(speakers listed in time order)
Tuesday, September 15th
Mark Vincent Parkinson is the president and chief executive officer of the American Health Care Association (AHCA) and the National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL). A former Republican, Parkinson is currently a member of the Democratic Party who served as the 45th Governor of Kansas and a member of both the Kansas House of Representatives and the Kansas Senate.
Dr. Don Rucker is the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he leads is the formulation of the federal health IT strategy and coordinates federal health IT policies, standards, programs, and investments.
Dr. Rucker has three decades of clinical and informatics experience. He started his informatics career at Datamedic Corporation, where he co-developed the world's first Microsoft Windows-based electronic medical record. He then spent over a decade serving as Chief Medical Officer at Siemens Healthcare USA.
Dr. Rucker has also practiced emergency medicine for a variety of organizations including at Kaiser in California; at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Presbyterian and Pennsylvania Hospitals; and, most recently, at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.
Dr. Rucker is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, with board certifications in Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine and Clinical Informatics. He holds an MS in Medical Computer Science and an MBA, both from Stanford.
Wednesday, September 16th
Fahad is the CTO and Co-Founder of CareMerge, a digital health company ensuring the aging experience is filled with the peace of mind and joy. Its platform is used by 470+ senior communities, in 39 states, serving over 80,000 residents. Caremerge is named one of the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the US and is backed by major healthcare investors including Insight Venture Partners, Echo Ventures and GE Ventures. He is also a contributor to Forbes covering digital health and senior care. Fahad has been featured on major print and digital media outlets including Fox News, Inc, Entrepreneur, among others. Fahad holds a BCS in Computer Science and MS in Wireless communications.
Dr. Mary G. Greene is the Director of the Office of Burden Reduction & Health Informatics. She is responsible for unifying CMS's efforts to reduce regulatory and administrative burden for beneficiaries and the medical community, enabling the health system to focus on providing higher quality care at lower cost and to foster innovation in health care delivery. She oversees initiatives to modernize regulations, drive interoperability, and improve the adoption and enforcement of HIPAA Administrative Simplification national standards and operating rules, and engages external stakeholders through listening sessions and onsite observational visits.
Previously, Dr. Greene served as senior advisor to the CMS Office of the Administrator leading and supporting CMS's burden reduction initiatives. Prior to that, Dr. Greene was the Director of the Governance Management Group in the CMS Center for Program Integrity (CPI), where she led CPI's vulnerability management, program risk assessment, regulation development, strategy development, and performance oversight functions.
Before joining CMS, Dr. Greene led strategy and operational support projects to stand up new programs, improve operational efficiencies, build collaborations, and foster professional development. Dr. Greene, a pediatrician and Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, completed her medical education at the Yale School of Medicine, clinical training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Masters in Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health, and Masters in Business Administration at Loyola College in Maryland.
Thursday, September 17th
Michelle Dougherty is a senior health informatics research scientist in the Digital Health Policy and Standards program in RTI International’s Division for eHealth, Quality, and Analytics (eQUA). She has more than 30 years of experience in health services, health policy, and health information practice and research focused on the electronic health records and other health technologies, related technical standards, and data reuse. Ms. Dougherty has led projects for the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), and others. These projects have focused on the use of health information and technology to support the care delivery process, emerging payment models, quality measurement, and interoperability standards. A number of these studies have sought to understand how clinicians and consumers interact with technologies in delivering patient care (electronic health records, telehealth, interoperability and health information exchange, etc.) and the benefits/challenges they encountered. Ms. Dougherty is active in the health IT standards community participating in multiple initiatives including the PACIO Project developing and testing FHIR standards for the exchange of information between post-acute care and others, electronic care and service plans, and electronic clinical quality measure standards groups. Past standards initiatives include participation in multiple Standards & Interoperability Framework projects; leadership of standards development groups related to EHR system functionality for post-acute care and records management and evidentiary support; and participation in standards development efforts related to behavioral health and personal health records. She has been invited to testify to health care policy-shaping groups and held appointments to the HIT Policy Committee’s Implementation, Usability and Safety Workgroup and Certification and Adoption Workgroup on Workforce.
Dan Hermann joined Ziegler in 1987 and was named President and CEO in 2018. He also is the Head of Investment Banking, a member of the Ziegler Board and Executive Committee. Dan focuses on fostering the growth of the firm while always pursuing new opportunities.
As the head of both the healthcare and senior living practices, Dan was instrumental in the creation of and fundraising for the Ziegler Link•Age Longevity Fund, L.P. (the “Fund”). The Fund is one of the first to focus on the aging market and companies that provide innovative products, services and technologies to meet the growing needs of seniors and senior living providers in this changing era of healthcare reform.
During his 30-year tenure with Ziegler, Dan has become a leading investment banker in the senior living industry. He has structured and led or co-led more than 325 senior living financings exceeding $8.2 billion, cumulating far-ranging experience in the management, structuring and financial analysis of every type of senior living financing.