2017 Speaking Faculty

Jan Arthur is the director of Clinical and Research Communications at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. More than 25 years ago, she began her career at Nationwide Children’s working in media relations. Following a brief period as media relations director at The Ohio State University’s James Cancer Hospital, she returned to Nationwide Children’s with marketing responsibilities for the hospital’s self-referral services including urgent care, primary care and sports medicine. In her current role, she oversees content production related to research, clinical programs and legislative advocacy. She has a bachelor’s degree in biomedical communications and a master’s degree in public policy and management, both from The Ohio State University.

Carrie brings more than 15 years of experience in a variety of healthcare roles and settings to her current position as an executive at Marketware. In addition to launching a nationally recognized physician relations and onboarding program, her background includes collaborating with over 60 healthcare teams to develop and implement strategies designed to engage physicians, hospital leaders, practice administrators and other business partners in strengthening and growing targeted service lines. Carrie is a graduate from The College of William and Mary and completed her MBA with a concentration in Healthcare Administration. Carrie is also Board Certi?ed in Healthcare Management by the American College of Healthcare Executives.

Linda Carifi is the Director of Business Development for Atlantic Health System, a five-hospital system in Northern New Jersey. In her position, Linda is responsible for establishing and developing productive relationships between physicians and Atlantic Health System through innovative alignment models and strategies. She is also responsible for expanding Atlantic Health System’s reach in current and emerging markets and program development.

Linda Carifi joined Atlantic Health System in 2012, as Manager of Cardiac Administration for the Gagnon Cardiovascular Institute. In addition to focusing on business growth and opportunities to recruit more than 60 cardiologists for Atlantic Health System, Linda partnered with Atlantic Medical Group to establish a key presence in Somerset County - a role in which she cultivated more than 50 new provider relationships.

Linda has more than 20 years’ experience in healthcare. In addition to uniting physicians and hospitals, she was Former Director of Physician Development at Robert Wood Johnson/Somerset, where she partnered with the Executive Team to align the hospital with its medical staff as well as recruit physicians and help ensure physician satisfaction. Linda also has worked in two Saint Barnabas Healthcare System Hospitals, where she was responsible for Patient/Physician Satisfaction and Patient Advocacy. Early in her career, Linda was a marketing associate for a home healthcare company. She also has worked in private physician practices.

Linda earned her BS in health policy and administration at Pennsylvania State University and has an MS in health administration from Seton Hall University.

Lauren Dudley serves as the Vice President of Market Development and Acquisitions for Lake Norman Regional Medical Center, in Mooresville, North Carolina. In her role she manages and directs the Physician Outreach Teams in the North Charlotte market, in coordination with network hospitals as strategies are developed and execution plans implemented. She manages the recruitment and acquisition of physician practices throughout the market, while fostering strategic direction of physicians in the growth initiatives of all key hospital service-lines. Additionally, Dudley has administrative oversight for both Pharmacy and Cardiopulmonary departments within her local hospital. She is focused on staffing metrics, productivity, regulatory readiness, and internal operations.

Previously, Dudley was the Director of Network and Ambulatory Development, responsible for identifying and developing targeted opportunities for growth, with an emphasis on network concepts and non-acute care expansion. She was charged with recommending new alliances or affiliations with outside hospitals and outpatient care service providers to gain a competitive advantage in the market. Dudley assisted in the 2014 launch of the network’s first service-line specific, Accountable Care Organization in Orthopedics, through a physician partnership in coordinated care and a shared savings program.

Prior to that she held the title of Director of Physician Outreach and developed an enhanced level of physician satisfaction within the organization, by integrating key business initiatives and practice/program development. Dudley assisted her hospitals in maximizing the utilization of its facilities and generating additional revenue from inpatient/outpatient census.

Dudley currently attends the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kenan-Flagler Business School completing her Master’s Degree in Business Administration and holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in Marketing from Appalachian States University.

Rebecca Emmons joined University Hospitals in March 2016 as a Physician Liaison. In her role, she is responsible for developing relationships with employed physicians and independent physicians, both primary care and specialty care, in order to assist building physician practices, facilitate key introductions and minimize referral leakage. By doing so, Rebecca utilizes PRM data tools to identify referral leakage gaps and position physician to physician outreach and market intelligence to close those gaps. She is key contact for the University Hospitals Otolaryngology Institute, where she just recently presented a key referral update at their department annual meeting and, in addition, this past year Rebecca has been responsible for training all of the primary care practices within her specific geography on the University Hospitals new mobile-based point-of-service scheduling tool, Schedule Me Now. New in 2018, Rebecca will begin to devote a portion of her time implementing ambulatory telemedicine into her more rural geographies.

Prior to joining UH, Rebecca served the banking industry for six years by managing an extensive portfolio of clients. In this role, she coordinated with her clients to meet current needs and anticipate future ones. Rebecca’s customer service and sales success in the financial industry has helped her learn how to build great relationships with system leadership and the providers within her geography.

As a native of northeastern Ohio, Rebecca received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Relations and Marketing Communications from Ursuline College. She is also in the process of obtaining her Healthcare MBA from Baldwin Wallace University. Rebecca was fortunate to be the keynote speaker at the northeastern Ohio American Heart Association Go Red for Women campaign this year, was thankful for the opportunity to speak on minimizing leakage through the utilization of digital tools at the 4th annual World Congress Physician Liaison Summit Midwest, and was just recently elected for a three-year term as a Board Trustee to the Geauga County Farm Bureau.

Kathleen Harkins, principal and CEO of Harkins Associates brings 25-plus years of experience in healthcare, HC policy, communications, business development, service launch, payer relations, and performance improvement to healthcare organizations intent on securing strong referral relations with physicians, building integrated ACO networks, and/or establishing healthcare businesses to support services delivery.

Kathleen’s healthcare career spans many subsectors, and years of employed positions, where at different times she was engaged with / responsible for business development, strategic planning, marketing and sales, training, corporate brand and operations. With each employer transition Kathleen took on greater responsibility and position promotion, eventually achieving the roles of Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing Officer for healthcare managed provider organizations.

Subsequent to these employed roles, Kathleen started Harkins Associates in 2000. The firm works with health systems in physician relations strategies, performance improvement for outreach staff, and in identifying, evaluating and pursuing opportunities stemming from healthcare reform policies and market changes. In addition, she assists health businesses in growth strategies and works directly with client leaders discerning likely challenges and adjusting strategies, while remaining focused on key objectives.

Kathleen’s long-term involvement in the healthcare industry provides a working knowledge of policy and regulations and a historical perspective on the key issues and challenges facing health systems, physicians and payers. As a result of her extensive experience in the healthcare space, Kathleen is firmly grounded in standardized processes associated with physician relations, strategic growth and new service launch.

Kathleen has lectured and conducted seminars throughout the US, she has taught business development at the Wharton School Small Business Center in Philadelphia, and served on the Board of Directors of the Healthcare Business Consortium. She is a contributing editor to Becker’s Hospital Review and publishes a Newsletter with articles, case studies, management advice, and tactical tips taken from the firm’s exclusive communications and selling model, Healthcare Consultative Communications and Selling™.

As an Emmy Award winning network television producer, Dorie Klissas oversees marketing and communications at Mount Sinai, one of the largest integrated health systems in the nation. In her role, she integrates media relations, crisis communications, social media, digital, video, publications, internal communications. marketing and creative. Previously, Dorie served as Vice President of Media and Public Relations at Montefiore Medical Center and the Media Director at NYU Langone Medical Center. Prior to 2008, Dorie was a producer at the Today Show on NBC, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and CBS Sports. She has been honored with an Emmy Award, two Gracie Allen Awards and an Edward R. Murrow Award producer credit for “Best Newscast.” Dorie earned a B.A. in European History from Harvard University, where she was on the varsity tennis team, and later studied at the Graduate School of International Affairs in Geneva as a Rotary Foundation Scholar. As a junior tennis player, she was ranked #101 in the United States Tennis Association and #9 in the Eastern Tennis Association.

Bryan serves as University Hospitals Director of Customer Engagement. In this role, he is responsible for helping lead marketing strategy and supervising all activity related to the hospital system’s new customer relationship management system -- which is used to engage consumers, manage patient communications and measure the return on investment of marketing activities. He also oversee the production and management of all written content for digital applications, including the monthly “Better Living” eNewsletters that are sent out to more than a 100,000 consumers a month and have open and click-thru rates that are more than double of the national average. Bryan has an MBA from Walsh University and a bachelor’s degree in communications from Ohio University.

Tonya Lawson-Howard is director of Physician and Referral Source Marketing at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. She is a healthcare marketing leader with 25-plus-years in strategic marketing, planning and business development. In her role at Nationwide Children’s she is responsible for service line marketing, strategic development of marketing and communication activities targeting physicians, oversight of regional hospital partnership marketing strategies, and research and development of relationship marketing insights and analytics. Tonya has a BS degree in Health Information Management from The Ohio State University and an MBA from Franklin University.

Michael McCullen is the Senior Physician Liaison at Geisinger, a not-for-profit, fully integrated health services organization headquartered in Danville, PA. The organization’s clinical enterprise is a physician-led, multispecialty group practice with more than 900 physicians, including 200 primary care physicians. Michael joined the physician liaison team in 2012, after nearly 12 years of providing a wide range of solutions and services to customers and clients in relationship-based sales environments. He has served in the Senior Physician Liaison Role since November 2015.

As a member of the Strategy & Market Advancement team, Michael routinely collaborates with the organization’s leaders to develop organized, timely and effective physician/provider communication programs, in support of the organization’s strategic goals and priority services. Geisinger’s nine physician liaisons maintain and advance relationships with targeted physicians and medical groups, to enhance alignment and referral development. Michael is also responsible for the coordination and supervision of regional activities that support new physician onboarding and ramp up.

Michael earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology at Bloomsburg University and holds a Master of Science in Health Care Administration from King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

Michael Nochomovitz, M.D. has focused his career on the development, management and leverage of large physician networks and integrated delivery systems. He has been an early adopter of new technologies and an advocate for change. He was recruited to New York Presbyterian as the inaugural Senior Vice President, Chief Clinical Integration & Network Development Officer (CCINDO) in 2015 to lead a new Physician Services Division. In a unique structure with two affiliate medical schools, he developed and led a Clinical Services Deployment function to systematically place specialty services of Columbia Doctors and Weill Cornell Medicine at the newly acquired hospitals of the NYP Regional Hospital Network and in the respective catchment areas.

He created the New York Presbyterian Medical Groups (NYPMG) – now numbering over a 1000 providers, co-branded with each of the medical schools to service the new Regional Network. NYPMG became a third physician entity in the NYP aligned physician enterprise with Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia Doctors. He also established the New York Presbyterian Physician Services Organization which provides comprehensive practice management services to the New York Presbyterian Medical Groups and their contracted and leased physicians. Most recently he has been engaged with a major digital health implementation across the enterprise focusing on virtual visits. His role encompassed Clinical Program development in the NYP Regional Hospital Network with responsibility for clinical integration of the regional network hospitals, physicians and NYP service lines.

Prior to joining NYP, Dr. Nochomovitz was the architect and leader of the regional multispecialty physician network and Physician Services Organization which he developed, implemented and led for University Hospitals in Cleveland.. The network of physicians included not for profit academic group practice and a for profit community entity, seven urgent care centers, Corporate and Integrative Medicine and a Workers Compensation MCO.

He has served on the Board of Directors of Qualchoice Inc, Western Reserve Assurance (Cayman), the American College of Chest Physicians, Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), Global Cleveland and the Business Advisory Board of Biomotiv a therapeutic drug accelerator associated with the Harrington Project for Discovery and Development.

Dr. Nochomovitz testified in the U.S. Senate’s Health Education Labor and Pensions committee hearings on health care reform, and participated in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid technical committee on physician payment methodologies. He is a regular participant in national forums on topics of healthcare delivery. He has twice been recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of the most influential physician executives in the United States. He earned his medical degree at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and completed his internal medicine and pulmonary critical care training at the University Hospitals/Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Rise` has been employed in health care since 1991 in a variety of human resource management leadership roles. She has extensive experience within large, academic healthcare systems which include the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, SC., and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) in Pittsburgh, PA. In her current role, she pipelines, hires, and onboards CRNA, Physician Assistant, and CRNP candidates to meet the diverse specialty and practice needs of urban, community, and regional operations. With more than 25 years in HR health care experience, Rise’ has capitalized in recruiting and managing the high-volume and high-demand recruiting for today’s and tomorrow’s Health Care workforce.

Heather Reading joined UPMC in December 2007. There she has held a variety of human resources roles. In her current role, she is responsible for managing physician relations functions for over 4,000 physicians and residents. These functions include physician on-boarding, implementation, modification, and administration of physician policies, disciplinary action, and engagement and retention.

As a native of Pittsburgh, Heather received her Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and Human Resources from Robert Morris University. She also received her Master of Business Administration from Point Park University.

Jennifer Stroup is a Senior Physician Liaison for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from LaSalle University and a Masters in Health Administration from Saint Joseph’s University. With more than 25 years in the physician relations field, she brings extensive experience to customer relationship building, program and service promotion, organizational infrastructure development and strategic planning. Her most recent projects include developing targeted referring provider quick reference tools, exploring ways to leverage digital health strategies to grow referrals and participating in various organizational communication and access initiatives.

Ryan has been a Physician Liaison with Chesapeake Urology for nine years. CUA is one of the premier private practice urology practices in the country. Chesapeake Urology has 80 urologist and 24 sites, with 5 more to come in early 2018, throughout Maryland and has voted one of the best places to work in the state numerous times. Ryan has developed a liaison program that works hand in hand with their urologist to have them engage with the Primary Care physicians throughout Maryland. CUA has also developed collaborations with the larger primary care practices throughout the state to streamline urgent urology care to their sites. Chesapeake Urology will soon be expanding its footprint with in Southern Maryland and by next year will grow its brand into other states throughout the country.

Tammy is a nationally recognized physician relations and retention consultant, keynote speaker and writer. She is known for her dynamic, educational and high-energy presentation style. Her programs are rich with real-life case material to enhance and enjoy learning.

Drawing on more than 25 years of healthcare management experience, Tammy’s work with both the health system and the physician practice side of healthcare gives her a unique perspective on the complexities facing today’s healthcare professionals. Prior to starting Tiller-Hewitt HealthCare Strategies, Tammy spent 20 years with BJC HealthCare in St. Louis, Missouri.

Tammy holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, Maryville University, St. Louis, MO; a Master’s Degree in Healthcare Administration from Trinity University, San Antonio, TX; and is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, the nation’s leading professional society for healthcare leaders.

Tammy is also a member of the John Maxwell Team, a group of Maxwell certified coaches, trainers, speakers and professionals. Tammy offers workshops, seminars, keynote speaking and coaching to aid in personal and professional growth.

Thomas Woodard, MBA is the current manager of business development and physician strategy at Atlantic Health System, a five-hospital system in Northern New Jersey. He is responsible for all new business development programming, physician alignment strategies, and overall hospital growth specifically focusing on emerging markets for the system.

Formerly, Woodard was the manager of the Atlantic Accountable Care Organization (ACO), which encompasses Chilton Medical Center, Morristown Medical Center, Newton Medical Center, Overlook Medical Center, and The Valley Hospital as well as more than 1,400 physician members at the time. Prior to leading the Atlantic ACO, Woodard was a member of the administration team at Overlook Medical Center in Summit, NJ. As manager of physician relations and development, he managed physician outreach and marketing efforts for the 490-bed hospital.

Previously, Woodard was the director of market development at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Rahway and spent time with Columbus Hospital and Cathedral Healthcare System in Newark as director of senior services/community health and director marketing/public relations. Woodard received his M.B.A. degree from William Paterson University and his B.A. degree and a Certificate in Healthcare Administration (CHA) from Seton Hall University. He has more than 15 years of experience in the hospital/healthcare administration industry.

Woodard is an adjunct professor at his alma mater (Seton Hall) in the Masters in Healthcare Administration (MHA) program and a current member of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and the Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development (SHSMD).