Benjamin Anderson is vice president for Rural Health and Hospitals at the Colorado Hospital Association, where he provides leadership and direction in the development and execution of the association’s rural strategies, advocates on behalf of rural hospitals and health systems, and works to develop strategic partnerships with organizations that affect the health of rural Americans.
Before joining CHA, Anderson served as CEO of Kearny County Hospital a comprehensive rural health care delivery complex in Lakin, Kan., that serves patients of 30 nationalities within a 180-mile radius. Anderson is a recognized leader in transforming rural health care through a mission-driven approach to recruiting physicians to underserved areas, tying together domestic and international services. Kearny County Hospital now is at the forefront of innovations in health care delivery to improve care to underserved U.S. populations, and his work recently was recognized on CBS Sunday Morning, in POLITICO and in Sports Illustrated.
Anderson was named to Becker’s Hospital Review’s Rising Star list of health care leaders under 40, and one of Modern Healthcare’s 2014 Up and Comers. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English, a Master of Business Administration from Drury University in Springfield, Mo., and a Master of Health Care Delivery Science from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.
Kim Blue uses her insights and a strategic perspective to help people align their passions, talents and values for success. She created and executed organizational blueprints for top-flight organizations, including ESPN and Microsoft. In October 2020, she joined Zoom as the Global Head of People Experience Partners, where she leads the company’s worldwide team of HR business partners.
Throughout her career, she has earned a reputation as a trusted adviser who is able to motivate leaders to embrace growth, change, diversity and inclusion to improve themselves and their organizations. Leading diversity and inclusion efforts at some of today’s top brands, she built a collective understanding that inclusion allows for all perspectives to have a place at the table that is not conditioned by agreement or being like-minded. Blue believes when diversity and inclusion are part of the culture of any organization, there is the opportunity for them to step beyond the shore of diversity and really explore the ocean that is inclusion. That ocean is filled with so much possibility if we are willing to be vulnerable, humble and explore.
Blue is a graduate of East Carolina University and Queens University of Charlotte, and she lives in Atlanta. She is an Executive Board Member at The Black in HR and is active in other not-for-profit organizations. In her spare time, you’ll usually find her cheering for her son, Avery Ross, from the sideline of a sporting event.
Larry Goldberg has more than 45 years of health care finance knowledge. He is a well-known and recognized expert on Medicare payment issues and frequently makes speeches to groups regarding federal payment legislation and regulations, and the ever-changing perspectives in Washington, D.C., regarding health care.
Goldberg retired as director of Deloitte and Touche’s Washington National Affairs for Health Care office in June 2006. He served as the firm’s “listening post” on federal — Medicare and Medicaid — health care financial issues, and assisted firm practitioners and clients on health care financing issues for more than 22 years. At Deloitte, he wrote the firm’s well-known and respected Washington Commentary and Health Care Review publications. Upon retiring, he formed Larry Goldberg Consulting. He currently assists several state hospital associations and Third Party Reimbursement Solutions, LLC. Goldberg continues to write and provide to clients his Washington Perspectives, analyzing changes in Medicare legislative and regulatory payments.
Mark Graban is an internationally recognized consultant, published author, professional speaker and blogger. He builds upon a deep education in engineering and management with practical experience working with executives and front-line employees in multiple industries to synthesize and practice methods, including Lean management, continuous improvement, statistical methods and people-centered leadership approaches.
Graban humbly helps others learn how to improve and sustain performance. In his health care work, this means improving the quality of care and patient safety, while also reducing cost and improving the workplace experience. Across multiple sectors, goals also include improving the customer (or patient) experience; helping the development of leaders and employees; and building stronger, more adaptive organizations for the long term. Graban consults part-time as a senior advisor for health care clients with the firm Value Capture. He also is a senior advisor to the technology and software company KaiNexus.
His latest book, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, is a management book about using simple, practical statistical methods that help leaders at all levels overreact less to their metrics, which frees up time for real, focused sustainable improvement. Graban also is the author of the book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement and has co-authored a second book, Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements.
Graban earned a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from Northwestern University, as well as a Master of Science in mechanical engineering and an MBA as a Fellow in the MIT Sloan Leaders for Global Operations Program.
Daniel Kraft is a Stanford and Harvard-trained physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur and innovator. With more than 25 years of experience in clinical practice, biomedical research and health care innovation, Kraft has chaired the Medicine for Singularity University since its inception in 2008, and is the Founder and Chair of Exponential Medicine, a program that explores convergent, rapidly developing technologies and their potential in biomedicine and health care.
He has multiple scientific publications and medical device, immunology and stem cell-related patents through faculty positions with Stanford University School of Medicine and as clinical faculty for the pediatric bone marrow transplantation service at the University of California San Francisco.
Dr. Nicole Lipkin is an internationally recognized leadership expert, business psychologist and speaker, and she is author of two popular business books What Keeps Leaders Up at Night: Recognizing and Resolving Your Most Troubling Management Issues and Y In the Workplace: Managing the “Me First” Generation. As a business psychologist, her goal is to help companies develop resonant, powerful and masterful leaders.
Combining the science of human behavior with practical approaches to business and leadership, Dr. Lipkin has been helping leaders transform their approach and their cultures for the past 15 years. After years in corporate America developing and implementing leadership programming and training, Dr. Lipkin founded Equilibria Leadership Consulting in 2007. This is an international firm based in the U.S. focused on helping companies, leaders and teams improve management and leadership skills; strengthen the leadership pipeline; and develop behaviors and practices that help increase organizational resilience and sustainability. She also founded Equilibria Psychological and Consultation Services, a group psychology practice located in Philadelphia, Penn..
Dr. Lipkin is a regular contributor to the broadcast community and has been featured on NPR, NBC, CBS, Fox Business News, Forbes.com, Entrepreneur.com, BusinessInsider.com, New York Times Magazine, and numerous other media outlets both nationally and internationally.
Dr. Lipkin has a doctorate in clinical psychology, a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Criminal Justice. She is a faculty member at the industry-leading Center for Creative Leadership and also is a board-certified executive coach. Dr. Lipkin was a board member of the Independence Arts Studio and currently is an Advisory Council Member of City Security and Resilience Networks in England, and a board member of Fearless Athletics.
Michael Polito formed Third Party Reimbursement Solutions, LLC in April of 2008. TPR has evolved into a national consulting firm and provides full-service Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement services. The cornerstone of our growth and success lies within the strategic hiring of high-level and experienced regulatory personnel, in addition to employing a robust data and technology department.
Before creating TPR, Polito served as a health care director out of the Charlotte, N.C., office at PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP. His experience includes 11 total years at PwC, at which time he focused on hospital regulatory payment issues, client services and product/business development.
While with PwC, he directed the preparation and analysis of numerous cost reports for a wide range of facilities, including acute care hospitals, home offices, rural health clinics, home health agencies and outpatient rehab facilities. Polito also reviewed financial statement estimates, contractual reserve adjustments and performed due diligence services for a wide variety of clients. He successfully developed a Medicare wage index assessment program, and a methodology to identify Medicaid eligibility days for inclusion in the Medicare Disproportionate Share calculation, both of which have been adopted by PwC on a national level.
Polito has directly managed in excess of 350 Disproportionate Share engagements that have generated more than $230 million in additional reimbursement for his clients. In addition, he has been directly responsible for the delivery of more than 600 Medicare wage index projects, which has generated in excess of $200 million of revenue for his clients.
Tracey Roland is a Principal at Third-Party Reimbursement Solutions, LLC. Before joining TPR in 2018, she was the founder and served as President of INTEGRITY Regulatory and Reimbursement Services, LLC for 10 years.
Roland has more than 25 years of health care financial experience, with an extensive background in revenue enhancement and federal and state regulatory issues for hospitals and health systems. Before starting her own company, Roland worked for eight years for Ernst & Young LLP. She served as the regulatory practice leader in their Hartford, Conn., and Iselin, N.J., offices.
Roland was credited for developing E&Y’s national Medicare wage index services and she also served as a lead instructor for the E&Y’s reimbursement and compliance courses. She is a frequent presenter at both northeast and national health care conferences. She reviews and prepares Medicare and Medicaid cost reports, performs hospital consolidation and acquisition analyses, evaluates federal and state reimbursement, and files appeals and reopening requests.
Roland represents hospitals in negotiations with third-party intermediaries during the entrance and exit conferences and throughout the appeal process. In addition, she has served as a liaison between her health care clients and Congress.
