Myra A. Tanamor, M.P.P., is Co-founder and Principal of L&M
Policy Research. Ms. Tanamor has spent more than 10 years working on health care financing and delivery issues and health communication strategies. She is currently leading several projects for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) examining how consumers use health care quality to improve the presentation of quality measures as the Agency begins to provide information about the quality of care provided by various providers. In addition, Ms. Tanamor is currently directing an evaluation using qualitative and quantitative methods for CMS on the 2006 Medicare Oncology Demonstration Program and the offering of medical savings account plans under the Medicare program. In addition, she is leading an effort to assess and improve the combined annual notice of change and evidence of coverage model document to make it easier for Medicare beneficiaries to understand and use. At BearingPoint, Inc., Ms. Tanamor managed numerous consumer research projects designed to evaluate and improve Medicare publications, forms, posters, and coverage documents, including an assessment of Medicare publication users and non-users to understand their attitudes toward Medicare publications and their usage patters in order to improve Medicare publication strategies. Ms. Tanamor has conducted over 400 cognitive interviews with Medicare beneficiaries, caregivers, providers and information intermediaries. She has also worked to strengthen the organizational capabilities of State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIPs), creating an interactive CD-ROM-based resource guide of effective SHIP dual eligible outreach practices, managing an assessment of their customer service telephone hotlines, and developing a comprehensive training manual on long-term care financing options and dual eligible programs.
Lisa H. Green, Ph.D.
is Co-founder and Principal of L&M Policy Research. Dr. Green has spent the past 13 years working and training in the area of health care access and health disparities, with a particular focus on federal health care programs. Currently, she is leading several projects for CMS examining various aspects of quality and efficiency in care delivery under the Medicare program, and how consumers use quality information to make informed health care decisions. These include an evaluation of care and disease management programs offered through Medicare Advantage plans, an evaluation of a five-state nursing home value-based purchasing demonstration and longitudinal analyses of Medicare managed care benefits and enrollment trends. Dr. Green recently directed an evaluation of innovative community-based approaches to identifying and enrolling Medicare beneficiaries in the Medicare Part D low income subsidy program, and serves with other L&M staff as Medicare policy experts for the Medicare Parts C and D fraud, waste and abuse contractor. She has conducted hundreds of key informant interviews and case studies nationwide with consumer groups, providers, state/local government agencies, and beneficiaries on the information and health service needs of underserved populations. Dr. Green also has extensive experience working with large data sources including the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, Medicare Standard Analytic File, Current Population Survey, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Medicaid expenditure data, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey and the National Health Interview Survey. Prior to her graduate work in health services and outcomes research, Dr. Green led a variety of projects assessing the impact of Medicare, Medicaid and S-CHIP policies on the health care access and health outcomes of underserved populations including racial/ethnic minorities, low-income elderly and low-income children. Dr. Green served as co-chair on the Access to Quality Care subcommittee of the Maryland Plan to Eliminate Health Disparities, spearheaded by the State’s Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities, and has published on the role of primary care as a means to addressing health disparities.
Judy Goldberg Dey, PhD, is a Senior Researcher at L&M Policy Research. An economist with over five years experience producing and communicating policy-relevant research, she specializes in integrating data analysis with careful literature review and communicating to audiences at various levels of expertise. She is currently providing consulting services to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) using qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze how plan benefit packages are changing in Medicare Advantage plans, and how these changes impact individuals with chronic conditions in their out of pocket expenditures. She has worked with a wide variety of large national survey data sets, as well as smaller surveys conducted for particular research questions. For instance, she recently analyzed a national survey of Medicare Advantage health organizations to document the characteristics of care and disease management programs in Medicare Advantage health plans, and a national survey of physicians to document their experiences and perceptions of the 2006 Medicare Oncology Demonstration Program. In addition, she has worked on CMS’s development of outpatient imaging efficiency measures, analyzing survey data, and for a second set of measures ensuring adherence to the measure development process and providing clinical literature review. She has also worked on several research projects designed to evaluate and improve Medicare websites, conducting cognitive interviews with Medicare beneficiaries and their caregivers and providing research support in site selection and environmental scans. Prior to joining L&M Policy Research, Dr. Dey led the preliminary research component of a Focused Workshop on Drug Pricing for the National Breast Cancer Coalition Fund, which brought together government, industry and the consumer community, as well as scholars and policy analysts to discuss providing access to innovative drugs. Working with several women’s organizations, she has integrated quantitative analysis and careful literature review into research publications to inform a broad spectrum of readers.
Colleen Dobson is a Research Assistant at L&M Policy Research. Currently, Ms. Dobson is contributing to several projects for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, examining various aspects of quality and efficiency in care delivery under the Medicare program, and assessing beneficiary understanding of Medicare materials. These include an evaluation of care and disease management programs offered through Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, and the development and testing of consumer friendly marketing materials for MA plans. In addition, Ms. Dobson is working with the National Council on Aging in an evaluation of the Connect the Dots program, a presentation aimed at helping seniors manage diabetes and hypertension. Prior to joining L&M Policy Research, Ms. Dobson worked in the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention at Harvard Medical School, contributing to a study on obesity prevention in children. She conducted several hundred interviews with caregivers to assess child health behaviors and program quality and effectiveness. In addition, she served as the primary contact with intervention sites and managed several aspects of research implementation.
Sally Crelia, MPH, recently joined L&M as a Senior Researcher, and brings over 15 years of experience managing qualitative research, program assessments, social marketing and communications projects. Most recently, she has led the development and testing of messages, materials, and tools around pandemic influenza for CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing (NCHM), has assisted CDC’s Office of Workforce and Career Development (OWCD) to evaluate their Preventive Medicine Residency Fellowship (PMR/F), and completed a Stakeholder Analysis for CDC’s Division of Alliance Management and Consultation (DAMC), through stakeholder interviews and focus group discussions on how the Division can better serve its partners, stakeholders, and grantees. Other recent experience includes social marketing and research for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as research and technical assistance in health systems reform for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank, and UNICEF.
Julia Doherty, MHSA, is Senior Research Director at L&M Policy Research. Ms. Doherty has 25 years experience in healthcare management, policy and research. With 19 years in the American healthcare system, she has held executive posts in a health maintenance organization, major academic hospital, community health center and management consulting firm. She worked extensively in the arena of managed care as it first took hold in the mid-eighties and has worked with large medical groups as well as hospitals and payers to improve communications and working relationships as well as respond to demands for improved efficiency and quality resulting in changes in provider operations. This included working with divergent organizations to develop collaboration in terms of utilization and case management. Ms. Doherty worked for six years in Europe advising German hospitals facing the introduction of DRGs, the increased need for discharge planning and case management, and required changes in response to economic pressures, as well as toward the development of the first German guidelines and quality measurements for breast cancer early screening and detection. These guidelines were initially published in 2003 and are now in their 4th edition. In addition to co-authoring a chapter in these guidelines, Ms. Doherty has published in European and American journals on a variety of healthcare topics.
Ferhat Q. Kassamali, MSc, MPH is a Senior Researcher at L&M Policy Research. Mr. Kassamali joined L&M in March 2009, bringing with him nearly seven years of health care consulting experience. Most recently, he worked as a management consultant advising hospitals on various financial, strategic, and operational matters, including strategic planning, ambulatory network development, cost-effectiveness, organizational alignment, and operational throughput. Prior to that, Mr. Kassamali’s consulting work focused primarily on health care finance. In this capacity, he worked with a range of clients on issues dealing with Medicaid financing, prospective payment systems (Inpatient, Outpatient, ASC, and LTCH), hospital service line development, and due diligence for M&A transactions. Mr. Kassamali holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Master of Science in Human Genetics from McGill University, as well as a Master of Public Health in Health Management from Yale University School of Public Health in conjunction with the Yale School of Management.
Kelly Moriarty is a Senior Researcher with L&M Policy Research. Ms. Moriarty has spent a decade conducting health care research, focusing on topics related to the Medicare program and including projects related to communications planning and evaluation, quality measure development, materials development, and program implementation and assessment. She has conducted hundreds of cognitive interviews with Medicare beneficiaries and their caregivers, moderated focus groups with consumers and providers, convened technical expert panels, and conducted key informant interviews with consumer groups, providers, and state/local government agencies. Currently, she is contributing to several projects for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) including a project to conduct qualitative research and consumer testing to support CMS’s efforts to publicly report health care quality information, an evaluation of the new Medicare Medical Savings Account (MSA) plans, and an effort to revise the model Annual Notice of Change/Evidence of Coverage for Medicare Advantage and Part D prescription drug plans. Prior to joining L&M, Ms. Moriarty managed projects to develop quality measures for Medicare Part D and for chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage renal disease (ESRD), led numerous projects to consumer test Medicare forms, publications, and Web tools, and developed model marketing materials for Medicare Part D.
Elizabeth Pietrafesa, M.A. is a Research Associate at L&M Policy Research. Ms. Pietrafesa has assisted with program evaluations of health-related governmental programs, collected and analyzed qualitative and quantitative data, written literature reviews, conducted key-informant interviews, cognitive interviews with Medicare beneficiaries and their caregivers, and assisted with consumer website testing. Currently Ms. Pietrafesa is assisting a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) funded project evaluating Medicare Advantage marketing materials, and assisting another project with L&M as a subcontractor of the Delmarva Foundation’s work as a Medicare Integrity Contractor indentifying areas of possible fraud, waste, and abuse in the management of Medicare Advantage and prescription drug programs. She is also continuing work for a CMS funded evaluation of care and disease management programs, including key-informant interviews, program site visits, and care and disease management case studies. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS). While at UCCS, Ms Pietrafesa was appointed a graduate fellowship and grant to pursue her thesis work on sociological theory, sociology of culture, and cultural products. While in her graduate program, Ms. Pietrafesa took additional classes from the University of Colorado’s Graduate School of Public Affairs and worked as a research assistant for Dr. Lynda Dickson. Prior to completion of her degrees, Ms. Pietrafesa worked in individual and family financial planning.
Alyson Marano Ward, RN, MPH is a Senior Researcher with L&M Policy Research. Ms. Ward, who recently joined L&M Policy Research, has spent over five years working on public health issues for various underserved target audiences, including rural pediatric and Medicare-eligible populations. Prior to joining L&M, she worked as a Research Nurse for a comprehensive cardiovascular disease risk reduction surveillance program aimed at lowering the unacceptably high prevalence of heart diseases and diabetes among children and their families in Appalachia. Ms. Ward developed, implemented, and evaluated various interventional strategies for the project and served as a liaison to State government representatives and health care providers on health policies impacting the epidemic of childhood obesity. While at BearingPoint, Inc., she participated in the comprehensive assessment of health care provider quality initiatives, specifically the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid’s (CMS’) Nursing Home Quality and the Home Health Quality Initiatives. She also helped to carry-out numerous consumer research projects designed to evaluate and improve Medicare publications, forms, posters, and coverage documents. In addition, Ms. Ward worked on efforts to more effectively raise awareness among homeless service providers about their eligibility to receive federal benefit program, a collaboration between CMS and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). At present, Ms. Ward is leading the task for the CMS-sponsored project, Integrating Home Health Care Survey information into Home Health Compare. She is also currently co-leading the external review of Medicaid Managed Care plans in collaboration with the Delmarva Medical Foundation for the District of Columbia’s Medical Assistance Administration.
