Leadership
COL Jennifer M. Gurney, MD, FACS, MC, USA
Chief, Joint Trauma System, Healthcare Operations, DHA
JTS is proud to introduce COL Jennifer Gurney as the new JTS Chief. COL Gurney has worked with JTS since 2012 in one capacity or another. She has dedicated her career to improving care of the combat casualty, making her an ideal candidate to lead JTS.
COL Gurney helped run the world-renowned Burn Care Unit as the Deputy Director, where she is the go-to expert for Burn Care and a teacher to residents. She provides strategic guidance to the JTS trauma care delivery team as Chief of Trauma Systems Development. She chaired the JTS Defense Committees of Trauma, leading over 150 subject matter experts in prehospital, surgical, and en route care in a multidisciplinary and tri-service collaboration to guide DoD trauma care. Her leadership supported the development of consensus clinical practice recommendations that have been adopted by international partners as best practice in military and civilian trauma care. As Chair, she codified the charter and established the Advanced Resuscitative Care working group responsible for developing lifesaving resuscitation guidelines and best practices.
COL Gurney has led efforts to better surgical practices and procedures across the globe, from working with Honduran surgeons to share knowledge to reviewing combat mortalities in South CCMD to assessing the African CCMD trauma system through surveys of Role 1 and Role 2 care and onsite visits. As the Army State representative to the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, COL Gurney supported the development of the military-civilian partnership guide. She helped develop the Combat Readiness metrics for deploying surgeons. Referred to the Joint Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Project, COL Gurney has been a leader in establishing the detailed expectations for expeditionary surgery. She was first to evaluate the epidemiology and trends of injury among U.S. female service members in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
COL Gurney joined the U.S. Army while at Boston University Medical School. She was Chief of General Surgery at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany from 2011 to 2013 and the William Beaumont Army Medical Center from 2007-2009. She deployed seven times, serving as the Theater Trauma Director in Operation Inherent Resolve in her last deployment to Iraq. Her tenure resulted in the Central Command's most comprehensive analysis of whole blood utilization in combat trauma and directly led to the adoption of whole blood use in the prehospital setting in several civilian regional trauma systems.
COL Gurney received a Legion of Merit with a 'C' (combat) device, three Bronze Star Medals, a Combat Action Badge, and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal for wartime service. She has had the opportunity to work at every level of care after Role 1 in the deployed battlefield trauma system.
In conference circles, COL Gurney became known for the JTS Case Records Panel she moderated. The panel of trauma surgeons (civilian and military) retrospectively evaluated trauma cases. The case files forum was so well received that the series was made into a podcast.
Mary Ann Spott PhD, MPA, MSIS, MBA, RHIA
Deputy Chief, Joint Trauma System
Dr. Mary Ann Spott joined the Joint Trauma System in 2006 to lead the establishment of the DoD's first and only trauma system and trauma patient registry. Dr. Spott was responsible for developing the strategic vision for trauma operations across the DoD and was instrumental in building the trauma system from the ground up. As the Deputy Chief, Dr. Spott manages all aspects of the JTS and DoD Trauma Registry and its integrated clinical registries and databases. The U.S. Secretary of Defense awarded Distinguished Civilian Award (DCS) to Dr. Spott in Dec 2016 for her outstanding work at the JTS. The DCS Award is the highest recognition the DoD can award an employee, and it is presented to a small number of civilian employees whose careers reflect exceptional devotion to duty and significant contributions of broad scope of policy, scientific, technical or administrative fields that increase effectiveness and efficiency.
As Deputy Chief, Dr. Spott is the principal Health Informatics Officer and Registered Health Information Administrator by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). Dr. Spott was awarded the first ever AHIMA e-HIM award for her contributions to the development and implementation of an outcomes and performance improvement software application that is now used in many trauma centers across the United States.
Her current responsibilities include coordinating the JTS components across the continuum of care which include prevention, pre-hospital, education, leadership and communication, quality assurance/performance improvement, research and information systems, including the DoD Trauma Registry. She also participates as a subject matter expert for the NATO trauma registry project.
Prior to her leadership at the JTS, she was the Associate Director for Management Information Systems and Trauma Registry at Pennsylvania Trauma Systems Foundation and worked at the State Health Data Center, Division of Health Statistics and Research and Pennsylvania Cancer Registry.
Dr. Spott received her Bachelor's Degree in Biology from the University of Scranton and a Master's in Business Administration at Pennsylvania State University where she completed her Master of Science in Information Systems. She also received a Master's Degree in Public Administration from Pennsylvania State University as well as a certificate in Economic Development. She received her Bachelor's Degree in Health Record Administration from York College. Dr. Spott graduated from the Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Business Senior Executives Fellows Program in March 2010. In 2015, she earned her doctoral degree in Leadership Studies from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.