Panel Session 3: Cancer-Journey Toward Better Health, Better Care and Lower Costs

Panel Session 3: Cancer: Journey Toward Better Health, Better Care and Lower Costs

Moderated by:

Simmi P. Singh
Senior Advisor, Health Innovation, Office of the Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services

Simmi Singh is a life-long student of history, human health and public policy. She is also an internationally recognized thought leader who has spent over twenty years working at the cross-roads of innovation, consumerism, care delivery and health financing – as an entrepreneur, business leader and management consultant in a range of governance, advisory and operating roles.

She is head of healthcare services at Egon Zehnder International, based out of the firm's Chicago office. In this role, Simmi serves as a trusted advisor to business and industry leaders across the globe on the topics of innovation, leadership and governance. Simmi is currently serving as Senior Advisor, Health Innovation, in the Office of the Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Throughout her career, Simmi has had extensive involvement with and exposure to public policy in healthcare. Simmi is a current and former member of leading industry Boards. She was a Director, Vice-Chair and Chair of the former Center for Health Information Management (CHIM) Board and a Director on the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society Board. Her contributions during those seven years on the CHIM and HIMSS Boards were recognized as pivotal to highlighting the potential of information technology to improve healthcare outcomes and to placing this topic on the national agenda. She received numerous awards for her work including the HIMSS Annual Leadership Award for outstanding contributions to the health care information technology sector.

She has been privileged to serve as guest lecturer at the Yale School of Management Executive MBA Program on Healthcare Leadership and currently serves as a member of the Provost's International Visiting Committee at Case Western Reserve University.

Panelists:

Amy Abernethy, MD
Associate Professor, Division of Medical Oncology, Duke University School of Medicine and Medical Director of Oncology Quality, Outcomes and Patient-Centered Care in Duke University Health System

Amy P. Abernethy, MD, is a tenured Associate Professor in Duke University Schools of Medicine and Nursing, Director of the Duke Cancer Care Research Program, and a medical oncologist and palliative medicine physician. Dr. Abernethy is an internationally recognized expert in health services research and delivery in patient-centered cancer care. She is an appointee to the Institute of Medicine's National Cancer Policy Forum, President-Elect of the American Academy of Hospice & Palliative Medicine, on the Board of Directors for the Personalized Medicine Coalition, on the Advisory Board for the Rapid Learning System for Cancer for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and Co-Chair of the National Institutes of Health funded Palliative Care Research Cooperative Group. Dr. Abernethy participates integrally in international discussions about reforming the evidence development system, presenting a model for rapid learning healthcare by coordinating clinical and research functions to better serve patients' needs in an evidence-driven, cost-effective, and patient-centered manner.

Amy Berman, RN
Program Officer, John A. Hartford Foundation

Amy Berman was appointed Program Officer of the John A. Hartford Foundation on January 1, 2006. She heads the Foundation's Integrating and Improving Services portfolio, focusing on the development and dissemination of innovative, cost-effective models of care that improve health outcomes for older adults.

Prior to that, Ms. Berman served as nursing education initiatives director for the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing at New York University College of Nursing. Among her responsibilities at New York University, Ms. Berman conducted a national survey on gerontological nursing content in baccalaureate programs. Her findings were cited in the Institute on Medicine's report, Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce. Ms. Berman also coordinated the Hartford Institute's Geriatric Nursing Research Summer Scholars Program for post-doctoral nursing researchers and collaborated with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing to provide programs that enhance the geriatric competence of nursing educators and the gerontological content in curricula.

Before joining the university, Ms. Berman worked in health care administration for twenty years with responsibility for performance improvement efforts through data-driven change, team facilitation, health information technology, accreditation, and regulatory compliance issues. She served as JCAHO coordinator and as accreditation consultant in performance improvement for a variety of health care institutions. Ms. Berman served on the New York State Department of Health's Emergency Preparedness Task Force and on the professional advisory boards of health care institutions in New York City.

Currently, Ms. Berman serves on the board of the New York University Alumni Association and is a member of the honor society of nursing, Sigma Theta Tau Tau, Epsilon Chapter.

Ms. Berman earned a bachelor of science degree in nursing from New York University College of Nursing, a bachelor of science in health care administration from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a geriatric scholar certificate from the Consortium of New York Geriatric Education Centers.

Jeffrey Elton, PhD
Co-Founder and Board Member, Kew Group, Inc.

Jeffrey Elton has 20 years of experience as an executive in the biopharmaceutical and healthcare sectors. He is a Co-founder and Board Member of KEW Group Inc. a personalized oncology company. From a foundation of centralized data, informatics and knowledge. KEW Group is building capabilities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of community-provided cancer care through personalized and evidence-based treatment pathways, performance and episode-based reimbursement approaches, and clinical research capabilities for an emerging network of centers across the country.

Prior to KEW Group, Jeff served as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Global Chief Operating Officer at Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research, Inc. (NIBR) in Cambridge, MA. He led the definition of disease area, research partnership, and global operations strategies. Jeff oversaw all NIBR operations in the US, Europe, and Asia. Prior to Novartis, Jeff was a senior partner with McKinsey & Company where he co-led the firm's R&D practice in the US and Europe for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and globally the Intellectual Property Strategy practice. Jeff has published articles in the Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, Radiology, In Vivo and other noted publications.

Jeff is currently a board member of several early stage biotechnology companies, the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, a board and executive committee member of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and faculty member of the Boston University School of Management. Jeff holds a Ph.D. in Business Economics and Marketing and an M.B.A. in Finance and Statistics from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Bruce Johnson, MD
Head of Thoracic Oncology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute

Bruce E. Johnson, MD is Director of the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the leader of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC) Lung Cancer Program and the Principal Investigator of the DF/HCC Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in Lung Cancer. His laboratory-based research is devoted to testing novel therapeutic agents for their efficacy against lung cancer and other thoracic malignancies.

Dr. Johnson was elected to the ASCO Board of Directors and received the ASCO Cancer Foundation's Translational Research Professorship in 2008. He received the IASLC (International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer) 2010 Scientific Award, given to an IASLC scientist for "life-time scientific contribution in thoracic malignancy research and who has also contributed to the organization's development". He was one of the leaders of the team awarded the AACR (American Association for Cancer Research) 2010 Team Science Award that "recognizes an outstanding interdisciplinary research team for its innovative and meritorious science that has advanced or likely will advance our fundamental knowledge of cancer or a team that has applied existing knowledge to advance the detection, diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of cancer".

Dr. Johnson received his MD from the University of Minnesota, did postgraduate training at the University of Chicago and the National Cancer Institute, and came to the Lowe Center in 1998 after serving for six years as the head of the Lung Cancer Biology section of NCI's Medicine Branch.

Chris Olivia, MD
Board Member, Eviti, Inc.

Christopher T. Olivia, M.D., is an experienced physician and executive. He has managed health insurance companies, hospitals, healthcare facilities and physician practices in both an academic and community environment. He has also started two medical schools. Dr. Olivia presently works for Highmark where he is the Senior Vice President for Strategic Planning and New Venture Development. In this role, he assists the CEO with provider division strategy and the completion of the West Penn Allegheny Health System merger. This merger is the largest payer-provider one to date valued at $1.3 billion and will create the country's third largest integrated payer-provider system after the Veteran's Administration and Kaiser with nearly $17 billion in revenue.

Dr. Olivia was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the West Penn Allegheny (WPA) in March of 2008. WPA is a 5 hospital academic health system with two major teaching facilities, and $1.7 billion in revenue with 13,000 employees. Prior to his arrival, the system had losses of nearly $100MM per year and little cash reserves. There he led the turnaround of the health delivery system by consolidating 6 hospitals and 700 physicians into a system of care. He improved operations by over $250MM over a three year period and rebuilt the balance sheet to over 60 days cash on hand. During his tenure, the flagship hospital was named a Top 50 Hospital by US News and World Report. Prior to this he led the turnaround and growth of the Cooper Health System in Camden, NJ as CEO. Dr. Olivia has extensive experience in venture-backed healthcare IT start-ups having served on the board of 9 such entities. Presently he is a board member of the teleradiology company Foundation Radiology and Eviti, a cancer risk management company.