Chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics & Digital Transformation

USCF School of Medicine

Dr. Julia Adler-Milstein is a Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics & Digital Transformation (DoC-IT).
Dr. Adler-Milstein is a leading researcher in health IT policy, with a specific focus on electronic health records and interoperability. She has examined policies and organizational strategies that enable effective use of electronic health records and promote interoperability. She is also an expert in EHR audit log data and its application to studying clinician behavior. Her research – used by researchers, health systems, and policymakers – identifies obstacles to progress and ways to overcome them.
She has published over 250 influential papers, testified before the US Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, been named one of the top 10 influential women in health IT, and won numerous awards, including the New Investigator Award from the American Medical Informatics Association and the Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award from AcademyHealth. She has served on an array of influential committees and boards, including the NHS National Advisory Group on Health Information Technology, the Health Care Advisory Board for Politico, and the Interoperability Committee of the National Quality Forum.
Dr. Adler-Milstein holds a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard and spent six years on the faculty at University of Michigan prior to joining UCSF as a Professor in the Department of Medicine and the inaugural director of the Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research in 2017. She became the inaugural Chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics and Digital Transformation in 2023.

President and CEO

Regional Center for Border Health

Amanda Aguirre, RCBH President & CEO – Former Arizona State Senator Amanda Aguirre has served as President & CEO for the Regional Center for Border Health, Inc. since 1991. Ms. Aguirre is bilingual and bicultural, and has been involved in healthcare and business administration for more than 35 years. She possesses a lifelong commitment to education; in 1991, she became Director of the Western Arizona Area Health Education Center (WAHEC), and in 2007 she established the College of Health Careers (CHC), a licensed post-secondary vocational training center in allied health training, which has generated job opportunities for over 3,000 individuals. Ms. Aguirre has built these organizations, which have become multimillion-dollar corporations that provide employment for 480 employees, in a slow, recovering economy. Ms. Aguirre also worked for Arizona Western College from 1995 to 1999 as the South Yuma County Campus Director.
Ms. Aguirre has lived in Yuma, Arizona for the last 30 years. Her commitment to education is lifelong, because she was raised by parents who were both elementary school teachers. Her democratic values come from parents who taught her to work hard and to serve her community before everything else. Ms. Aguirre holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Sonora in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. In 1981, she received her master’s degree from the California State University in Los Angeles, California, with emphasis in nutrition and dietetics. In 2013, Ms. Aguirre completed a Certificate Program in Executive Leadership for Healthcare Professionals at Cornell University (online), and she completed a Training Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2005.
In 2003, Ms. Aguirre was appointed to the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission by President William Clinton and, in 2023, was nominated to serve on the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services (NACRHHS), which advises the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services on healthcare challenges in rural America. Her appointment to NACRHHS will begin in 2024. Current Memberships: Advanced Nursing Education Workforce (ANEW) Advisory Committee, University of Arizona; Northern Arizona University Advisory Committee for the Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative (NAU-SHERC); Morrison Institute Distinguished Fellow, Arizona State University.
Ms. Aguirre is not budgeted for the RCORP but will provide guidance and support to the WA-RCORP Project Team as well.

Assistant Professor of Health Policy & Management

University of Maryland School of Public Health

Dr. Nate C. Apathy is an informatician and health services researcher with interests at the intersection of health information technology (IT), healthcare delivery, and health policy. He studies the role of health IT in support of delivery and payment reform efforts and the impact of regulations on health IT adoption and use. He specializes in the use of system-generated log data to increase our understanding of health IT’s impact on care quality. His current research focuses on sources and consequences of documentation burden and organizational strategies to reduce that burden.

Principal Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer

CMS

Jonathan (Jon) Blum currently serves as the Principal Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). In this dual role, Jon oversees CMS’s program policy planning and implementation and day-to-day operations of the entire agency. CMS’s programs provide health coverage to more than 150 million individuals, spending more than $1.7 trillion in annual benefits with an annual operating budget of more than $7 billion. This is Jon’s second time serving in a senior leadership position at CMS. He previously served as the Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center of Medicare from 2009 – 2014, leading the agency’s Medicare payment and delivery reform strategies and the policy and program management of the Medicare program. Jon has more than 25 years of public- and private-sector experience working in health care policy and administration. In addition to his positions at CMS, he has worked as a strategy and management consultant, an Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, professional staff at the Senate Finance Committee, and a program analyst at the Office of Budget and Management. Prior to joining CMS, Jon served on several nonprofit boards with missions to improve access and equity to health care and health coverage, including Mary’s Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center; the Primary Care Coalition of Montgomery County; and the Medicare Rights Center. Jon earned a Master of Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences

McMaster University

Dr. Sheila Boamah is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University, specializing in health system innovation to improve care quality and outcomes for never- and underserved groups, including older adults. Her research leads in co-creating solutions with affected communities and implementing transformative strategies that address underlying causes of health disparities, ensuring equitable access to care across Canada and beyond. Guided by a commitment to transdisciplinary collaboration, Dr. Boamah strives to bridge divides across traditionally siloed teams and sectors, focusing on improving care for patients and families, and fostering a cohesive, collaborative healthcare ecosystem.

Chief Dental Officer

CMS

Dr. Chalmers is a board-certified pediatric dentist, oral health policy expert, and public health advocate who brings more than 20 years of clinical, research, industry, and regulatory experience to CMS in her role as Chief Dental Officer in the Office of the Administrator. Previously, Dr. Chalmers served as a Dental Officer at the US Food and Drug Administration.
Dr. Chalmers has devoted her career to transforming scientific and health care data and information into actionable insights to address equity, improve care, and better inform policy and funding. Dr. Chalmers completed her Doctor of Dental Surgery degree at the Faculty of Dental Medicine of the Medical University of Sofia, a residency in pediatric dentistry at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, and a Ph.D. in oral microbiology from the Graduate Partnerships Program of the University of Maryland School of Dentistry and the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research at the National Institutes of Health, Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Forsyth Institute, and Clinical Research Fellowship at the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Chalmers holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Research from Duke Medical University and a Certificate in Drug Development and Regulatory Science from the University of California San Francisco School of Pharmacy.  Her research has translated into action, improving oral care and advocating for the role health policy can play across the lifespan—particularly when it embraces dental well-being as a facet of care for the whole person.

Deputy Director

Center for Medicare, CMS

Ing-Jye Cheng serves as the Deputy Center Director of the Center for Medicare at CMS, where she oversees rules and regulations governing Medicare fee-for-service payment and operations. She joined CMS in 2009 as the Deputy Director of the Division of Acute Care in the Hospital and Ambulatory Policy Group. She has also served as Deputy Director and Acting Director for that Group, as well as Director of the Chronic Care Policy Group.  Previously, she worked for the Maryland Hospital Association and in management consulting.  She earned a master’s in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in international studies from American University.

Deputy Administrator, Innovation and Partnership

HHS Administration for Community Living

Kelly Cronin serves as Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Innovation and Partnership at HHS’s Administration for Community Living. She has been with HHS since 2001, in a variety of roles at the FDA, CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, which she helped establish as its first employee. For several years, she coordinated health IT programs and policies with health care payment and delivery system reform. In her current role, she oversees programs to support Medicare beneficiaries’ access to low-income subsidies, health insurance counseling on their benefit options, as well as State No Wrong Door systems to enable access to long-term services, and supports the state efforts to enable access to assistive technologies. Her Center also leads efforts to develop and integrate networks of community-based organizations into health care delivery to address social determinants of health. She holds a Master of Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology and Biostatistics and a Master of Science in Health Policy from the School of Public Health and Health Services at George Washington University.

Medical Officer, Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Ellen S Deutsch is a Medical Officer in the Division of General Patient Safety with the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS) at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). She is an experienced Pediatric Otolaryngologist (ear, nose and throat surgeon specializing in children) with expertise in simulation, resilience engineering, human factors, and patient safety.
Her longstanding goals include implementing human factors principles and enhancing the resilience of healthcare delivery systems thereby appreciating and empowering clinicians and patients to improve patient and provider safety, well-being, and satisfaction.
Dr. Deutsch has served in leadership roles in national and international professional otolaryngology and simulation organizations, authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, chapters and editorials, and given more than 80 invited lectures. She edited the text entitled “Comprehensive Healthcare Simulation: Improving Healthcare Systems” and has created numerous innovative educational activities.
She completed her medical training and a residency in Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Maryland and a fellowship in Pediatric Otolaryngology at Children’s National Medical Center. She practiced Pediatric Otolaryngology for 20 years before focusing exclusively on simulation as a modality for individual, team, and organizational improvement. She then obtained a Master’s degree in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety from Northwestern University followed by serving as the Medical Director of the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority and editor of the Patient Safety Advisory journal. She joined AHRQ in 2022.

Managing Director, Center for Health and Social Care Integration

Rush University Medical Center

Bonnie Ewald (she/her) is the Managing Director of the Center for Health and Social Care Integration (CHaSCI) at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. In this role, she collaborates with diverse stakeholders to develop health equity initiatives, trains social workers and other interprofessional providers, and advocates for policies that expand access to coordinated and high-quality whole-person care. Bonnie also manages the Coalition for Social Work and Health, co-chairs the billing and coding workgroup for the Partnership to Align Social Care, and serves on the American Society on Aging’s public policy committee. Bonnie has her master’s degree in public policy studies from the University of Chicago (2018), a post-graduate certificate in Sustainable Urban Design from Archeworks (2013), and a bachelor’s in mathematics and geography from the University of Wisconsin (2011).

Chief Experience Officer

CMS

Ariele Faber currently serves as the first Chief Experience Officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). She leads the design of consistent, connected, and sustainable care experiences delivered across the country with dignity. Ariele oversees the full scope of the CMS Experience portfolio, translating what the public and the agency’s workforce need, feel, and value into opportunities to co-create best-in-class products, services, programs, and policies.
Prior to this role, Ariele was a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the General Services Administration (GSA) across two Administrations where she led federal-wide initiatives focused on Human-Centered IT Modernization, Digital Health, and Building a Future of Work through a Culture of Care. Earlier on, Ariele worked across startups, small businesses, non-profits, and corporations specializing in experience design for healthcare and life sciences.
Ariele holds a bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College, where she studied Neuroscience and Architecture; a Master of Science in Healthcare & Design from Imperial College London; and a certificate in Climate Change and Health from Yale School of Public Health.

Director, Dental Benefits, Coding and Data Exchange ADA

American Dental Association

Rebekah Fiehn is the Director, Dental Benefits, Coding, and Data Exchange at the American Dental Association. In this role, she leads ADA inter-agency efforts and multi-stakeholder efforts relating to dental benefits, directs activities associated with the maintenance of the Code on Dental Procedures and Nomenclature (CDT) and the Systematized Nomenclature of Dentistry (SNODENT) and represents the ADA as a content expert on terminologies and the exchange of dental data. Rebekah has fostered advancements in dental care coordination and medical-dental integration by managing the development and implementation of technology and data protocols. She also serves as a member of the WEDI board of directors.

Regional Administrator & Staff Director

CMS

John P. Hannigan serves as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Regional Administrator for HHS Region VIII. John coordinates local engagement efforts with regional stakeholders in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming with an emphasis on partnership development and strategic communication strategies to inform and drive CMS policies, programs, and initiatives. John serves as a member of the Colorado Federal Executive Board and coordinates with other regional federal components to enhance government efficiency and foster community engagement throughout Region VIII.
Prior to his current role, John served as the Associate Regional Administrator of the Division of Financial Management & Fee-for-Service Operations, where he led staff in the Kansas City and Denver Regional Offices to provide financial oversight, consistent policy implementation, and program compliance of Medicare Administrative Contractors and address the needs and concerns of Medicare providers, fee-for-service beneficiaries, and other stakeholders throughout 10 states in HHS Regions VII and VIII.
Prior to joining CMS, John served for 25 years in the United States Air Force with a variety of assignments in operations and management, including oversight of regional and international implementation of the TRICARE healthcare program. John holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law along with a Master of Business Administration and Master of Science – information systems degrees from the University of Colorado, Denver.

Chief Medical Officer and Director

Center for Clinical Standards and Quality,
CMS

Dora Hughes, MD, MPH, is the Chief Medical Officer and Director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ) for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). CCSQ is primarily responsible for executing all national clinical, quality, and safety standards for healthcare facilities and providers, as well as establishing coverage determinations for items and services that improve health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries.
Previously, Dr. Hughes served as Chief Medical Officer at the CMS Innovation Center. She led the Center’s work on health equity, advised on care delivery, payment and data collection strategies for the Center’s models and initiatives, and represented CMS on clinical and cross-agency working groups within HHS.
Earlier in her career, Dr. Hughes served as the Counselor for Science & Public Health to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. In this role, she helped with the passage and early implementation of the Affordable Care Act and provided oversight and guidance on priority issues regarding public health and prevention; workforce and the safety net; food, drug, and device regulatory matters; and biomedical research innovation.
In addition to federal service, Dr. Hughes was an Associate Research Professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University (GWU), where her work focused on the intersection of clinical and community health, health equity, healthcare delivery, and teaching. She remains on faculty at GWU’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr. Hughes has also served as Senior Policy Advisor at Sidley Austin, where she advised on regulatory and legislative matters in the life science industry.
Dr. Hughes began her career in health policy as Senior Program Officer at the Commonwealth Fund, and subsequently as Deputy Director for the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee under Senator Edward M. Kennedy. She then served as the Health Policy Advisor to former Senator Barack Obama.
Dr. Hughes received a B.S. from Washington University, MD from Vanderbilt and MPH from Harvard. She completed her internal medicine residency at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and is licensed and board-certified.

Deputy Director

Center for Program Integrity, CMS

Jeneen Iwugo has over 20 years of government leadership, resource management and policy development expertise. She is Deputy Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Center for Program Integrity (CPI). In her CPI role, Jeneen has executive responsibility for oversight of Risk Adjustment Data Validation (RADV) audits of Part C plan sponsors, Medicaid state unwinding audits, Marketplace agent and broker fraud in Federally Facilitated Marketplace exchanges and coordination of the CPI vulnerability process which identifies, prioritizes, and proposes mitigations for all of CMS’ programs. She also leads operational management of the Center’s 500 FTEs and $1.1 billion operating budget. In her prior position, as Deputy Director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality, Jeneen was the Senior Government Executive accountable for leadership, management, and execution of the Center’s $1.5 billion annual budget, 800 FTEs and 200 contracts.
Throughout her career, Jeneen has led innovation, transformation and change management efforts for the QIO Program’s national quality initiatives, medical case review programs and beneficiary protection programs. She is a people person with a proven ability to align programs with evolving agency priorities and objectives while successfully meeting and exceeding program goals. With a reputation for candor and transparency, Jeneen is a go-to for solving any budgetary, implementation or collaboration challenge affecting CMS.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer

Center for Clinical Standards & Quality, CMS

Dr. Shari M. Ling currently serves as the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Dr. Ling’s committed focus is on the achievement of meaningful health outcomes for patients and families through the delivery of high quality, person-centered care, across all care settings. Her clinical focus and scientific interest is in the care of persons with dementia, multiple chronic conditions, and functional limitations.

Dr. Ling leads the CMS Behavioral Health Strategy implementation. She also represents CMS on several Health and Human Services (HHS) efforts. She represents CMS on the workgroups for the National Alzheimer’s Project Plan, and workgroups to eliminate and prevent Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs), the National Strategy to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance.

Dr. Ling earned a Master’s in Gerontology in Direct Service at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, an MD degree at Georgetown University School of Medicine, completed a rheumatology fellowship at Georgetown University Hospital followed by a Geriatric Medicine fellowship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She continues her clinical work serving veterans as a volunteer dementia care provider and has retained her appointment as part-time faculty in the Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Senior Vice President

Ambulatory Care and Population Health, NYC Health + Hospitals

Ted Long, MD, MHS, is Senior Vice President of Ambulatory Care and Population Health at New York City Health + Hospitals (NYCH+H), the largest public healthcare system in the U.S., with over five million outpatient visits annually. He served as Executive Director of the NYC Test & Trace Corps, the city’s operational response to COVID-19. He additionally leads the Arrival Center and Humanitarian Centers for asylum seekers coming into NYC. NYCH+H provides essential services to over one million New Yorkers. Dr. Long leads one of the nation’s largest Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), transforming the health system’s portfolio of ambulatory care into an integrated and high-quality network providing care to all New Yorkers, without exception. He supervises Population Health and founded the NYC Care program, providing universal access to care for all New Yorkers. Dr. Long previously served as Senior Medical Officer for the Quality Measurement and Value-Based Incentives Group at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where he helped lead more than 20 federal programs, including the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, and the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program. Before CMS, Dr. Long served as Medical Director at the Rhode Island State Department of Health, and principal author for the first statewide evaluation of health service capacity and access to care, with a focus on primary care capacity and need. Dr. Long is a practicing primary care physician who did his undergraduate work, residency training, and post-graduate master’s work in health services research at Yale University. He has authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Long is a Clinical Professor at NYU Langone’s Department of Population Health, as well as on the faculty at the Yale School of Medicine and the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care.

Director

Office of Healthcare Experience and Interoperability,
CMS

Stella “Stace” Mandl is a certified public health nurse with 38 years of combined social work, nursing, policy development, and leadership experience and has dedicated her professional career to improving of patient care quality, safety, and patient outcomes. Stace serves as the Acting Director (previously Deputy Director) for the Office of Healthcare Experience and Interoperability (OHEI) where she is responsible for supporting OHEI, its five groups and its mission to identify and create efficiencies across the healthcare enterprise by integrating technology, policy, regulation, and stakeholder engagement to improve healthcare quality and population health. Prior to joining OHEI, Stace served in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation as the Staff Director for Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee and Designated Federal Officer. Stace served for over 10 years as a technical lead and then Director for the Division of Chronic and Post-Acute Care, located within the Quality Measurement & Value-Based Incentives Group of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality where she provided leadership, strategic oversight and advisory support for the post-acute quality reporting programs; as well as technical guidance and oversight for the implementation of the statutory requirements related to patient/resident assessment data standardization and quality measures in satisfaction of the Improving Post-Acute Care Medicare Transformation Act of 2014. Stace has a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from San Francisco State University and a Bachelor of Science in Social Work from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and served in the US Army Nurse Corps. Her clinical background includes emergency, peri-operative, psychiatric and medical-surgical services, research, and nursing leadership.

Chief Health Equity Officer and Director

Office of Minority Health,
CMS

Martin Mendoza, PhD, serves as the Chief Health Equity Officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Director of the CMS Office of Minority Health (OMH). In this role, Dr. Mendoza leads OMH in its mission towards the advancement and integration of health equity in the development, evaluation, and implementation of CMS’s policies, programs, and partnerships.
Prior to CMS, Dr. Mendoza served as the first Director of Health Equity for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) All of Us Research Program where he provided leadership and high-level expertise to improve inclusion and equity in precision medicine.
Before joining All of Us, Dr. Mendoza led extramural research for minority health in the Office of the Commissioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He is a recognized expert in clinical trial diversity and has testified on it before Congress. He is also the primary author of the pivotal FDA guidance recommending that clinical trial sponsors submit a diversity action plan to FDA. Dr. Mendoza’s original idea and recommendation became federal public law in December 2022.
Dr. Mendoza has also served as director of the Division of Policy and Data in the Office of Minority Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Secretary, as well as in multiple NIH Institutes including the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Human Genome Research Institute where he assisted in the genetic mapping of the Human Genome Project.
Dr. Mendoza is a graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and received his Ph.D. in cancer biology from Johns Hopkins University.

Regional Chief Medical Officer

CMS

Sean Michael is an actively practicing emergency physician with dual-board certification in clinical informatics. He serves as Regional Chief Medical Officer in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Denver location, focusing on cross-cutting implementation of CMS programs and policy. He also helps lead CMS agency-wide work on emergency care, including EMTALA, emergency department boarding and crowding, emergency medical services (EMS), acute behavioral health care, and emergency care of older adults. Dr. Michael was previously the emergency department director of a large academic ED and continues to practice clinically and serve on the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Chief Health Informatics Officer and Director

Health Informatics and Interoperability Group, Office of Healthcare Experience and Interoperability,
CMS

Alexandra Mugge is the Director of the Health Informatics and Interoperability Group (HIIG) within the Office of Healthcare Experience and Interoperability (OHEI) and serves as the Chief Health Informatics Officer for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), where she and her team have led the Agency’s interoperability and health IT efforts since 2018. HIIG’s mission is to “promote the secure exchange, access, and use of electronic health information to support better informed decision making and a more efficient healthcare system.” Before leading CMS’ interoperability efforts in her current role, Alex served as the Deputy Director of the Division of Health IT in the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ), where she and her team lead the overhaul of the Meaningful Use Programs to create the Promoting Interoperability initiatives. Alex earned her Masters of Public Health from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University where she specialized in Public Health Policy. She has over 15 years of experience working in health care policy and federal regulations.

External Relations

Noridian

Scott Oien currently serves as the External Relations Lead for Noridian, the Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) for Jurisdictions E and F. With a strong focus on establishing and maintaining relationships with various stakeholders, Scott assists providers and associations in resolving complex issues on a weekly basis. Scott has also held various managerial and representative roles in his 32 years at Noridian, contributing to provider education and customer service improvements. Ensuring that every interaction receives personalized and attentive service is one of his main priorities.

President and Chief Executive Officer

The Joint Commission

Jonathan B. Perlin, MD, PhD, MSHA, MACP, FACMI, became the seventh President and CEO of The Joint Commission Enterprise on March 1, 2022. The Joint Commission Enterprise includes The Joint Commission, Joint Commission Resources (JCR), Joint Commission International (JCI), and the National Quality Forum (NQF).
Previously, as President, Clinical Operations and Chief Medical Officer, HCA Healthcare, Dr. Perlin led clinicians, data scientists and researchers in developing a learning health system model for improving care at the system’s 189 hospitals and 2,200 other locations. His team’s work achieved national recognition for preventing elective pre-term deliveries, reducing maternal mortality, using artificial intelligence to improve sepsis survival, and developing public-private-academic partnerships for improving infection prevention and treating COVID-19. Dr. Perlin’s CHARGE consortium partnered HCA, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and academia to create a reusable platform for accelerated research using real-world evidence from the care of over 400,000 COVID inpatients.
Before HCA, Dr. Perlin was Under Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where he led the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to national prominence for full implementation of a national electronic health record and benchmark clinical performance. He has served on numerous Federal Commissions including as a Congressional Budget Office Health Advisor, a member of MedPAC (Medicare Payment Advisory Commission), and as chair of the VA Special Medical Advisory Group. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), he has co-chaired NAM action collaboratives on digital health, combatting opioids and climate change.
Dr. Perlin’s board service includes Columbia University’s Health Policy and Management program, Vanderbilt University’s School of Engineering, and he served as a Trustee of Meharry Medical College for 15 years. Perennially recognized as one of the most influential leaders in healthcare, Dr. Perlin maintains faculty appointments at Vanderbilt University as a Clinical Professor of Medicine and at Virginia Commonwealth University as an Adjunct Professor of Health Administration.

Chief Strategy Officer

CMS Innovation Center,
CMS

Purva Rawal, PhD, is the Chief Strategy Officer at the CMS Innovation Center at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. As part of the Senior Leadership team, she provides guidance and leadership on the execution of the Innovation Center’s strategy.

Most recently, she was a principal at CapView Strategies, where she developed evidence-based public policy and business strategies and conducted policy research on health system transformation and sustainability issues. She was also an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University. In 2016, she published a book, The Affordable Care Act: Examining the Facts and has published book chapters, blogs, and papers on value-based care. Previously, Dr. Rawal served as professional staff on the Senate Budget Committee during the passage of the Affordable Care Act and as the health and social policy advisor to Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). She was also a director in the Health Insurance and Reform Practice at Avalere Health. She began her health policy career as a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences and as a Congressional Fellow for the Society for Research on Child Development and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Rawal received her B.A. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

Director

Healthcare Experience Group, Office of Healthcare Experience and Interoperability,
CMS

Ms. Samantha Richardson is the Director of the Healthcare Experience Group and leads CMS’s efforts to reduce regulatory and administrative burden for beneficiaries and the medical community, enabling the nation’s health care system to focus on providing higher quality care at lower cost in an innovative environment that leverages the stakeholder experience and data. She oversees initiatives to measure the impact of CMS policies; leverages stakeholder data to lead Human Centered Design (HCD) initiatives; leads the development of tools to reduce misinformation in CMS policies; and creates strategic communications informed by external stakeholders and internal policy developers. In addition, Ms. Richardson oversees the development of databases and data analytic protocols to assist internal CMS offices as they develop policy.

Ms. Richardson has served in various leadership positions during her tenure at CMS including Senior Advisor in the CMS Office of the Administrator leading CMS’s burden reduction initiatives under the Patients over Paperwork Initiative. She served as the Director of the Division of Performance and Oversight in the CMS Center for Program Integrity (CPI), where she led CPI’s program risk assessment and strategy development functions. She also served in a variety of leadership positions in the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ) on National Coverage Determination (NCDs), End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Network program and the Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) programs.

Before joining CMS, Ms. Richardson was a consultant focused on information technology and health policy contracts with CMS and the Food and Drug Administration. Ms. Richardson is the recipient of several awards most notably as a member of the Department of HHS’s award winning COVID Waiver Team during the onset of the pandemic.

Executive Vice President for Public Policy and Government Relations

The Joint Commission

Kathryn Spates is the Executive Vice President for Public Policy and Government Relations at The Joint Commission. In this role, she leads The Joint Commission’s Government Relations office in Washington, D.C., which is The Joint Commission’s interface with the federal government, state governments and with public policy issues. It is also the office concerned with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and its relationship to private sector accreditation; relationships with U.S. Department of Health and Humans Services (HHS) agencies; other offices such as U.S. Government Accountability Office and HHS Office of the Inspector General; Medicaid offices; and with policymaking institutions. Ms. Spates works with federal agencies, Congress, national professional organizations, patient-focused associations, and other relevant stakeholders. She also analyzes the effects of legislation and regulations on The Joint Commission and health care entities.
Ms. Spates has more than 25 years of health care industry experience, spanning legal, government relations, and clinical work. She previously worked at the Food and Drug Administration and as an attorney at a law firm in Washington, D.C. Before she began her government relations and legal career, she spent many years in clinical care as a nurse and an acute care nurse practitioner. She has worked at academic medical centers, in clinical research and at the U.S. Peace Corps headquarters. Ms. Spates also served as a Lieutenant in the United States Navy Nurse Corps. She is a member of the American Bar Association, Health Law Section and American Health Law Association.
Ms. Spates received a Juris Doctor from the Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America. She received her master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Boston College. She is admitted to the District of Columbia and Maryland bars.

Chief of Oral Medicine, Oral Oncology, and Dentistry

Miami Cancer Institute

Dr. Alessandro Villa is Chief of Oral Medicine, Oral Oncology and Dentistry at the Miami Cancer Institute. He also serves as a Professor at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, FIU. He was previously Chief of Oral Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and Program Director of Oral Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Dr. Villa’s research focuses on the prevention of HPV related oropharyngeal cancers, and treatment of oral precancers and complications from cancer therapy. His contributions to the field are vast, with over 160 peer-reviewed articles published and research funding exceeding $3 million. He is the President Elect of the International Society of Oral Oncology.

Regional Chief Medical Officer

CMS

Dr. Ashby Wolfe is a board-certified family physician and serves as Regional Chief Medical Officer for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) offices in Seattle and San Francisco. Dr. Wolfe has served as a CMS Regional Chief Medical Officer since 2015, focusing on the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid policy across the Western United States and the Pacific Territories (AK, ID, OR, WA, AZ, CA, HI, NV, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). As a senior medical advisor for CMS programs in the West, she provides clinical expertise to the divisions of Medicare and Medicaid payment policy, quality improvement, survey operations, contracted health plans and serves as a principal liaison with the clinical community. Dr. Wolfe also serves as co-lead of the CMS Acute Hospital Care at Home Initiative, as extended by Congress, following the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency.
Dr. Wolfe completed her medical degree at SUNY Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, and her residency training at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California. She also holds a Master of Public Policy and a Master of Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Wolfe has practiced broad-scope family medicine in academic, integrated and community clinical settings over the course of her career. She holds medical licenses in both the State of California and the State of Washington, and currently serves as a member of her local HHS medical reserve corps. She has a particular interest in improving the quality and equity of care for underserved and low-income populations. She has published on the CMS Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver experience as well as multiple articles on Medicare and Medicaid policy and is a contributing author of the public health text Prevention is Primary (Jossey-Bass). In her free time, she enjoys hiking, swimming, and traveling with her husband and two children.

Consultant

Yeh Innovation

Dr. Yeh is a passionate advocate for healthcare transformation and healthy aging. Her career spans a wide range of sectors, including providers, payers, tech companies, nonprofits, and government agencies. She has held roles such as Chief Medical Officer at AARP Services Inc., Regional Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Chief of an emergency department.
Dr. Yeh earned her MD from Northwestern University Medical School. She has extensive board experience and has received numerous honors for her contributions to the field.