Total Number of Persons at $40 per person ______________________

Ms. Montanaro is a dedicated health care advocate for poor, disenfranchised and vulnerable populations in the US and globally. She is actively involved in health care policy and system reform, particularly as it relates to primary care. She also advocates for breast cancer treatment and research.

Her current professional Board affiliations include: Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island (Vice President), Rhode Island Public Expenditures Council (Trustee), Electronic Health Records of RI (Secretary), The Molar Express (Secretary), Shoulder to Shoulder (Treasurer), RI Health Centers Association (Past Chair), Woman and Infants’ Hospital’s Breast Health Center Steering Committee, RI Quality Institute’s HIT Steering Committee and Policy/Legal Committee, National Association of Community Health Centers Health Policy Committee and Pay for Performance Subcommittee, Robert Graham Center (AAFP) Advisory Board and the RI State Task Force on Medicaid Reform.

PANELIST:   Christopher F. Koller, Rhode Island Health Insurance Commissioner

Mr. Koller is Rhode Island’s first Health Insurance Commissioner. Created by legislation in 2004, the Health Insurance Commissioner is responsible for regulating health plan rates, reserves and business conduct, consumer protection, fair treatment of providers and “directing the insurers towards policies that advance the welfare of the public”. Appointed to the role in 2005 by Governor Donald Carcieri, Mr. Koller also serves as the Administration’s health policy coordinator and convenes the Administration’s efforts to develop, coordinate and implement a comprehensive health policy agenda to improve access to health care, maintain and raise standards of quality and address rising medical costs.

Prior to this post, Mr. Koller was the Chief Executive Officer of Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island, a 73,000 member HMO founded in 1994 by Rhode Island’s Community Health Centers that primarily serves enrollees in RIte Care, the State’s managed care program for low and moderate-income families. Under Mr. Koller’s leadership, NHPRI was the first community health center affiliated health plan to attain an “Excellent” rating from the National Committee for Quality Assurance and it achieved national recognition for its unique partnerships with community health centers, the state and private institutions in the service of medically underserved populations.

Mr. Koller is former chair of RI’s HMO Association and the founding Chair of the Association of Community Affiliated Plans, a national membership association of 17 Medicaid Managed Care health plans, which comprises approximately one million enrollees. In 2002 he chaired the Health Care Advisory Committee for the transition team of Governor-elect Carcieri. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Program of Public Health at Brown Medical School. Mr. Koller has also been a contracts and operations manager in a series of positions for an HMO in Buffalo, New York and served as a consultant to the Bureau of Primary Health Care. Mr. Koller is a summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, and holds Master’s Degrees in Management and Religion from Yale University.

PANELIST:   Laura Adams, President & CEO, Rhode Island
Quality Institute

Laura Adams is the President and CEO of the Rhode Island Quality Institute, a collaboration of the top leadership of health care stakeholders working together to transform the health care system. The Quality Institute led the effort in Rhode Island as it became national beta test site of the SureScripts’ electronic prescribing system and is currently leading and coordinating multiple initiatives to promote the adoption and full use of health information technology throughout Rhode Island. The organization was one of nine Regional Health Information Organizations selected to develop national consensus practices for state-level health information exchange.

Laura was selected to serve on the inaugural board of the American Health Informatics Successor Inc., an independent, sustainable public-private enterprise whose role is to bring together the best of the public, non-profit and private sectors into a trusted, purpose-driven organization for the creation and use of a secure interoperable nationwide health information system.

Laura is a faculty member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston since its inception. She directed the IHI/VHA Idealized Design of the Intensive Care Unit project and was a long-time faculty member of VHA’s Transforming the Intensive Care Unit initiative. She also led the governance consulting for the Improving Performance in Practice Initiative, a Robert Wood Johnson-funded collaborative initiative of the American Board of Medical Specialties, and the Boards and Societies of Internal Medicine, Family Physicians and Pediatrics. She serves on the National Advisory Board for this initiative.

Laura was Founder, President and CEO of Decision Support Systems, a New York-based company specializing in Internet-based health care decision support. She was among the first to bring the principles of healthcare quality improvement to the Middle East, in conjunction with Donald M. Berwick, MD and the Harvard Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East. She traveled in the U.S. and Europe with Dr. W. Edwards Deming as a student in the study of statistical-based quality improvement.

Her publications include co-authoring with Gustafson, et al, "Developing and Testing a Model to Predict Outcomes of Organizational Change", Health Services Research, 38(2), 751-776 and co-authoring "Collaborating with Consumers to Advance Health Knowledge and Improve Practice" in Herzlinger, R, Consumer-Driven Health Care: Implications for Providers, Payers and Policymakers, 2004" She also co-authored "A Draft Framework for Measuring Progress Towards the Development of a National Health Information Infrastructure, BMC Medical Informatics Decision Making, June, 2005. Laura also co-authored "Improving comfort and communication in the ICU: a practical new tool for palliative care performance measurement and feedback", Nelson, J., Mulkerin, C., Adams, L. and Pronovost, P.; Quality and Safety in Health Care, Aug 2006.

Laura’s experience in healthcare at the senior management level included her position as Vice President of Patient Services at Parkview Episcopal Medical Center in Colorado and Assistant Administrator for the Universal Health Services’ New Orleans area hospitals. She is Thundermist Health Center’s 2007 Francesco Cannistra Memorial Award recipient for visionary leadership and dedication to improving health care quality in Rhode Island.