Agenda – Day I

Mylia Christensen is the Executive Director of Oregon Health Care Quality Corporation, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality and affordability of health care in Oregon and is also the executive director of HealthInsight Oregon, a private, nonprofit, community-based organization dedicated to improving health and health care. Mylia serves on the Board and is the former Chair for Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI), a national organization representing over 35 member Regional Health Improvement Collaboratives. Previously, Mylia has worked in almost all facets of health care, from clinical settings to hospitals and health systems management, strategic planning and administration.

Joseph Gifford, MD, is Senior Vice President of Provider Markets at Lumeris, a pioneer in population health management solutions.

Prior to Lumeris, Dr. Gifford served as VP of Population Health at Providence Health & Services and chief executive of the accountable care organizations his team developed. He oversaw the development of a population health portfolio serving more than 600,000 lives, and launched CINs and accountable care organizations for CMS and a number of industry leading companies, including Boeing, Aetna and Intel.

Previously, Joe served for seven years as Chief Medical Officer of Regence Blue Shield of Washington and Executive Medical Director of Cambia. He also co-founded QuickCompliance, a health media firm that was sold to a national media company. He received his residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Washington Hospitals.

Mark L. Wagar, is President of Heritage Medical Systems, an affiliate of the Heritage Provider Network serving over 1 million patient/members in integrated, population based health quality payment programs through medical groups and independent practice associations (IPA’s) in California, New York, and Arizona. He previously served as the President and CEO of Empire BlueCross BlueShield based in New York City and is an Operating Partner with Enhanced Equity Funds which invests exclusively in healthcare services organizations.

Heritage Provider Network (HPN), founded by Dr. Richard Merkin in 1979, is one of the nation’s leading physician-led healthcare solutions organizations. HPN manages one of the largest and most successful Pioneer ACO’s in the United States.

At Empire BlueCross BlueShield, Mr. Wagar led New York’s largest health insurer covering nearly 6 million people, and was a Senior Vice President in WellPoint, Inc. In both Heritage and at Empire, he has been engaged in an active leadership role in public policy, provider collaboration, and community engagement. During his tenure, Empire achieved net growth of over 1 million medical members, market leading member satisfaction results, and the introduction of the first major medical home network in metropolitan New York.

An experienced officer and director in public and private corporations, Mr. Wagar currently serves on the Boards of The New York Academy of Medicine, WhiteGlove, Inc, TurningPoint, and the Tannenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. He has been recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus of The Ohio State University, and a recipient of the Dr. Jonas Salk Memorial Mentor in Medicine Award, as well as an honoree helping fund numerous charitable causes supporting healthy communities and diversity. In 1971 he was a member of the Big Ten Champion basketball team of The Ohio State University.

Jay Sultan, Principal Strategy Advisor at Edifecs, is a nationally recognized expert in payment reform. Sultan began work on implementing episodes for payment over 15 years ago and has authored two patents in payment bundling. He has participated in both commercial and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) payment bundling programs – for both retrospective and prospective episodes, and is currently working on one of the largest episode of care programs in the industry. Jay has served and/or still serves as subject matter expert in payment bundles to the CMS, several states, various non-profits (such as IHA), and over 100 payer and provider organizations.

Dr. Pimperl has been a 2015-16 Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice from Germany, funded by the Commonwealth Fund, at the time the study for his presentation for the P4P Summit was conducted. He holds a PhD in health care management and health economics from the Institute for Healthcare Management and Health Economics, within the University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology in Austria.

Dr. Pimperl is now the Head of Finance & Business Intelligence at the OptiMedis AG, a health science-based management and investment company facilitating integrated care systems throughout Germany and other European countries. Before his Harkness Fellowship he has been working on accountable shared-savings business and performance measurement models for integrated care systems and the replication of the German best practice model, Gesundes Kinzigtal, to other regions. He has built up the Analytics Department at OptiMedis and established standardized processes and reports for accounting to improve cost transparency and controlling. Dr. Pimperl also developed and implemented the scientifically based business intelligence (BI) infrastructure, enabling the linkage, preparation, and enrichment of data from various sources in a data warehouse to enable the data-driven management approach of the integrated care system Gesundes Kinzigtal with his team. In 2013, this BI solution was awarded the “BARC Best Practice Award for BI & Data Management.”

Jeffrey Bailet is executive vice president of Health Care Quality and Affordability at Blue Shield of California, a 4-million-member nonprofit health plan that serves the state’s commercial, individual and government markets. Bailet is responsible for the management and performance of company’s Network Management, Health Care Services and Wellvolution® teams.

Bailet has more than 20 years of health care experience. Prior to joining Blue Shield, he served as executive vice president at Aurora Health Care and president of Aurora Health Medical Group.

He is currently chair of the executive committee of AMGA (formerly the American Medical Group Association). He also serves on the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC) established by The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) providing comments and recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on physician payment models

Elizabeth Mitchell serves as President & CEO of the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement. She is the Vice Chair of the Physician Focused Payment Technical Advisory Committee and she serves on the Quality Improvement Strategy (QIS) Technical Expert Panel (TEP).

Prior to leading NRHI, Elizabeth was the CEO of the Maine Health Management Coalition. Elizabeth led the Coalition’s performance measurement and public reporting program, and its strategy for engaging the public in the use of cost and quality information. While at the Coalition, she established the Coalition’s Data and Analytics program with a multi-payer claims database and was the nation’s 4th designee in CMS’ Qualified Entity Certification Program. Elizabeth was integral to the development of Maine’s successful State Innovation Model (SIM) grant in which the Coalition was named as the State’s ‘Implementation Partner’.

Since 2008, Leah Binder has served as President & CEO of The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., representing employers and other purchasers of health care calling for improved safety and quality in hospitals. She is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, the Huffington Post, and the Wall Street Journal expert forum, and consistently cited by Modern Healthcare among the 100 most influential people and top 25 women in healthcare.

Under her leadership, The Leapfrog Group launched the Hospital Safety Score, which assigns letter grades assessing the safety of general hospitals across the country. She fostered groundbreaking innovation in the annual Leapfrog Hospital Survey, which publicly reports information on hospital quality available from no other source.

Ms. Binder has worked for Franklin Community Health Network in Farmington, Maine, the Office of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York City, and the National League for Nursing. She has a bachelor’s from Brandeis and two master’s degrees from University of Pennsylvania.

Greger Vigen is a health actuary and MBA. Before going independent, Greger worked at Mercer for major purchasers including CalPERS and other public and private sector organizations. As lead actuary for these clients, he was responsible for just over 2 million lives in California and across the country. His work included development of various programs including the first high performance networks in California for both HMO and PPO products. These are the foundation for Exchange products in many counties.

Greger is the founding chair the Society of Actuaries Payment Reform subgroup and past member of their Health Council. He was on the board of directors for Physician Associates IPA. He has authored a various papers for the Society of Actuaries and PBGH. Measurement of Health Care. His MBA comes from UCLA after undergraduate degree at the University of Southern California.

Emma Hoo directs several initiatives for PBGH that promote effective health management, provider accountability. She focuses on care redesign and payment reform initiatives, including contracting principles and standardized measures for Accountable Care Organizations, implementation of an Intensive Outpatient Care Program for high-risk people, and community health and wellness initiatives. She has managed value purchasing initiatives including health plan and disease management vendor assessments, quality performance metric negotiations, administration of the eValue8 Health Plan Request for Information for Covered California QHP assessment, and group HMO and PBM purchasing programs on behalf of PBGH members. Hoo has served on the NCQA Disease Management Measurement Advisory Panel and National Quality Forum Behavioral Health Measures Committee. She currently participates in the Business Action Collaborative of the IOM Roundtable on Population Health Improvement and on the High Cost Patient and Bundled Payment Workgroups of the Health Care Transformation Task Force. She has authored papers on provider network management and design, consumer-directed health plans, ACOs and quality reporting requirements for health insurance exchanges. Previously, Hoo was director of operations for a Northern California medical group, with responsibility for contracting, data analysis, and information systems. Hoo received her Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies from Harvard University.

Dr Herzig is a Rheumatologist who is currently chair of the Mercy Health Select state wide clinically integrated network. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American College of Rheumatology. He has 45 years of private practice experience and has published numerous scientific articles. He is currently cochair of the APM design committee for the ACR. He is a founder of the Cincinnati Rheumatic Disease Research Group.

During her 30 years of practice she has participated in landmark clinical trials with her research interests including congestive heart failure, cardiovascular risk prevention, cardiovascular disease in women and older patients, and disease management.

Dr. Lewis was an investigator for trials including the SAVE trial, PROVE-IT trial, TNT, Jupiter, and the CARE trial. She is author of the subgroup analysis from the CARE trial on women, an author of the SAVE subgroup analysis of women, TNT analysis of women and older patients, and author of the subgroup analysis on older patients from CARE.

She was named by Good Housekeeping Magazine as one of the 44 top cardiac centers/doctors for women, and has been recognized over many years in Castle and Connolly America’s Top Doctors.

Adam Weinstein lives on Maryland’s Upper Eastern Shore and is a co-founder of the Kidney Health Center of Maryland. He completed his training in internal medicine and nephrology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and University of Maryland Medical Center.

In addition to working in private practice, he has worked as a VP with the University of Maryland Medical System, Shore Regional Health, has served on the Maryland Healthcare Commission and has served on the Renal Physicians Association Board of Directors.

He is currently a VP for Medical Affairs with Clinical IT Services at DaVita as well as a part-time clinical nephrologist in Maryland. He continues to serve as the AMA RUC advisor for the Renal Physicians Association (RPA) and chairs the RPA clinical data registry workgroup.

Harold D. Miller is the President and CEO of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR), a national policy center that facilitates improvements in healthcare payment and delivery systems. He also serves as Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. Miller is a nationally-recognized expert on healthcare payment and delivery reform. He has worked in more than 40 states and metropolitan regions to help physicians, hospitals, employers, health plans, and government agencies design and implement payment and delivery system reforms, and he has written a number of widely-used papers and reports on health care payment and delivery reform. He is one of the eleven members of the federal Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee that was created by Congress to advise the Secretary of Health and Human Services on the creation of alternative payment models.

Dr. Brown is a family physician and a tenured professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin. His academic focus has been the management of alcohol and drug disorders and other behavioral risk factors and conditions in primary healthcare settings. He has conducted NIH-funded research, published dozens of peer reviewed articles, made numerous presentations, and conducted workshops in this realm on four continents. He served as president of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA) from 1997 to 1999 and received AMERSA’s McGovern award for excellence in medical education in 2002. From 1999 to 2004, he served as the founding director of Project MAINSTREAM (www.projectmainstream.net), a federally funded program which enhanced substance abuse education for twelve health professions and improved education for over 10,000 trainees. He currently serves as Director for the Wisconsin Initiative to Promote Healthy Lifestyles (www.wiphl.com), which aims to enhance delivery of alcohol and drug screening, brief intervention, referral, and treatment (SBIRT) in healthcare settings throughout Wisconsin and elsewhere. In 33 settings, WIPHL has provided over 110,000 screens and 20,000 interventions, garnered excellent patient satisfaction, elicited substantial declines in risky and problem drinking, marijuana use and healthcare costs. Dr. Brown is owner and CEO of Wellsys, LLC (www.wellsys.biz), which provides software, consulting, training and clinical support to enable healthcare settings to provide systematic, evidence-based, cost-saving screening, intervention and referral services for alcohol and drug use and other behavioral risks and disorders.

Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD, is president and CEO of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) and its two operating arms, the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) and Health Careers Futures (HCF). When Dr. Feinstein founded PRHI, it was among the nation’s first regional multi-stakeholder quality coalitions and the first to apply industrial engineering principles to advance safety and quality. Dr. Feinstein was instrumental in the formation of the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI), a national coalition of Regional Health Improvement Collaboratives.

Dr. Feinstein is regarded as a leader in healthcare quality improvement and frequently presents at national and international conferences. She is the author of numerous regional and national publications on quality and safety. She has served on the faculties of Boston College, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Pittsburgh. In 2015 she was named Pittsburgher of the Year by Pittsburgh Magazine.

Dr. Feinstein is on the Board of Overseers of Brandeis University’s Heller School, the Advisory Committee of the Princeton Conference on Health Economics and Policy. For 25 years, she has been on the UPMC Presbyterian/Shadyside Board of Directors, the UPMC System-wide Patient Care Committee and IT Advisory. Karen is a long time Board member of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.

Dr. Feinstein earned her bachelor’s degree at Brown University, her master’s degree in social planning at Boston College, and her doctorate at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Karen has Honorary Doctorates from Chatham and Carlow Universities.

Richard Levy was chairman of the Varian Medical Systems Board of Directors from 2002-2014, and is currently Chairman Emeritus. He was General Manager of the Medical Business from 1986-1999 and CEO of the company from 1999 to 2006.

Levy was on the Board of Sutter Health, an $11B Healthcare system, from 2006-2016, and was Chairman of that Board 2013-2014. He has served on the Board of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation since 2002. He has been a co-chair of the Advisory Committee of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and an active participant in summits for CCI (Center for Corporate Innovation, Inc.), with a focus on improvement of the national healthcare system. That focus remains one of his primary interests today.

Ms. Janet Liang has been the President of the Northern California Region at Kaiser Permanente since August 2016. Ms. Liang served as Chief Operating Officer for Northern California Region at Kaiser Permanente since June 2014 until August 2016. Ms. Liang served as President of Hawaii Region from March 5, 2007 to June 2014. Ms. Liang served as Executive Vice President, Columbia Region at Seattle-based Group Health Cooperative (GHC). Ms. Liang, who joined Group Health in 1992, held numerous leadership roles in hospital, ambulatory care and health plan operations. Most recently, she was the Executive Vice President for a division with 180,000 enrollees across Washington and Idaho, and the Board Chair for KPS Health Plans, Inc., a PPO subsidiary of Group Health. Additionally, she led numerous process improvement efforts across the organization, resulting in clinical advancements and a more competitive cost structure. She is an active community leader, serving on the boards of the Washington State Hospital Association, Washington Health Foundation, Washington Technology Center, and Asian Counseling and Referral Services. She was recognized by the Puget Sound Business Journal in 2005 as one of the region’s 40 under 40 leaders. Ms. Liang graduated cum laude from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in political science. She earned her master’s degree in health administration from the University of Washington.

Elizabeth Mitchell serves as President & CEO of the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement. She is the Vice Chair of the Physician Focused Payment Technical Advisory Committee and she serves on the Quality Improvement Strategy (QIS) Technical Expert Panel (TEP).

Prior to leading NRHI, Elizabeth was the CEO of the Maine Health Management Coalition. Elizabeth led the Coalition’s performance measurement and public reporting program, and its strategy for engaging the public in the use of cost and quality information. While at the Coalition, she established the Coalition’s Data and Analytics program with a multi-payer claims database and was the nation’s 4th designee in CMS’ Qualified Entity Certification Program. Elizabeth was integral to the development of Maine’s successful State Innovation Model (SIM) grant in which the Coalition was named as the State’s ‘Implementation Partner’.

Anas Daghestani, M.D., is an Internal Medicine Physician and President and Chief Executive Officer of Austin Regional Clinic (ARC), a 350-physician multi-specialty medical group that serves the greater Austin metropolitan area with 21 clinical locations. ARC provides care to approximately 420,000 Central Texans in seven cities and three counties. Dr. Daghestani is President of the ARC Executive Board and also serves as Medical Director of ARC?s Population Health & Clinical Quality.

In addition, Dr. Daghestani serves as Chief Medical Officer for the Seton Health Alliance, an Accountable Care Organization (ACO), in partnership with the Seton Healthcare Family, and as Chief of the ARC Internal Medicine Department, a position he has held since 2008.

Dr. Daghestani is a member of the Travis County Medical Society Executive Board, Texas Medical Association, American College of Physicians, Seton Health Plan Quality Committee, and Cigna South Region Advisory Council.

Dr. Daghestani joined ARC in 2005, and practices at ARC Far West. He received his medical degree from Damascus University, Damascus, Syria, and completed his internship and residency at the University of Illinois St. Francis Hospital, Evanston, IL. He received additional training at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. and is board certified in Internal Medicine. He is married and the couple have three children.

Fiona Wilson is a San Franciscan. She trained at Harvard Medical School and UCSF in primary care internal medicine, where she practiced primary care for 20 years. She’s with Brown & Toland Physicians, the regional IPA, initially in quality, currently as Chief of Clinical Transformation. She is involved in PCMH and organizing independent clinicians. She is passionate about primary care and evolving and transforming practice to meet all stakeholders needs: patients, staff, and providers. Physician compensation is one lever that can assist in recognition and reward to reflect both intention and outcomes.

Dr. Wulf is the first physician Chief Executive Officer of COPC assuming this position in 2013. Prior to this role, he served as the Corporate Medical Director of COPC for seven years. Bringing 30 years of medical and leadership experience, he was a leader among the founding physicians that helped establish COPCP, Inc. in 1996.

Dr. Wulf previously operated a private practice in Columbus and continues to serve as the COPC Laboratory Medical Director.

Dr. Wulf is a member of the COPC Executive Committee, the Ohio State University Health Plan Quality Committee. He is also on the board of directors for The Health Collaborative of Central Ohio, The Ohio Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative and The Ohio Health Information Partnership and CAPG.

As an internist, he received his Doctor of Medicine from the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo.

Mara McDermott serves as the Vice President of Federal Affairs for CAPG, heading up the association’s federal legislative and regulatory activities in Washington, DC. Mara works on behalf of CAPG member organizations to advance policies that promote coordinated care. This role includes advocacy and education efforts with members of Congress and their staffs, the Administration, and other health policy stakeholders.

Prior to joining CAPG, Mara was Counsel in the health industry practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. In this role, she focused on a variety of issues affecting health industry clients, with a particular emphasis on health policy and regulatory issues facing physician organizations, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and academic medical institutions. Mara received her JD with high honors from George Washington University School of Law and her MPH from George Washington University, both in 2007. She received her BA in 2003 from the University of California, Davis.

Jacqueline Barton True is the Director of Rural Health Programs for the Washington State Hospital Association.

She works on a variety of policy and regulatory issues impacting rural hospitals, with an emphasis on delivery system reform and the transition to value based methodologies. A major focus is the Healthier Washington Initiative, through which Jacqueline partners with the Washington State Health Care Authority and the State Department of Health to build a sustainable path forward for rural health systems via Payment Model 2.

Jacqueline joined WSHA three years ago as an intern with the Association of Washington Public Hospital Districts and advanced the grant-funded work around rural strategic planning and a Cambia Foundation initiative to integrate behavioral health services into rural primary care settings. Prior to WSHA, Jacqueline worked in the Office of Governor Deval Patrick in Massachusetts. She holds a Masters of Social Work and a Masters of Public Health from the University of Washington.

Dr. Sule Gerovich has recently joined Mathematica Policy Research as a Senior Researcher. Previously, she was a Director at the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission (“HSCRC”), which is an all-payer hospital rate setting agency in Maryland. At the HSCRC, Dr. Gerovich developed global budget adjustments for acute care hospitals and lead the pay for performance policies and methodology development. Before joining the HSCRC, Dr. Gerovich participated in revising the state health plan on long-term care, assessment of quality of care in nursing homes, and race and ethnicity data collection. She is a Fulbright Scholar and a nurse with six years of clinical experience at a hospital inpatient setting.

Dr. Gerovich holds a doctorate degree in Health Policy and Management and a Master of Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins University, and a Master of Arts in Political Science and Public Administration from Bilkent University in Turkey.

Harold D. Miller is the President and CEO of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR), a national policy center that facilitates improvements in healthcare payment and delivery systems. He also serves as Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. Miller is a nationally-recognized expert on healthcare payment and delivery reform. He has worked in more than 40 states and metropolitan regions to help physicians, hospitals, employers, health plans, and government agencies design and implement payment and delivery system reforms, and he has written a number of widely-used papers and reports on health care payment and delivery reform. He is one of the eleven members of the federal Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee that was created by Congress to advise the Secretary of Health and Human Services on the creation of alternative payment models.

H. Scott Sarran, M.D., is Divisional Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Government Programs, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). He is responsible for network strategy and oversight (including ACOs), medical management and quality for HCSC’s government programs in all five (IL, TX, NM, OK, MT) states. Dr. Sarran joined HCSC in 2008 as Chief Medical Officer for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois.

Brent Asplin is an emergency physician and healthcare executive who is focused on building a sustainably affordable health system that is consumer friendly and value driven. Most recently, Dr. Asplin served as the Chief Clinical Officer for Mercy Health, a $4.5B system that operates 23 hospitals in Ohio and Kentucky. He provided system-wide strategic leadership for Mercy’s physician network and clinical imperatives. His areas of focus were physician integration, clinically integrated networks, population health management, and Mercy’s quality and clinical transformation function.

Dr. Asplin came to Mercy Health from Fairview Health Services, a $3.3-billion, eight-hospital system in Minneapolis, where he was the organization’s President and Chief Clinical Officer and President of Fairview Medical Group, a multi-specialty group with more than 550 physicians. Before joining Fairview in 2011, he was Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Asplin’s career also includes serving as a clinical leader with Regions Hospital and HealthPartners in St. Paul and serving on the Committee on the Future of Emergency Care in the U.S. Health System with the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Asplin received a bachelor’s of arts, music performance from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He earned his doctor of medicine degree from Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minn., completed his residency in emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and attended the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Michigan. He earned his master’s degree in public health (health management and policy) from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Williams is the founder of Pharos Innovations, and has served as Chief Executive Officer since 2004. He is responsible for setting the vision and overseeing the execution of Pharos’ mission to transform healthcare through patient engagement in self-care. He has nearly 20 years of executive experience developing chronic care management programs and models.

Dr. Williams graduated with honors from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 2009 he supported the work of the US Senate Finance Committee in crafting the Affordable Care Act. He is an author and frequent speaker on topics related to population health, patient engagement, physician leadership, and healthcare transformation.