the update and development of two editions of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Australian Modification, the Australian Classification of Health Interventions and the Australian Coding Standards (ICD-10-AM/ACHI/ACS). She was also instrumental in re-engineering and automating the process for capturing and processing submissions and queries about ICD-10-AM/ACHI/ACS. She been managing the implementation of ICD-10-AM/ACHI/ACS Sixth Edition and AR-DRGs v6.0 in Singapore until October 2012.
Megan Cumerlato
Megan Cumerlato was the Education Coordinator for the Singapore ICD Migration Project until August 2012. Megan holds a degree in Bachelor of Applied Science, Health Information Management, from Sydney University. As part of the National Centre for Classification in Health at The University of Sydney, where she worked for more than 12 years, she was responsible for managing and coordinating the highly successful Australian national education program for approximately 1500 coders annually. During this time, she was responsible for preparing and conducting educational workshops both nationally and internationally on the latest version of ICD-10-AM (International Classification of Diseases and Procedures, 10th Revision, Australian Modification), Australian Classification of Health Interventions (ACHI) and the Australian Coding Standards (ACS).
As a Consultant, Health Information Manager, Megan has also conducted numerous coding audits to review the accuracy of clinical coding and diagnosis related group (DRG) allocation using the Australian Coding Benchmark Audit tool. Auditing in both ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-AM/ACHI/ACS, based on sample sizes ranging from 50 to >1,000 records in national and international healthcare settings. She is also currently a Co-Managing Editor for the Internal Medicine Topic Advisory Group for WHO on the ICD-11 Revision Project and until October 2012 was secretariat for the WHO-FIC Family Development Committee. Megan is involved in the development of an International Classification of Health Interventions (ICHI).
Megan also works on a casual basis for the Health Information Management Association (HIMAA) looking after the students enrolled in the advanced ICD-10-AM/ACHI/ACS coding course. Megan has also previously been involved in lecturing at The University of Sydney within the School of Health Information Management and in the Health Sciences offshore nursing program in Singapore. Lecture topics included disease classification, medical terminology, management systems, casemix and financial management.
Linda Best
Linda is a Health Information Manager having graduated from Cumberland College of Health Sciences in 1980.
Over a period of 25 years Linda worked in a number of Sydney hospitals both public and private gaining experience in both managerial and coding roles.
In 1996 she became the coding course coordinator for the Education Services of the HIMAA. During this time she restructured and rewrote the distance education programme for coding in ICD-10-AM and was co-author of the textbook An Introduction to Coding with ICD-10-AM.
Linda joined the NCCH in 1999 as a project officer. During her time at the centre she has been involved in the development of the various ICD-10-AM/ACHI/ACS revisions and the subsequent coder education around Australia. She co-authored the text Fundamentals of Morbidity Coding using ICD-10-AM, ACHI and ACS, Seventh Edition. Linda was also involved in the preparation and presentation of ICD-10-AM education material in Singapore, New Zealand and Ireland.
During the last 5 years Linda has been involved in international work with the WHO-FIC on ICHI as well as assisting at the WHO, Geneva on the ICD-11 Revision.
Nicola Fortune
Nicola joined the National Centre for Classification in Health in May 2011 to assist with the development of the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Health Interventions.
From 1998 to 2007 Nicola worked at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, where her role included data development, data analysis and interpretation, report writing, and project management in the disability field. During this time she was involved in the development and early implementation of the WHO’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).
In 2001–02, Nicola spent a year working on hospital statistics in the Department of Health in London, and contributed to the development of a new hospital statistics common data set for the European Union.
Julie Rust
Julie Rust is a Health Information Management consultant, specialising in the area of clinical classification systems and coder education. She currently holds the position of co-Managing Editor of the Internal Medicine Topic Advisory Group (IM-TAG) for the World Health Organization (WHO) ICD-11 Revision Project. Prior to June 2010, she worked for 13 years at the National Centre for Classification in Health (NCCH) at the University of Sydney, in classification development, with a particular emphasis on international updating and maintenance of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision (ICD-10).
Ms Rust holds a degree in Bachelor of Applied Science, Health Information Management, from Sydney University. In earlier roles, she worked in both public and private hospitals as a health information manager, followed by a position as Associate Lecturer in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Sydney University.