Elliot M. Stone Award 2020

2020 Recipients

Suanne Singer

Suanne Singer

Al Prysunka with the Award

Al Prysunka

Suanne Singer, the former president of Onpoint Health Data (previously the Maine Health Information Center), and Al Prysunka, the former Executive Director of the Maine Health Data Organization (and more recently a consultant with Milliman), led the construction of the nation’s first APCD, nearly 20 years ago for the State of Maine. Together Suanne and Al identified the challenges associated with the collection and processing of claims data and collaborated with stakeholders to find common ground.  They worked tirelessly to overcome the political and technical impediments. Suanne and Al set the framework for both what to collect in an APCD and how to build one.   

Suanne spent more than 35 years developing innovative solutions across the array of healthcare data systems, including software development, data collection, validation, linkage, master patient and provider indices, reporting, analysis, privacy, and security, including focused work on claims adjudication and integration with hospital discharge data. Ms. Singer’s work, long recognized for its insight and creativity, is matched by the respect she garnered from her team, colleagues, and clients.

Al Prysunka spent over 23 years promoting the value of States investing in systems to collect, validate and release healthcare data including hospital encounter data; claims data; hospital financial and healthcare quality data.  Al was instrumental in the development of the APCD Common Data Layout; the NCPDP standard for reporting paid pharmacy claims data to state agencies; and he was a champion of the State Agency agreement with Medicare for state agencies to receive Medicare data.  Al is recognized by his peers as being tenacious, detailed orientated and a subject matter expert in data collection and standards.