2019 Speaking Faculty

Marisa “Mimi” Albert, MPH: Mimi is the Operations Director for the Office of Professional fulfillment and Resilience and the Program Director for the Value Based Care Improvement Program at Stanford Children’s Health. In her role, Mimi leads and collaborates on work that seeks to improve professional fulfillment of the entire health care team (including patients and families). Mimi’s work is focused on measuring and understanding both burnout and professional fulfillment throughout the health care system, and operationalizing strategies to improve overall wellbeing. Mimi also co-directs the Value Program (VIP) at Stanford Children’s Health, supporting and guiding multidisciplinary team projects on projects that increase value across the health care continuum. Mimi holds a Master of Public Health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health with a focus on Health Policy and Management. Mimi is an avid marathoner and frequently uses what she learns at work in her training and what she learns from tough training in her work. She also publishes a weekly Newsletter called WorkRx, which delivers the latest information on resilience, professional fulfillment, and wellbeing to your inbox.

Dr. Fred Dennis is an MBA trained physician executive with decades of hands-on experience in healthspan coaching as well as financial, practice and administrative medically related matters both on the provider as well as payer side.

As medicine becomes more complex and stressful he strives to coordinate business and medical strategies in this very cost conscious environment.

During his career at Cedars he started an Executive Coaching Business. The focus on increased healthspan has lead him to becoming a national lecturer on Physician and Executive Burnout.

Fred is currently Vice-President of the 46,000 member self-insured ERISA Employee Health Plan (EPO) for Prime Healthcare at 45 hospitals in 14 states.

Prior to Prime Healthcare he was Consultant and Coach to Synergistics Systems, a boutique physician billing company based in Encino California. Working with the CEO on advanced data analysis based strategies they optimized revenue cycle opportunities, Key to success was his coaching of their contracted physician groups to “get paid for the work you do”.

In fall of 2016 he was retained by Blue Cross of Idaho to implement a Value Based Purchasing (VBP) strategy based on his extensive California Managed Care experience. He developed geographic ACO arrangements for all of Idaho. Implementation of VBP required working with physicians to develop win-win strategies that improved medical care and decreased cost. Shared savings were the goal. Obtaining physician buy-in and partnership was critical to success.

Prior to Blue Cross he consulted for Keenan Healthcare, a large healthcare broker and TPA for self-insured Hospital-based Employee Health Plans. At Keenan he developed advanced analytics to identify significant client savings. He then worked closely with the Keenan clients to implement the data driven cost saving strategies.

Prior to that he was employed at Envision Healthcare as Executive Vice President with direct financial and operational responsibility for ninety hospital-based physician-staffing contracts in six western states. Direct reports included an operational team of 25 Client Managers, 5 VPs, and 15 Regional Directors. For 4 years his team exceeded 15% ETIDA, the only division to do so.

While working clinically he was Attending ER physician at multiple hospitals in the Los Angeles region including 10 years at Cedars-Sinai ER. During this time he obtained his Executive MBA in Healthcare from University of California Irvine (and started his Executive Coaching practice).

He trained in Emergency Medicine at McGill University in Montreal where he was Chief Resident. His Medical Degree is from the University of Toronto, Canada.

Healthcare is increasingly complex. Physicians are often reluctant or even resistant to supporting the necessary changes. Business leaders do not understand the medical impact of many of their proposed changes and the pushback that will occur. And the stress this causes is increasing burnout, dropout, addictions and even suicide among providers and executives alike.

Peter holds a pivotal role in advancing the portfolio of healthcare solutions to align with industry pressures and shifting needs of healthcare clients. He helped create the Healthcare division and drive significant growth between 2006 and 2011 and then briefly left the company to act as the Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Prior to Nuance, Peter worked as a consultant, president of Unveil Technologies, Inc. and vice president of marketing and business development at Lernout and Hauspie. He graduated from the University of Vermont with Summa Cum Laude honors where he received his B.S. in Business Administration.

Dawn Ellison, MD is an ABEM certi?ed Emergency Medicine (EM) physician who has practiced EM for more than 20 years in Minnesota. Dawn was a Crucial Conversations instructor with Mayo Health System and has done graduate work in coaching through the College of Executive Coaching. She is a 2006 Bush Medical Fellow, during which she studied communication and leadership in healthcare. She stewards Art of Hosting globally. She is the founder of Influencing Healthcare, LLC a healthcare consultant firm assisting healthcare leadership. Dr Ellison’s role at Centracare Health is to improve the engagement and well-being of the clinical partners. Her approach is to host voice, help them connect with patients, colleagues and themselves resulting in a co-creation of space for innovation, collaboration and passion for the caring for patients.

George Gellert is a physician executive and epidemiologist focused on health information technology with a track record of formulating and executing innovative and transformative organizational strategy, services and products. Dr. Gellert served for 6 years as the Associate System and Regional Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) of CHRISTUS Health. He has served in physician leadership roles within industry (GlaxoSmithKline, WebMD, HCORP, 3M), international health NGOs and the non-profit sector (Project HOPE and the United Nations), as well as in government (Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and Orange County Health Care Agency, California). Dr. Gellert has delivered over 200 scientific presentations at national and international health information technology, public health and biomedical conferences. He has worked and traveled in 100+ nations, serves as a peer reviewer for 18 leading biomedical, health care and information technology journals, and has a peer reviewed publication record of over 140 biomedical journal and book publications.

Dr. Rehan Qayyum, MD, MHS is Chair of the Division of Hospital Medicine at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond Virginia and leads a group of over 80 hospitalists. Prior to taking up his current role, Dr. Qayyum spent several years as faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He completed his Internal Medicine Residency at the University of Connecticut Health Center and received his MHS in Clinical Epidemiology from the Bloomberg School of Medicine, Baltimore Maryland. Dr. Qayyum has strong interest in physician burnout and wellness and has developed programs to examine burnout across the institution and at the local medical society level. His work in identifying the extent of burnout among physicians has led to several initiatives to mitigate physician burnout, increase wellness, and enhance physician engagement. His research background gives him unique insights into measurement methodology.

Janae Sharp is a connector. She loves helping people have a great experience and connecting them with solutions.

Janae Sharp is the founder of the Sharp Index, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing physician suicide and burnout. After her former husband died by suicide before completing residency, she was disappointed for her children and upset that discussions about physician suicide seemed to be muted by the healthcare system With a background in healthcare IT and patient engagement, she decided to start contributing to the solution. The Sharp Index addresses solutions to help healthcare systems quantify and fix organizational problems that lead to Physician Burnout. They also host a scholarship and awards for people working in burnout and encourage healthcare IT companies to improve. Janae Sharp is a connector and an idealist, working to empower each individual to contribute in the face of large organizational failings.

Janae Sharp serves on the advisory board to Lightning Bolt Solutions, a company that optimizes physician scheduling, and Inside Digital Health, the digital health arm of MJH Associates, the largest privately health healthcare media company in the US. She is a proponent of positive healthcare advocacy on social media, and served as a social media ambassador for HIMSS and Intersystems. She is on the Board of Utah HIMSS and serves as a member at large. She loves working with companies to use social media to share their message and enable improvement.

Andy Shin, JD, MPH is Chief Operating Officer for the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) Center for Health Innovation. The Center leads many activities designed to support hospital and health system transformation and accelerate innovation at-scale. In his role leading day-to-day management and strategy for the Center, he oversees business lines and initiatives spanning commercial partnerships, applied research and data analytics, value and affordability, performance improvement, market intelligence and leadership development. Previously, he was COO of the Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET), the AHA non-profit affiliate focused on quality improvement, safety and population health.

Prior to the AHA, Andy led strategy for an international non-profit focused on clinician resiliency based at Massachusetts General Hospital. His experience includes consulting for bio-pharmaceutical companies, healthcare analysis for institutional investors, and roles in the federal government including the Energy and Commerce Committee during drafting of the ACA and helping to launch the CMS Innovation Center (CMMI) where he led stakeholder engagement.

I am a physician scientist and executive who oversees healthcare data strategy, including population health management and data analytics, for the largest healthcare organizations in Western New York. I have more than 20 years of experience in medical management, medical staff leadership, electronic health records, medical informatics and big data research.

I serve as VP and Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO) of Kaleida Health, the Executive Director of the University at Buffalo (UB) Institute for Healthcare Informatics (IHI), and CMIO of UBMD, the faculty practice of UB physicians. I am also President of the Kaleida Health Medical/Dental Staff and am a Certified Medical Staff Leader.

As VP and CMIO of Kaleida Health, the largest healthcare system in Western New York with over 2000 providers and greater than $2B in revenue, I provide strategic direction for the integration strategy for all forms of healthcare data, including electronic health records (EHRs), population health management tools and financial datasets. I am charged with determining the optimum methods for collecting and analyzing data to support value-based care. Kaleida’s primary technology vendor is Cerner. Kaleida is a HIMSS Stage 6 awardee. In my role of CMIO for UBMD, which is part of a close partnership between UB and Kaleida Health, I have operational responsibility for the UBMD EHR (Allscripts Touchworks) for over 500 UB physicians, residents and students.

I also direct the IHI, which is the healthcare data research facility at UB. The IHI supports big data healthcare research at UB and its partners by providing a secure computing environment, data science and security consulting, and extensive healthcare datasets. The IHI opened in 2012 with funding through portions of $25 million in NYS HEAL grants. The IHI is located in the heart of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and provides a secure data center with a state-of-the-art data repository infrastructure (>1M patient records). The IHI is a principal component of the $50 million NYS Buffalo Institute for Genomics and Data Analytics (BIG). It also supports the UB CTSA award by providing data serves such as i2b2 and TrinetX. The IHI is part of the ACT network. I serve as Co-Director, Recruitment of Research Participants on the CTSA.

My particular academic interest is ethical issues in informatics. I am a long-time member of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), past chair of the AMIA Ethical, Legal and Social Issues Working Group and past chair of the AMIA Ethics Committee.

I have served the Kaleida Health Medical Staff for many years and was elected President in 2016. I have worked to improve and streamline Medical Staff processes, including helping to implement our Peer Review Committee. I am currently focusing on the areas of physician leadership, professionalism and burnout.

I am a Board-certified Pediatrician and Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics whose clinical career was focused on children in inner-city Buffalo, New York.