The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and the Mary J Labyak Institute for Innovation presents

The 2013 Innovation Intensive
A exclusive educational event within the MLC

Featured Speakers:

Susan Beane, MD.
Vice President & Medical Director
Healthfirst
www.healthfirstny.org

Dr. Susan Beane joined Healthfirst in 2009, bringing with her extensive professional experience in managed care. As Vice President and Medical Director at Healthfirst, Dr. Beane focuses on care management and clinical provider partnerships, especially programs designed to improve the delivery of vital, evidence-based healthcare to our members. Dr. Beane, a dedicated primary care physician and Board certified internist, is a strong proponent of collaborating with and engaging providers to improve health outcomes.

Prior to joining Healthfirst, Dr. Beane served as Chief Medical Officer for Affinity Health Plan for five years—during which time she helped Affinity’s plan become a top performer in quality and member satisfaction. Before that, she worked at AmeriChoice and HIP USA, as Medical Director.   Dr. Beane is a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Gregory Berger, M.D.
Medical Executive Director
Michigan Pioneer ACO & DMC Managed Care Programs

GREGORY E. BERGER, M.D. is the Medical Executive Director of the Michigan Pioneer ACO & DMC Managed Care Programs and the Chief Medical Officer, ProCare Health Plan.  His previous position was Vice President/Chief Operating Officer, Sinai-Grace Hospital.  Dr Berger is also an Assistant Professor at the Wayne State University School of Medicine. 

Dorothy “Dottie” E. Deremo, RN, MSN, MHSA, FACHE
President and CEO
Hospice of Michigan (HOM)
www.hom.org

Ms. Deremo is the president and chief executive officer of Hospice of Michigan (HOM), called the “Harvard of Hospice” by national leader, Dr. Diane Meier. HOM is the largest statewide nonprofit, end-of-life care provider in the nation, serving more than 1,200 patients and their loved ones daily across 56 counties in Michigan. Ms. Deremo is also the founder and president and chief executive officer of HOM’s wholly owned national subsidiary advanced illness management company, @HOMe Support™, which is improving quality and saving 30 percent net total health care costs for patients with serious illness and their stressed caregivers pre-hospice.

Prior to working for HOM, Ms. Deremo was vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer at Henry Ford Health System. She has held several executive positions at the Detroit Medical Center and has been an assistant professor at both Michigan State University and Wayne State University during her 43-year health care career.

Richard Fredrickson
Senior Vice President - Long Term Care Programs
Centene Corporation
www.centene.com

Rick serves as Senior Vice President – Long Term Care Programs for Centene Corporation and was most recently the CEO and President of Bridgeway Health Solutions, Centene’s Long Term Care and Arizona subsidiary. Rick has over twenty years of experience in working with and advocating for people with disabilities and the aged. 

From within the private sector his passion is for change from a purely clinical model of care to one that embraces functional status and the removal of socio-economic barriers. Rick has implemented this concept in his work with a Florida Nursing Home Diversion Pilot, serving as Executive Director for a MCO in the Texas StarPlus pilot project for people with disabilities, as CEO of an Arizona Long Term Care Program, and as interim CEO for Centene’s Ohio subsidiary. Rick has participated on boards or governing committees for the ARC, Easter Seals, ADAPT, Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities and is supportive of the role of advocates and consumers in the developments and ongoing operation of private sector MCOs that serve people with disabilities. 
 

Christie Hinrichs
President and CEO
Tabitha
www.tabitha.org

Christie Hinrichs was named President and CEO of Tabitha in July 2010. Her dedication to Elder Care and involvement with Tabitha dates back to 1993 and includes leadership roles within Tabitha Hospice and the organization’s in-home support program. Following her service as a branch manager for Coram Healthcare and executive experience as Chief Operating Officer (COO) at the Nebraska Heart Hospital, Hinrichs returned to Tabitha in 2006 as Vice President of Clinical Services. Even during her time away from the organization in a day-to-day capacity, Hinrichs stayed connected to Tabitha—serving on its corporate board of directors from November 2004 through May 2006.

Hinrichs is a member of the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce board of directors, the Lincoln Fire and Rescue advisory board and the Thrivent Fellows advisory board. She recently garnered national honors, being named co-chair of the national LeadingAge Consumer Cabinet. She spends time actively volunteering with Tabitha Meals on Wheels and Junior Achievement.

Andrienne Mims, MD MPH
Medical Director, Medicare Quality Improvement
Alliant GMCF
www.gmcf.org/AlliantWeb

Adrienne Mims, MD MPH is a board certified family medicine/geriatrician with over 25 years of primary care, consultative and home care geriatric experience. She has been a medical administrator for 18 years.  Originally from Washington D.C., Dr. Mims completed her undergraduate training at George Washington University; Medical school at Stanford University; Residency at Martin Luther King Jr./Charles Drew Medical Center; Geriatric Fellowship at the West Los Angeles VA; and MPH at UCLA.

Dr. Mims is the Medical Director for Medicare Quality Improvement for Alliant/GMCF. In this role she provides oversight to protect the Medicare trust fund and improve the quality of health for Georgia Medicare beneficiaries.  Areas of focus include evaluation of Medicare beneficiary cases for quality of care concerns; development of strategies for care improvement; and providing consultation to provider offices to improve clinical quality of care measures.   She was elected to a serve as president-elect for AHQA, the trade association for Quality Improvement Organizations.  She was elected to a second term on the Board of Directors for the American Geriatric Society, where she serves as the chair of the Audit Committee.  She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Georgia Academy of Family Physicians.  She is adjunct faculty for Morehouse School of Medicine in the departments of Family Medicine and Preventive Health and Community Medicine. 

Dr. William H. Thomas
Founder and President
Eden Alternative
www.edenalt.org 

Dr. William H. Thomas is an international authority on geriatric medicine and eldercare. A graduate of Harvard Medical School (1986) he went on to graduate medical training in the Highland Hospital/University of Rochester Family Medicine Residency. While he planned on a career in Emergency Medicine, a part-time position as the medical director of a small rural nursing home turned into a full-time and lifelong passion for improving the well-being of older people. In the early 1990s he and his wife Judith Meyers-Thomas developed the Eden Alternative.

The Eden Alternative put forward a radical critique of the status quo in long-term care and offered a creative way to “change the culture” of nursing homes by bringing life and laughter into the lives of elders.  The philosophy also called for fundamental changes in the relationship between staff and management. His book on the initial implementation project, “The Eden Alternative: Nature Hope and Nursing Homes” was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1994. That same year he founded the Eden Alternative non-profit organization, which has grown to include affiliates in Japan, Australia, Scandinavia, Europe, Canada and the United Kingdom as well as the fifty states. Dr. Thomas continues to serve as its president.

During the late 1990s, Dr. Thomas saw that America’s nursing homes buildings were “aging faster than the people living inside them.” This led him to imagine a new approach to long-term that became known as the Green House. Supported at first by the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation and later by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dr. Thomas oversaw the construction of the nation’s first Green Houses.  This model of care is now being replicated nationwide.