2020 Speakers

Laura Adams, MBA

Laura is Director of Medicare Stars at Medical Mutual of Ohio. She is responsible for the oversight and overall Stars strategic plan to ensure a four plus Star rating. Laura holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Education in Community Health. She has also earned a Six Sigma Black Belt Certificate.

Saeed Aminzadeh

Saeed founded Decision Point with the mission of improving health plan clinical, financial and operational performance through informed, data-driven predictions on strategic decisions. He has more than 25 years of health information technology experience, with a track record of developing innovative approaches to solve complex business problems. He has held key senior management positions at Eliza Corporation, Ingenix (currently Optum), IHCIS and ProVentive, where led high-performing teams focused creative uses of technology for practical problem- solving. Saeed is a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University with a BA in Economics.

Irfan Ali, MRPharmS

Irfan leads the Network Performance and Clinical organizations at EnlivenHealth™, developing strategies that help to influence, communicate and impact outcomes for our health plan and retail pharmacy customers. Since joining Omnicell in 2007, Irfan has held several leadership positions focused on building medication adherence solutions within the UK, European and most recently global pharmacy markets. Prior to joining Omnicell, Irfan worked at a number of UK retail pharmacy companies, creating operational models to improve the delivery of medication adherence solutions. In addition, he spent five years launching and operating consulting services for the UK and European healthcare market. Irfan is a qualified pharmacist, holding a B.Sc. in Pharmacy from University of Portsmouth, UK.

Jessica Assefa

Jessica Assefa is the Senior Director of Star Ratings at Gorman Health Group (GHG). In this role she provides expertise to health plans regarding Quality Improvement (QI), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) Services Quality Bonus Programs (QBP) and Star Ratings. Jessica is an accomplished nurse and brings clients over twenty years of diverse experience and achievement in managed care, quality improvement and clinical care in addition to strong Medicare, Medicaid, Marketplace and Dual-Special Needs Plans (D-SNP) programs knowledge. Prior to joining Gorman Health group, Jessica led the Medicare, Marketplace and Medicaid Star Ratings Programs and Quality Ratings Systems (QRS) for an independent, nonprofit health plan in the state of Minnesota, successfully achieving 4, 4.5 and 5 Star Ratings for the plan’s multiple Medicare and Marketplace contracts and product lines. Her managed care experience expands into the areas of Clinical Compliance, including training and oversight of internal and delegated care coordination entities for Medicare Advantage and Dual-Special Needs Plans (D-SNP). For the past several years, Jessica has been asked to speak at multiple, national health care, quality and managed care conferences on the topics of Star Ratings, social determinants of health, health plan operations and beneficiary experience, among other topics. In addition to her managed care experience, Jessica brings years of clinical knowledge, patient-care and nursing experience in the states of Minnesota, Indiana and New York, working extensively with the geriatric and disabled populations in nursing home, school, clinic and home-care settings in a variety of roles including Director of Clinical Education, Manager of Alzheimer’s & Memory Care and Minimum Data Set (MDS) coordination.

Sarah Bezeredi

Cory Busse, VP

Cory Busse is the VP of Sales Operations & Performance Strategy at NovuHealth. With 20 years of healthcare industry experience, Cory helps health plans optimize (and maximize) engagement with hard-to-reach member populations to improve quality, enhance member satisfaction and manage costs. Prior to NovuHealth, Cory was a senior leader at health tech firm DrFirst, where he helped make patient health data more available and actionable for practitioners. He has also held senior leadership positions at Prime Therapeutics, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, ARKRAY and MGI Pharma.

Natalie Caruso

Karen W. Connolly, RN

Karen Connolly, RN, a health care professional, has over 40 years of extensive experiences in operational leadership in health care quality delivery and management including quality management and improvement in health care. She has been involved in nursing and hospital administration and in operational leadership with the health plan industry to include QI, accreditation attainment, HEDIS, health information, contract administration, risk management and strategic planning. Her expertise and experiences in quality improvement activities have included activities in both the hospital and ambulatory settings and interfacing with a number of external agencies in the promotion of quality and in the use of data to increase access to care and to increase the quality of health care delivery systems. She has worked consultatively in the health plan community with Medicaid Advantage, Medicaid, and Commercial health plans in the areas of compliance, QI, operational leadership, accreditation achievement, key metrics, and HEDIS with emphasis with the CMS Medicare Advantage Stars Program for over 14 years. She has facilitated strategic planning sessions and performed analytical evaluation, database management, and quality improvement of key performance indicators that have resulted in statistically significant improvements impacting health outcomes particularly focused in the health plan that has resulted in impacting star ratings including the achievement of a 5 Star Rating from CMS. Ms. Connolly has worked with organizations throughout the country in the achievement and continued compliance with accreditation with NCQA, AAAHC, and The Joint Commission.

Ms. Connolly has been an accreditation surveyor with the Accreditation Association for Health Care Administration (AAAHC) since 1998 and serves as faculty for AAAHC educational programs. Ms. Connolly serves as the Chair of AAAHC's Health Plan Advisory Committee and is a member of AAAHC's Standards and Survey Process Committee. She has served on a number of other committees, workgroups and task forces for AAAHC that have included the Medical Home Advisory Committee, the Task Force on Quality Improvement, the Task Force for Primary Care, and workgroups for Patient Center Medical Home and Scoring Methodology. She currently serves on 2 CMS national technical expert panels on Quality Improvement Strategies and the Quality Reporting System in conjunction with the Affordance Care Act. She is an under-graduate of DePauw University School of Nursing in Indiana and did her graduate studies at Oakland University and University of Michigan in Michigan.

Debra A Corbett

Debra A Corbett is the Program Director for Senior Products Clinical Services Strategy for Tufts Health Plan, a multi-year 5 CMS Star Plan. In that capacity, she manages a number of Clinical Stars Quality Improvement Campaigns as well as the Chronic Care Improvement Program (CCIP), Performance Improvement Projects (PIP) and Quality Improvement Projects (QIP) and the Dual Special Needs Program (SNP) Model of Care. Ms. Corbett has more than 20 years of experience in the managed care industry; serving predominately as senior administrator for quality and/or care management in several Health Plans. She has also provided consultation services for more than 10 years.

David Dodge

Josh Edwards

Josh is the Medicare Stars Programs Manager at Martin’s Point Health Care in Portland, Maine. His company’s PPO contract reached 5-stars for the first time in 2020 and his HMO contract has achieved 5-stars five times since 2010, most recently in 2019.
In his role Josh is responsible for identification, development, and implementation of quality improvement initiatives to maintain and improve health plan quality measures, specifically Medicare Star Ratings.
Prior to his health care career Josh worked for several branches of the Walt Disney Company, including many years in production management at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, Calif. Josh has an MBA in Marketing from the American University in Dubai and a Master of Science in Health Communication from Boston University. He lives in Portland with his wife and eight-year-old daughter.

Renée Golderman

Renée S. Golderman, MS, RN, NE-BC began her career with CDPHP in 2007. In her current position as senior vice president and chief quality officer, she provides the strategic leadership in designing, implementing, and managing a quality improvement program focused on providing CDPHP membership with efficient, cost-effective and timely care. Renée also has responsibility for overseeing credentialing, utilization management and appeals.

With more than 30 years of progressive experience in the health care industry, Golderman is also responsible for directing HEDIS, NCQA and Medicare Stars initiatives, which includes collaboration among Medicare risk, medical management, and network providers to drive innovative initiatives to improve quality outcomes and ensure member satisfaction with their health care. She has led health care transformation initiatives, including tools for population health and clinical integration strategies, and assists in design and operational aspects of primary care incentive programs.

Golderman is skilled at fostering relationships while executing on strategic plans to drive quality outcomes focused on the Quadruple Aim. Golderman demonstrates sound understanding of and has broad experience with hospital operations, health care finances, board responsibilities, physician relations, and knowledge of how all entities are interdependent, along with current knowledge of the trends and challenges in health care.

Prior to joining CDPHP, Golderman has held various positions in the health care industry and has a record of accomplishments in a range of health care settings, including both the clinical and administrative aspects of inpatient and outpatient care, quality and risk management, hospital and primary care business operations, as well as health plan leadership and administration. Golderman has served as the director of nursing for Seton Health System, part of the Ascension Health System where she was a recipient of the NYSNA Nursing Excellence Award in Administration/Management. In addition, she held clinical management positions at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston, Mass., and New Britain General Hospital in New Britain, Conn. She has also served as a clinical educator for The Eddy in Troy, N.Y.

  Golderman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing from SUNY Buffalo, and a Master of Science degree in health care management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Renée is a nurse executive-board certified, by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) and is a member of the National Association for Healthcare Quality.

Anna Hall

Anna Hall is an experienced clinical pharmacist by training and a pioneer in building MTM programs and STAR Ratings/HEDIS measure improvement intervention programs for prominent national prescription plan sponsors. At Enhanced Medication Services, Anna oversees strategic partnerships, contracting of clinical services, and program compliance. Over the past 10 years she has worked to develop interactive training programs designed to teach technicians and pharmacists how to engage patients in medication therapy management and encourage adherence through the provision of multi-modal interventions and motivational interviewing. Anna serves in national roles for both PQA and AMCP to influence MTM innovation and consensus and contributes to the national strategy to improve effectiveness of MTM and quality improvement programs.

Kimberly Howland, Ph.D.

Kim leads the product organization for EnlivenHealth™, working closely with customers to develop the roadmap for current products and envision and deliver new solutions to the market. Prior to joining EnlivenHealth™, Kim served as Chief Product Officer at Diameter Health, where she developed software solutions to solve healthcare data interoperability challenges. Kim served as VP for Product Development for Omnicell, Inc. and opened and led the San Francisco office of Health Advances, a healthcare management consultancy. Kim holds a B.S. in Biology from Bates College, a Masters in Medical Sciences from Harvard Medical School, and a Ph.D. in Immunology from Harvard University.

Noreen Hurley

Noreen has spent her career in the healthcare arena. She blends operational, strategic and technology perspectives as well as payer and provider expertise to lead major initiatives and strategies. She started in hospital operations and was Director of the Admitting & Registration department in the New England Deaconess Hospital, a Harvard teaching hospital in Boston. Transitioning to IT, she implemented the EMPI (Enterprise Master Patient Index) when the Deaconess merged with the Beth Israel Hospital to form what is now the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. From there she moved to the vendor world and ran implementations of EMPI's, HL7 integrations and HIPAA EDI transactions for SeeBeyond Technologies.

Most recently, she has focused on the payer space. She started and oversaw the Star program at Tufts Health Plan, as well as working in IT, developing a senior products PMO and managing the member call center. Moving back to technology, she developed data driven solutions in the healthcare space while working at Informatica. Her current role is developing the Star program at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, which has recently re-entered the Medicare Advantage market. As a leader in the Clinical Informatics Division, the program focuses on leveraging non-traditional data and analytics to craft targeted initiatives to improve performance in the Star program and the Harvard Pilgrim Stride product

Priyanka Jain

Priyanka Jain, BDS, MS, MPH is an accomplished healthcare leader with over 15 years of experience. For the past three years, she has led Tufts Medicare Advantage Plan in Massachusetts to a 5 Star success. Trained as a Dentist in India, she moved to the United States to pursue her passion in public health. With a Master’s degree in Health Education, she served as an Assistant Director of Health Services at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, TX.

Later she moved to Boston to pursue a degree in Health Care Management and Policy from Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to joining Tufts Health Plan, she held management roles in Clinical Operations at Emerson Hospital, an affiliate of Partners Health Care and Provider Performance Strategy at Beth Israel Primary Care Physician Network in Massachusetts. Passionate about quality improvement, she is proud to be recognized as a change leader who motivates others with her energy, resolute, and strive for excellence attitude.

Tejaswita Karve, Ph.D.

David L. Larsen RN, MHA

David L. Larsen has been the Director of Quality Improvement for SelectHealth in Salt Lake City, Utah for the past 25 years and has worked for Intermountain Healthcare for 32 years. SelectHealth is a mixed model HMO with more than 650,000 commercial, 90,000 Medicaid, 35,000 Medicare advantage and 10,000 CHIP members in Utah and Idaho. Intermountain Healthcare is an integrated health care delivery system with 23 hospitals and over 1500 employed physicians.
As the Director of Quality Improvement, David has responsibilities for oversight of the Medicare Advantage Stars program for which SelectHealth received a 4.5 Star rating in 2015; maintaining NCQA accreditation, SelectHealth is currently accredited with a Commendable rating; as well as, HEDIS performance measurement, public reporting (transparency) and disease management. David was a past co-chair of America's Health Insurance Plans Subcommittee on Accreditation and Industry Standards.

David has also been responsible for the oversight and development of chronic disease registries, performance measurement and web based reporting systems, quality improvement pay for performance incentives for physicians, and direct patient improvement interventions related to chronic illnesses including patient adherence monitoring, reminders and incentive programs. David led initiatives that were successful in applying for and receiving the 2001 American Association of Health Plans National Exemplary Practice Program Award for Diabetes, the 2002 George W. Merck Quality Award for cholesterol management, the 2002 American Association of Health Plans Innovations in Immunizations Award and the 2003 Best Provider Engagement Initiative Award from the Disease Management Association of America.

Cynthia Pawley-Martin

Cynthia Pawley-Martin is a Senior Clinical Consultant at Gorman Health Group (GHG). In this role, she provides expertise to health plans and provider practices regarding Quality Improvement (QI), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Bonus Programs, Quality Rating System (QRS), and Star Ratings. Cynthia is a Registered Nurse (RN) certified in Healthcare Quality and brings GHG clients more than 15 years of experience in the healthcare industry. Her areas of expertise include CMS regulatory requirements (Quality/Star Ratings/Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®), Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®), Health Outcomes Survey (HOS), Models of Care (MOCs), and providing support for Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) and PQRS. Cynthia comes with a solid record of success leading and supporting QI programs across healthcare delivery systems, including health plans and large physician practices. Her leadership skills allow her to effectively communicate across all organizational levels and enables those teams to reach consensus among diverse stakeholders to deliver better services for GHG healthcare clients. While at GHG, Cynthia has guided plans in CMS quality program assessment, implementation, organizational design, and MOC development. She has also supported provider groups in obtaining PCMH recognition. Prior to joining GHG, Cynthia served as Director of Star Ratings for a leading organization and has held numerous positions in Quality and managing HEDIS® for multiple products in the managed care arena. ​,

Dave Mastovich

Dave Mastovich has helped companies achieve top and bottom line growth through marketing and story telling for decades.

Mastovich served in senior marketing leadership positions for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), a multibillion dollar healthcare system, and Duquesne University, a US News “Top Tier” University with more than 10,000 students, as both organizations achieved massive growth in market share and brand awareness.

He started MASSolutions because he wanted any company, regardless of size or industry, to be able to leverage real marketing through his No BS Go To Market System. He and his team help companies focus on both the art and science of marketing to define, reach and influence their key internal and external target audiences through memorable messaging and creative marketing solutions.

Mastovich has been quoted or published in Entrepreneur, Inc, Fortune, ABC News and many other outlets on Marketing, Branding and Crisis Communications.

He’s author of the book Get Where You Want to Go Through Marketing, Selling and Story Telling and host of the No BS Marketing Show podcast. His blog has been featured in over 50 media outlets with readership of more than 1 million. Mastovich is also a nationally-recognized speaker.

Molly McDonnell

Molly McDonnell has a passion for identifying and driving improvements to the experiences of members with their health plans. In her role as Senior Project Manager, Molly stays attune to the voice of the customer and widely communicates it throughout the organization. She collaborates with many areas internally to develop and evaluate member engagement mechanisms, and leads cross-functional initiatives to help drive down voluntary disenrollment, improve CAHPS scores and help members get the care they need.

Gary Melis

Gary Melis is a Clinical Pharmacist for the past six years at Network Health, a local health insurance provider in Northeast and Southeast Wisconsin. He is currently one of two pharmacists involved making MTM calls in-house. His responsibilities also involve NCQA, pharmacy appeals, P&T Committee, Member and Provider relations. Gary's also has experience as pharmacy manager for a national long term care company, pharmacy manager for retail pharmacy chain, and Pharmacy Director for a National Health Care provider. He has also been a pharmacy instructor at local medical college family practice clinic.

Kerri Petrin, MPH

Ms. Petrin is vice president of business development at RxAnte. In this role, she manages business development efforts across all clients segments and business lines at RxAnte. Ms. Petrin previously worked as a Project Officer for the Beacon Community Program at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, leading a data and performance measurement program. She also held roles at The Brookings Institution and the Puget Sound Health Alliance. Ms. Petrin holds a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Science from Duke University.

Grant Roholt

Grant is the co-founder and Chief Solutions Architect for Novillus, which provides healthcare technology and service solutions for numerous health plans. Grant has spent the last 18 years in senior leadership roles at technology and services companies, providing vision, hands-on strategy and delivery of high quality, scalable, secure solutions.

Grant served as Chief Technology Officer of Yesmail from 2006 to 2012, where he was instrumental in taking Yesmail’s enterprise multi-channel marketing solution to a Forrester rating of “Market Leader”, achieving a “Best Current Offering” of all enterprise multi-channel marketing solutions. Grant also led the Operations and Customer Support teams.

Prior to Yesmail, Grant co-founded Swan Island Networks, where he received U.S. Patent No. 7,337,146 for trusted collaboration networks for real-time sharing of sensitive information. Grant is a Portland, Oregon native.

Melissa Smith

Melissa Smith is the Executive Vice President of Consulting and Professional Services at HealthMine, bringing over 25 years of experience in Star Ratings, strategy, sales, and marketing for health plans, providers, pharmacy benefit managers, and industry vendors. Melissa has extensive experience developing strategic and tactical solutions to meet client needs and a strong background of building productive partnerships across internal teams and with external vendors to improve performance on clinical, medication, patient survey, and administrative quality measures.

Most recently, Melissa was Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing, Strategy and Stars at Gorman Health Group. She is a well-known thought leader and healthcare strategist with proven success developing enterprise-wide solutions to improve Star Ratings, quality performance, health outcomes, and the member experience. Melissa’s team helps clients improve performance within quality ratings systems, evaluate market dynamics and opportunities, optimize distribution channels, and support our clients’ strategic planning needs.

Prior to Gorman Health Group, Melissa served in a leadership capacity at Cigna-HealthSpring. Before working in Medicare Advantage and quality ratings systems, Melissa was an Associate Director at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Melissa received her degree from Purdue University and began her career at KPMG, LLP. Melissa’s unique background of business process, regulatory compliance, and healthcare quality offers our clients unique access to healthcare strategy, quality performance, revenue optimization, and more.

Rachel Sterner

Rachel Sterner, MPH has almost 10 years of extensive knowledge and experience working in Minnesota’s quality landscape, both on the government and payer side. She has experience improving health outcomes for individuals in a variety of insurance types including Medicare, Medicaid, Dual- Eligible, and Special Needs. As the Stars Program Manager at UCare, Rachel has responsibility for the facilitation and coordination of the Star Ratings program for UCare’s five Medicare Advantage and Dual Eligible products.

In addition, she plays a significant role in working with UCare’s provider network on joint ventures aimed towards increasing ratings. UCare’s Medicare offerings include: UCare Medicare (Medicare Advantage), Minnesota Senior Health Options (MSHO) which is a D-SNP plan combining Medicare and Medical Assistance benefits/services to low income seniors, EssentiaCare (Medicare Advantage) between Essentia Health (local care system) and UCare, Connect + Medicare (Special Needs Basic Care) combines benefits /services of Medicare and Medical Assistance for individuals with certified disabilities aged 18 to 64, and UCare Medicare with Fairview and North Memorial (Medicare Advantage) between UCare and two local care systems. Rachel has been a key contributor in increasing UCare’s MSHO Star Rating to 4 Stars and maintaining 4.5 for UCare Medicare.

Donna Sutton

Donna received her MBA from the University of Southern California (USC) and is a Certified Master Black Belt in Six Sigma. She has over 14 years of experience managing and conducting process improvement projects. Her most recent experience prior to SCAN includes various process improvement roles at OptumInsight and OptumRx. Her responsibilities at SCAN include managing the deployment of and providing oversight over SCAN's 5 Star programs and interventions.

Dan Weaver

Daniel Weaver is an established leader with extensive experience developing and implementing intervention strategies to improve Medicare Stars performance. With demonstrated success with innovative intervention programs, Daniel's team has consistently delivered market-leading performance and forward-thinking engagement with providers and members.

Staci Zink

Staci lives for a challenge in all aspects of her life; always being drawn to pilot programs, people with innovative ideas, and newly developed positions that give her the opportunity to explore new approaches addressing old challenges.

Staci began her zest for professional challenges as far back as the mid 90’s when accepting a position in a pilot Outpatient Unit within a local hospital that planned to take a new approach to cardiac care, then moving on to independent ownership of a franchise in dire straits. She relocated and found herself entering the insurance arena after life took a turn. She has held a variety of positions over the last 20 plus years, including ones with large health plans, independent brokerage firms, small businesses looking to grow, and finally with BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. Under the leadership and partnership of equally creative people, she has found an atmosphere that can drive change through creative thinking. She believes that success is possible when people are willing to push away from the norm, break down internal silos and try something new. There is only one direction – forward!