Our Team

Ashrith Amarnath, MD

David Hopkins

David S. P. Hopkins is Research Advisor at Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center and Senior Advisor, Pacific Business Group on Health, where he served for many years as Director of Quality Measurement and Improvement. Earlier in his career he was Director of Corporate Affiliations and Policy at Stanford University Hospital. David received his M.S. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Operations Research from Stanford.

Libby Hoy

As the mother of three sons living with mitochondrial disease, Libby has over 25 years of experience navigating the healthcare system. Libby began volunteering as a Parent Mentor in 1995 and has been working to improve health systems and empower patients and families to be active partners in care ever since. Libby strives to build the infrastructure and capacity for healthcare organizations to engage all patients and families, from the bedside to the boardroom.

In 2010, Libby founded PFCCpartners to create a community of patients, families, providers and health care organizations committed to the shared learning of Patient & Family Centered Care practice. PFCCpartners also supports the PFANetwork, inclusive of more than 600 Patient Family Advisors working in healthcare settings across the country to partner for improvement in the quality, safety, experience and
the design of healthcare.

Robert Imhoff

Christopher Krawczyk, PhD

Dr. Christopher Krawczyk is Chief Analytics Officer with the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), Information Services Division. In this role, Dr. Krawczyk provides overall strategic direction for analyses of healthcare quality, outcomes, and utilization; for data services that facilitate stakeholder access to using data in their own analyses and work; and engagement of stakeholders to increase the usefulness and impact of OSHPD data and analytic products.

Thai Lee, DO, MPH

Dr. Thai Lee is currently a Senior Quality Specialist at Covered California. Thai serves as the primary liaison with Covered California’s stakeholder community, including health and dental plan issuers, advocates, providers, collaboratives, nonprofits, regulators, and other groups to further Covered California’s quality improvement and health equity agenda. Thai previously worked with underserved communities as a primary care physician with the San Francisco Department of Public Health. He has also worked in New Zealand and Minnesota, where he was a champion for indigenous and immigrant community health. In his recent role as Policy Analyst with the National Center for Youth Law, Thai worked with state legislators and diverse stakeholders in criminal justice and child welfare on the passage and implementation of bills and budget allocations supporting California youth. Thai received his DO degree from Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine and MPH in Health Policy and Management from UC Berkeley.

Julia Logan, MD

Helen Macfie

Helen Macfie, Pharm.D., F.A.B.C., is Chief Transformation Officer for MemorialCare, a four-hospital, 1,300 bed nonprofit health system including a Medical Foundation and over 2600 affiliated physicians, located in Southern California. She also serves as the Executive Administrator for MemorialCare’s Clinically Integrated Network. Her passion is the attainment of the safest and highest quality care for every patient and family, in pursuit of the Triple Aim for health care.

Helen has executive responsibility for facilitation of system level transformation and performance improvement for MemorialCare’s population health, clinical quality, patient safety, risk management, utilization, Lean and patient and family experience initiatives. Additional areas of responsibility include coordination of system-wide strategic planning activities, operational Value Added Teams and executive sponsorship of the system’s Physician Society Board and clinical Best Practice Teams.

Helen was recently re-named as one of the Top 50 Patient Safety Experts Leading the Field by Becker’s Hospital Review (2016, 2017, 2018), and sits on the Joint Commission Pioneers in Quality Advisory Panel. She speaks nationally at forums focused on improving health care strategy, physician partnerships to drive quality, integration of lean principles, and performance improvement and patient safety. She serves as faculty for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) Change, Patient Safety Executive and other courses, has been active on the Board of the California Hospital Association’s Hospital Quality Institute and state Quality Committee, is a member of the Board for California Hospital Assessment and Reporting (CHART), and several California statewide advisory boards (CQC). Most recently she has been serving as part of IHI’s Leadership Alliance, leading a workstream on “Big Waste” and serving on the Equity workstream. In addition, she is a MemorialCare Certified Lean Leader.

Helen earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree at UCSF School of Pharmacy, San Francisco, followed by post-graduate residencies in clinical pharmacy at UCSD and in pharmacy administration at Long Beach Memorial. Her FABC – Fellow of the Advisory Board Company – was earned for completing a two-year fellowship in Leadership of the Healthcare Enterprise for the 21st Century. She practiced as an acute care pharmacist for 13 years prior to moving into her organizational improvement work spanning the last 20+ years.

For fun, Helen loves travel, baseball, and movies. Go Dodgers!

Joan Maxwell

Bruce Spurlock, MD

Bruce Spurlock, MD is the Executive Director for Cal Hospital Compare. He is also President and CEO of Cynosure Health, a healthcare improvement organization whose vision is to create the day when suboptimal care is eliminated; when safe, reliable, and affordable healthcare is a reality for every patient. He leads and advises large improvement collaboratives at the regional, state, and national level designed to accelerate the implementation of evidence-based practices. He is a nationally known speaker on a broad range of health care topics including translating policy into practice, health care trends, and effectively engaging every stakeholder to drive improvement.

Kristof Stremikis

Kristof Stremikis is director of CHCF’s Market Analysis and Insight team, which promotes greater transparency and accountability in California’s health care system.

He oversees the foundation’s work to provide research and analysis to policymakers and other health leaders across the state to give a market-wide view of the complex health care ecosystem and to support informed decisions about California’s health care landscape. Previously, Kristof served as associate director for policy at the Pacific Business Group on Health, where he also oversaw the Purchaser Value Network. Prior to that, he spent six years at the Commonwealth Fund as senior researcher to the president. Kristof received a bachelor’s degree in economics, political science, and history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; a master’s of public policy from the University of California, Berkeley; and a master’s of health policy and management from Columbia University.

Ken Stuart

Ken has over 45 years of experience in administration and consulting for employee group benefit plans. He served as the administrative manager of the San Diego Electrical Health & Welfare Trust, San Diego Electrical Pension Trust and the NECA/IBEW Drug-Free Workforce Program. He was previously, employed for 16 1/2 years by one of the largest third-party administration and consulting firms in the US servicing numerous Taft-Hartley, single employer and municipal employee group benefit plans. Ken was recently appointed Chairman of the Healthcare Payments Data Review Committee pursuant to California Assembly Bill 1810, works for the California Health Care Coalition, and is the Chair for the Cal Hospital Board of Directors.

Kevin Worth

Kevin is a seasoned Healthcare Executive with more than 20 years’ experience in leadership positions in community, academic and integrated delivery healthcare settings.

In March 2019 Kevin was promoted to the Executive Director role for Kaiser Permanente for Risk Management, Patient Safety, and Patient and Family Centered Care.

Kevin joined Kaiser Permanente in 2003 as the Quality and Compliance Director for the Oakland and Richmond medical centers, from UCSF Medical Center where he held a similar position.

Kevin joined the Redwood City team in 2004, as the Area Quality Leader.  In 2007, Kevin transitioned to the role of Continuum Administrator.  In 2010, Kevin assumed an expanded role as the Area Quality Leader for Redwood City and South San Francisco, a position he held through 2013.  In 2013, Kevin accepted an assignment as Chief Operating Officer of the Richmond Medical Center.  Kevin returned to the Area Quality Leader position for Redwood City and South San Francisco in 2015.  Kevin was promoted to the position of Area Quality Leader for Kaiser Permanente Greater South San Francisco and San Francisco Area in 2016.

Gretchen E. Alkema, PhD

Gretchen E. Alkema is Vice President of Policy and Communications at The SCAN Foundation. In this role, Gretchen oversees the Foundation’s communications and policy strategy development and execution, championing a world where all people – regardless of age, life circumstance, or ability – live well in the place they call home. Prior, Gretchen served in the office of Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) as a Heinz/Health and Aging Policy Fellow where she advised on aging, health, mental health, and long-term care policy. She also worked in a variety of community-based care settings in both the public and private sectors.

Gretchen holds a PhD from the University of Southern California (Gerontology) and completed post-doctoral training at the VA Greater Los Angeles. She earned a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Michigan, and bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado. Gretchen enjoys hiking, 19^th century Russian novels, and a great cup of coffee.

Jamie Chan, Pharm.D.

Jamie Chan is the Vice President, Clinical Quality for Blue Shield of California. In this role, Jamie is responsible for the development and execution of the organization’s clinical quality strategy and operations.

Previously she has served as Senior Director, Clinical Quality at Blue Shield of California responsible for overseeing the Medicare Stars and Member Experience strategy. Prior to joining Blue Shield of California, Jamie worked at Kaiser Permanente as their National Executive Director for Pharmacy Quality and Medication Safety. She has managed Kaiser Permanente’s California Drug Information and Professional Services Department, was the California Pharmacy Benefits Leader, and the Drug Use Management Leader for Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California Region.

Jamie attended undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley then earned her PharmD degree from the University of California, San Francisco. She is also a graduate of the Advanced Leadership Program from the University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Business School. Jamie currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Pharmacy Quality Alliance.

Terry Hill, MD

Ashrith Amarnath, MD

Dr. Ashrith Amarnath is a strong physician leader with a focus on healthcare quality, patient safety, and delivery reform. He is trained in General Surgery with a background in Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. He is well regarded for his skills in performance improvement, cultural transformation, and high reliability in healthcare with a demonstrated history of working in health policy, innovation, as well as within hospital and healthcare systems. He is currently serving as the Medical Director, Plan Management for Covered California, the health benefits exchange for the State of California. In this role he acts as a technical advisor on all medical policy and standards issues for health plan contracting, oversees the medical, behavioral health, and clinical programs on quality and effective care delivery for insurance services, and drives continuous improvements to the level of health services provided with the goal of improving health outcomes. He sits on Technical Expert Panels for the National Quality Forum and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He held prior roles as the Patient Safety Officer for Sutter Valley Medical Foundation and Medical Consultant for the California Department of Health Care Services.

Patty Atkins

John Bott

David Hopkins

David S. P. Hopkins is Research Advisor at Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center and Senior Advisor, Pacific Business Group on Health, where he served for many years as Director of Quality Measurement and Improvement. Earlier in his career he was Director of Corporate Affiliations and Policy at Stanford University Hospital. David received his M.S. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Operations Research from Stanford.

Sayeed Khan, MD

Dr. Sayeed Khan is a physician executive with two decades of experience in coordinated managed care delivery systems for both Medicare and Medicaid. He is currently the Chief Medical Officer of Molina Healthcare of California, which serves the needs of more than half a million members in both Southern and Northern California. He previously held leadership positions at several large medical groups in Southern California, namely Healthcare Partners Medical Group, Heritage Provider Network, and AltaMed Health Services.

Dr. Khan completed his undergraduate studies at Boston University, completed medical schooling in Chicago, Illinois at Rush University, did his internship and residency at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Santa Clara, California. He is board certified in Internal Medicine. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, Dr. Khan practices as a part time hospitalist in Long Beach, California.

Barbara Kivowitz

Leslie Kowalewski

Christopher Krawczyk, PhD

Dr. Christopher Krawczyk is Chief Analytics Officer with the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), Information Services Division. In this role, Dr. Krawczyk provides overall strategic direction for analyses of healthcare quality, outcomes, and utilization; for data services that facilitate stakeholder access to using data in their own analyses and work; and engagement of stakeholders to increase the usefulness and impact of OSHPD data and analytic products.

Thai Lee, DO, MPH

Dr. Thai Lee is currently a Senior Quality Specialist at Covered California. Thai serves as the primary liaison with Covered California’s stakeholder community, including health and dental plan issuers, advocates, providers, collaboratives, nonprofits, regulators, and other groups to further Covered California’s quality improvement and health equity agenda. Thai previously worked with underserved communities as a primary care physician with the San Francisco Department of Public Health. He has also worked in New Zealand and Minnesota, where he was a champion for indigenous and immigrant community health. In his recent role as Policy Analyst with the National Center for Youth Law, Thai worked with state legislators and diverse stakeholders in criminal justice and child welfare on the passage and implementation of bills and budget allocations supporting California youth. Thai received his DO degree from Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine and MPH in Health Policy and Management from UC Berkeley.

Sharon Lutz

Helen Macfie

Helen Macfie, Pharm.D., F.A.B.C., is Chief Transformation Officer for MemorialCare, a four-hospital, 1,300 bed nonprofit health system including a Medical Foundation and over 2600 affiliated physicians, located in Southern California. She also serves as the Executive Administrator for MemorialCare’s Clinically Integrated Network. Her passion is the attainment of the safest and highest quality care for every patient and family, in pursuit of the Triple Aim for health care.

Helen has executive responsibility for facilitation of system level transformation and performance improvement for MemorialCare’s population health, clinical quality, patient safety, risk management, utilization, Lean and patient and family experience initiatives. Additional areas of responsibility include coordination of system-wide strategic planning activities, operational Value Added Teams and executive sponsorship of the system’s Physician Society Board and clinical Best Practice Teams.

Helen was recently re-named as one of the Top 50 Patient Safety Experts Leading the Field by Becker’s Hospital Review (2016, 2017, 2018), and sits on the Joint Commission Pioneers in Quality Advisory Panel. She speaks nationally at forums focused on improving health care strategy, physician partnerships to drive quality, integration of lean principles, and performance improvement and patient safety. She serves as faculty for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) Change, Patient Safety Executive and other courses, has been active on the Board of the California Hospital Association’s Hospital Quality Institute and state Quality Committee, is a member of the Board for California Hospital Assessment and Reporting (CHART), and several California statewide advisory boards (CQC). Most recently she has been serving as part of IHI’s Leadership Alliance, leading a workstream on “Big Waste” and serving on the Equity workstream. In addition, she is a MemorialCare Certified Lean Leader.

Helen earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree at UCSF School of Pharmacy, San Francisco, followed by post-graduate residencies in clinical pharmacy at UCSD and in pharmacy administration at Long Beach Memorial. Her FABC – Fellow of the Advisory Board Company – was earned for completing a two-year fellowship in Leadership of the Healthcare Enterprise for the 21st Century. She practiced as an acute care pharmacist for 13 years prior to moving into her organizational improvement work spanning the last 20+ years.

For fun, Helen loves travel, baseball, and movies. Go Dodgers!

Elliott Main

Scott Masten

Mary Schramke

Bruce Spurlock, MD

Bruce Spurlock, MD is the Executive Director for Cal Hospital Compare. He is also President and CEO of Cynosure Health, a healthcare improvement organization whose vision is to create the day when suboptimal care is eliminated; when safe, reliable, and affordable healthcare is a reality for every patient. He leads and advises large improvement collaboratives at the regional, state, and national level designed to accelerate the implementation of evidence-based practices. He is a nationally known speaker on a broad range of health care topics including translating policy into practice, health care trends, and effectively engaging every stakeholder to drive improvement.

Jennifer Wieckowski

Jennifer Wieckowski, MSG, is the Senior Executive Director of Health Services Advisory Group, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) for California and Arizona. She is responsible for providing oversight and direction to the QIN-QIO tasks to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, economy, and quality of services delivered to Medicare beneficiaries in California. Her expertise is in healthcare quality and data analysis to drive improvement in order to achieve the best possible patient outcomes with community providers, such as hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, and community-based organizations. Prior to joining HSAG in 2008, Ms. Wieckowski was project administrator at the California Health Innovation Center for Partners in Care Foundation. In this role, Ms. Wieckowski was engaged in the strategic operations with the California Departments of Aging and Public Health, National Council on Aging, health systems, physician groups, foundations, education, nonprofits, and aging organizations to disseminate evidence-based health promotion programs to high-risk older adults within California. She also worked for the California Center for Long Term Care Integration, housed at the University of Southern California. She earned a Master of Science in gerontology from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University. She resides with her husband and three kids in Los Angeles, California.

Kevin Worth

Paul Young

Asraf Gulzar

Ashraf has over 26 years of healthcare experience. Prior to joining Santa Clara Valley Medical Center as a Quality Improvement Manager, she was Clinical Director of Quality, overseeing Accreditation, Regulation and Licensing (AR&L), Lead Quality Nurse Consultant and Department Manager for Oncology/ Hematology/Infusion clinic, at Kaiser Santa Clara. Prior to joining Kaiser, she was a Director of Quality Management and Infection Prevention and Control Program at O’Connor Hospital. She has also worked as Clinical and Business Manager of Wound Care Clinic and Hyperbaric Unit, Manager for Medical Surgical Telemetry Unit, and Clinical Educator for Oncology Unit at O’Connor Hospital. She was also the Consultant for the Joint Commission International. As a staff nurse, she has worked in Oncology and Cardiology units. She also has served as a faculty for School of Nursing at The Aga Khan University School of Nursing.

She received Master’s in Nursing Degree from San Jose State University, Bachelor’s in Nursing Administration and Diploma in Nursing from The Aga Khan University Karachi, Pakistan. She is certified as a HACP (Healthcare Accreditation Certified Professional), CPHQ (Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality and Improvement Advisor (IA). She is also a member of Sigma Theta Tau Honor society for nurses and several other professional members including National Association for Healthcare Quality and California Association for Healthcare Quality.

Daisy Tam

Craig Uejo, MD

As Chief Quality Officer, Dr. Uejo oversees efforts to further elevate the quality and safety of health care at Scripps’ acute-care hospitals and outpatient clinics across San Diego County. He also directs performance improvement initiatives and ensures compliance with the data reporting requirements of regulatory agencies.

Dr. Uejo also serves as medical director of occupational health and safety at Scripps, a role he has held since 2012. In this position, Dr. Uejo manages the employee health and worker’s compensation programs for Scripps and oversees the clinical and administrative operations of the employee care clinics available for Scripps’ workforce.

Previously, Dr. Uejo served as Scripps’ lead corporate physician for infection prevention and employee safety. He also was medical director of Scripps’ employee wellness program. Dr. Uejo’s career as a physician spans more than 25 years, most of which has been in the fields of occupational and environmental medicine, as well as employee health.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Uejo earned his medical degree from the University of Southern California. He completed his medical residency at UC San Diego and UC Irvine and later earned a master’s degree in public health from San Diego State University. Dr. Uejo is board certified in preventive medicine with an emphasis in occupational health.

Tracy Fisk

Mahil Senathirajah

Alex Stack

Richele Benevent