Girard has nearly 25 years of senior management and both national and international healthcare consulting experience.  Prior to founding his own consulting firm, Clinical Benchmarking, LLC, in 1998, he was Chief Executive Officer of OR Benchmarks, Inc., where he developed the innovative tools and software that make it possible to benchmark clinical services in hospital ORs.  During this time, he also was Managing Principal of Premier, Inc.'s Supply Chain Performance Improvement division, responsible for clinical areas.  In that role, he developed national implant pricing tools as well as advanced techniques for demand matching.  Previously, he was Program Director for Surgical Services at the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) where he was first involved in national benchmarking studies.  In addition to coordinating the UHC Surgical Services Council for purchasing, operations improvement, technology assessment, and managed care, he was also responsible for purchasing contracts totaling more than a billion dollars.  Earlier still, he was Vice President of Patient Care at a 300-bed acute-care hospital, responsible for Nursing, Surgery, and patient-focused ancillary departments that included Housekeeping and Dietary.  He has also been Director of Surgical Services in a 280-bed hospital, responsible for a 12-suite OR, as well as PACU, Pre-Admissions, Outpatient Surgery, Central Processing, and three inpatient surgical nursing units.  He has been a consultant with Herman Smith Associates, division of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, primarily in Surgical Services and Nursing areas, and he was lead consultant on Information Systems projects.  Throughout his career, but particularly in the past 15 years, Girard has been the author of numerous articles in healthcare professional publications, and he has spoken to many regional and national healthcare professional societies and organizations.

EDUCATION
Master of Science in Nursing, 1985, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Certificate of Health Care Accounting, 1985, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Bachelor of Science in Nursing, 1981, University of Wisconsin, Madison