AdvaMed® Payment Policy Forum

Rebecca Adams is the lead health care analyst for WP Intelligence, where she examines policy and industry trends including those involving health care coverage and cost drivers. Among the topics on her radar are developments and policies shaping the industry including delivery systems, innovation, life sciences, and insurance. 

Rebecca comes from KFF Health News, where she was responsible for providing expert health care news and analysis to major media outlets around the country, including The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, ABC News, and CBS News. 

Before joining KFF Health News, Rebecca served as a reporter and editor for CQ Roll Call. She covered all the major legislative health care battles in Washington after joining CQ Roll Call in 1998 until she became an editor in 2015. She directed coverage of the 2017 Republican effort to repeal the health care law and the ever-changing course of the pandemic. 

Rebecca’s first byline in The Washington Post appeared in 2003 in a freelance Health and Science section feature. She has contributed to multiple editions of three books about the government, including Congress A to Z and Politics in America. 

Her fellowship awards include the KFF journalism fellowship and the USC Annenberg Health Journalism Fellowship. 

Before coming to Washington in 1998, Rebecca wrote for The Arizona Republic, The Chattanooga Times, and The Macon Telegraph. She graduated from Emory University with a bachelor’s degree in political science. 

Jeannie Biniek -Fuglesten is an associate director for the Program on Medicare Policy at KFF. She focuses on providing analyses used to develop data-driven approaches to pressing national health policy issues, including the role of Medicare Advantage, the delivery and financing of care for people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, Medicare spending trends and efforts to reform provider payment. Her work has been published in Health Affairs and JAMA and cited by The Washington Post, The New York Times and USA Today, among others. Dr. Biniek -Fuglesten has also testified on health policy issues before Congress.

She previously worked as an economist on the staff of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee during the passage and initial implementation of the Affordable Care Act. She also held positions at the Health Care Cost Institute, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, NERA Economic Consulting and Bienestar Human Services.

Dr. Biniek -Fuglesten received a bachelor’s in economics from UCLA, a master’s in applied economics from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in health policy with a concentration in health economics from Harvard University.

Carol Blackford is the Executive Vice President of Payment and Health Care Delivery Policy at AdvaMed.  AdvaMed’s Payment and Health Care Delivery Policy department develops and advocates for policies to ensure and expand patient access to medical technologies by improving coverage, coding, and payment processes used by Medicare and commercial payers. 

Ms. Blackford comes to AdvaMed with over two decades of health care policy experience.  Prior to joining AdvaMed in 2023, Ms. Blackford served as a Senior Executive and Director of the Hospital and Ambulatory Policy Group in the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).  In this role, Ms. Blackford had responsibility for payment and benefits policy on the acute care side of the Medicare Fee-For-Service Program.  During her 28-year career at CMS, Ms. Blackford lead work in the Medicare fee-for-service program and served in a number of enterprise-wide leadership roles, including serving as the Agency’s COVID-19 Pandemic Response Coordinator.  

Carol holds a B.A. in Political Science from McDaniel College and a Master of Public Policy from The College of William and Mary. 

Tara Burke, PhD is Vice President for Payment and Healthcare Delivery at the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed). In this role, she is responsible for a variety of policy issues, with a significant focus on coding, coverage, and payment for diagnostic tests. She joined AdvaMed in 2022 from the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), where she served as Senior Director of Public Policy & Advocacy. At AMP she led efforts to inform and influence regulatory and reimbursement issues affecting molecular diagnostics. Dr. Burke has over a decade of biomedical research experience specializing in biochemistry, molecular genetics, and epigenetics.

After receiving her BS in Molecular Biology from Vanderbilt University and a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics from The University of Virginia, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the NIH.  

Deborah Godes is a Principal at McDermott+, a consulting firm that serves health industry clients with market access and policy experience supported by data analytics capabilities. Deborah is a seasoned regulatory and reimbursement consultant, advising clients on reimbursement and policy strategy for medical devices, diagnostics, biologics, and health services with public and private payers, including CMS and managed care organizations. She focuses primarily on coding, coverage, payment and other reimbursement models for new and existing products and services.

She has over twenty years of experience providing strategic, operational and policy consultative services to companies of all sizes from start-up organizations to Fortune 50 companies. Deborah offers clients the ability to analyze and manipulate reimbursement databases to buttress data-oriented policy positions.

Dr. Gruner specializes in the prevention and treatment of sports medicine injuries. Some of his procedures include minimally invasive ultrasound-guided carpal tunnel release, percutaneous tenotomy (Tenex procedures), tendon scraping, neural releases, ultrasound guided fasciotomy for compartment syndrome, and regenerative medicine injections (BMAC, Lipogems, Prolotherapy, Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP)). He received his Registered in Musculoskeletal® (RMSK®) certificate which is the highest standard of ultrasound in medicine. 

Dr. Gruner is the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Limber Health, a digital health solution for patients and providers, designed to reduce costs and improve the care of individuals with musculoskeletal conditions, such as low back and knee pain.  

He is passionate about teaching and helping patients understand the evidence of sports medicine treatments. Working with Medicare (CMS), leading national organizations, and regenerative registries, he is a strong believer in measuring patient reported outcomes to demonstrate value for various treatments. 

Zoë comes to AdvaMed from Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX), where she was most recently the Senior Manager of Research and Content, managing teams that performed medical device research and data analyses to support evidence-based purchasing and utilization decisions for hospital systems.   

Zoë started her career at Lumere (fka Procured Health), a health-tech startup as a medical device analyst providing clinical research, FDA regulatory and safety information, and purchasing data for medical device analyses at hospitals. Since then she has held a variety of positions, which included ownership of the research and data for the Women’s Health and General Surgery service lines, prior to moving into management roles.   

Zoë holds a BS degree in Physics from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Rochester in New York.    

Jordan Alyssa Heyman serves as Senior Director, Policy and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Government Relations (OGR) at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). In this role, she leads a team of specialists in federal regulatory policy, legislative analysis, coding and reimbursement to advance the priorities of orthopaedic surgeons and their patients.  

Ms. Heyman brings to her role over a decade of experience in healthcare policy and advocacy. She was most recently Director of Healthcare Policy (and lobbying) for the National Association of Manufacturers. Prior to that, she was Director of Partnerships and Coalitions at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. She also served on Capitol Hill as Health Policy Advisor in the personal offices of two members of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means. Her career began as Deputy Political Director on a highly competitive campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives. In these roles, she has built expertise in policy analysis, congressional and executive branch relations, political strategy and coalition management.  

Ms. Heyman holds an MBA from the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School and a BA in history from Tufts University. 

Zach Hochstetler is the Vice President of CPT Coding and Payment at the American Medical Association’s Health Solutions business unit. He leads the strategic development of the AMA’s CPT® code set and CPT Editorial Panel process, working closely with key stakeholders to deliver trusted, high-value data to the healthcare ecosystem. Under his leadership, CPT continues to evolve as the definitive standard for procedure coding, ensuring the AMA remains at the forefront of healthcare innovation, data integrity, and reporting accuracy.

Jennifer Holloman has over 14 years of experience leading programs in federal, private, and non-profit healthcare organizations. In her current role at the American Hospital Association (AHA), Jennifer leads healthcare policy efforts for issues such as physician reimbursement, alternative payment models, telehealth, and social determinants of health. Prior to joining the AHA, Jennifer served as Senior Director of Strategic Alliances for The Healthcare Council and its wholly owned GPO subsidiary, ShareSource. 

Previously, she was Manager of Telehealth Services at Atlantic Health System, where she established a new virtual care department, and served as Acting Chief of Virtual Health for the US Army Office of The Surgeon General. She began her career as a federal healthcare consultant with BearingPoint and Deloitte. Ms. Holloman earned masters’ degrees in Health Administration and Business Administration from Baylor University, and graduated with honors with bachelors’ degrees in Marketing and Management from Virginia Tech. 

Dr. Jacobs is a highly effective senior executive leader in public service with a track record of success. Throughout his tenure in state and federal government, he has dedicated his professional life to creating an American healthcare system that better meets the needs of each unique patient, by strengthening primary care, promoting access to behavioral health, reducing disparities in care, and driving health system transformation towards value-based and accountable care.

Dr. Jacobs is the first Chief Transformation Officer in the Center for Medicare at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where he leads center-wide efforts for delivery system reform. Medicare is responsible for more than 1 in 5 health care dollars spent in the US and covers more than 63 million Americans. Under his leadership, Medicare has finalized important changes to pay for services delivered by community health workers to underserved populations, strengthen primary care through advanced primary care teams, and expand access to mental health counselors and therapists. As a leader of CMS’ National Quality Strategy, he also led reforms in value-based programs to reward excellent care delivered to underserved populations and created the concept of Universal Foundation to align quality measures across CMS programs and reduce burden.

Prior to this role, he was the Chief Medical Officer and first Chief Innovation Officer for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS), where he helped oversee the state’s Medicaid program and led the agency’s COVID-19 pandemic response. He started, operationalized, and managed a nationally acclaimed program that paired academic medical centers with long-term care facilities, which was funded for $175 million by the state legislature.

Dr. Jacobs is an effective manager widely regarded as a personable, strategic, and effective change agent who is well-liked by colleagues. He is a talented oral and written communicator, and has authored several articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal for Public Health, Health Affairs Forefront, Washington Post, and New York Times. Dr. Jacobs is a Harvard-trained, board-certified, and practicing Internal Medicine physician, and continues to see patients an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Georgetown University.

Since early 2019, Jim Jeffries has served as senior vice president, head of public affairs, for AdvaMed®.  

Prior to his time here, Jeffries served as head of executive communications for the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen at Vulcan, Inc., in Seattle, where his role was to help build Allen’s public profile and lead his external and internal communications efforts across Allen’s vast and varied business and philanthropic pursuits. 

From 2009 to 2016, Jeffries served as senior director of communications for U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and the Senate HELP committee where he led the year-long public affairs efforts pushing for the passage of the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act and the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (which replaced No Child Left Behind), among other major HELP committee successes. 

From 2002 to 2008, Jeffries worked in communications for several members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including House Republican leadership, and spent a year at the language strategy firm Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research where he worked with Fortune 500 companies, trade associations, and political clients. 

Purva Rawal is a nationally recognized leader in value-based care with experience spanning the academic, government and private sectors. Most recently, she was the Chief Strategy Officer at the CMS Innovation Center. She played a key role in the conceptualization of a strategy that was grounded in accountability and whole, person-centered care, and oversaw its implementation across the Center.

Prior to that, Dr. Rawal spent a decade in policy research and business strategy consulting on value-based payment and health system transformation. She was also an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University teaching classes on the Politics of Health Care and mentoring students. In 2016, she published The Affordable Care Act: Examining the Facts and has written for internationally recognized publications including the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Health Affairs. From 2005-2010, Dr. Rawal served as professional staff on the Senate Budget Committee during the Affordable Care Act and as an advisor to Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). She started her career in DC as a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering. Dr. Rawal received her B.A. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University. 

Jacob Shiff is Chief AI & Technology Officer at the CMS Innovation Center, where he focuses on payment policy to enable the effective adoption of AI and technology across the healthcare system. Prior to joining CMS, Jacob co-founded and led Anomaly, a venture-backed startup streamlining the health insurance billing and payment process, and worked at Redesign Health, Flatiron Health and Google. Jacob has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and MBA from Stanford University. 

Sherry Smith is the Director of Physician Payment Policy at the American Medical Association.  She is a national expert on the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS), which is the system used to distribute fee-for-service payment to health care professionals by Medicare and other payers.  She serves as a key negotiator with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in securing acceptance of more than 90% of the AMA/Specialty Society RVS Update Committee (RUC) recommendations each year.  

Prior to her career at the AMA, Ms. Smith was employed by the University of Chicago Hospitals and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, with a focus on Medicare hospital payment policy.  Ms. Smith obtained her Master of Science degree in Health Policy and Administration at the University of Illinois and her Bachelor of Business degree in Accounting from Western Illinois University.  She is a certified public accountant.   

Amber Stock, MPH, joins AdvaMed with more than a decade of policy and government affairs experience. Most recently, she served as a lead policy analyst at the MITRE Corporation, where she provided health care policy thought leadership to CMS and HHS and, assisted with policy development in support of federal health program implementation. Prior to her work at MITRE, she served on government affairs teams at the American Academy of Neurology and the American Academy of Family Physicians.  

Amber holds a BA degree in Urban Studies/Affairs from the University of Minnesota and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. 

Focuses on health care policy in Congress, from prescription drug prices to mental health. Formerly: The Hill

Kirsten Tullia, J.D., MPH, joined the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) in 2021 and serves as Senior Vice President in the Payment & Health Care Delivery Policy Department.  In this position she covers a wide range of policy issues, with a particular focus on the Medicare fee-for-service payment systems, alternative payment models, and quality programs.  Prior to joining AdvaMed, Kirsten was the Department Head for Health Policy at the MITRE Corporation, where she led teams supporting the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in addressing healthcare quality and payment issues through strategic planning, research and evaluation, and regulatory development.  She holds a B.A. from Southern Virginia University, a J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law, and an M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.  

James Vavricek has over two decades of experience in federal government relations. After working on the Capitol Hill staff of U.S. Senator Ben Nelson with a focus on healthcare and education issues, James joined the American Association of Neuromuscular & Electrodiagnostic Medicine, where he worked on both state and federal legislative and regulatory issues relevant to the diagnosis and treatment of peripheral nerve disease. As the leader of regulatory efforts at the American College of Cardiology, James and his team work to ensure cardiovascular patients have access to important services and therapies by pursuing policy goals across government agencies and functions.