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Medical Rehabilitation Patient Perspective Speaker: Leading Professionally, Battling Personally
Laurel Dupont, PT, DPT, Chief Executive Officer, Northshore Rehabilitation Hospital
Tuesday, October 6, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. ET

For inpatient rehabilitation hospitals and units across the country, March 2020 was a month of rapid change. This was no different for Northshore Rehabilitation Hospital, led by Chief Executive Officer, Laurel DuPont. While Laurel was focused on the health and safety of employees and patients at her newly opened hospital, she soon had to focus her own health when she was failed a daily temperature screen when checking in for work. During this session, Laurel will talk about her perspective, from a hospital leader, to a COVID-19 patient, and the recovery process in a medical rehabilitation setting.
 

Lessons Learned During a Quarter Century in International Medical Rehabilitation Accreditation
Christine MacDonell, FACRM, Managing Director, Medical Rehabilitation and International Aging Services/Medical Rehabilitation, CARF International
Tuesday, October 6, 2020 at 3:00 p.m. ET

Chris began her varied career in the health care industry as an occupational therapist after graduating from the University of Southern California.  While still in California, she became an administrator of a full continuum of care.  Chris came to CARF in 1991.  She has served as the Managing Director of Medical Rehabilitation and Aging Services during her time with CARF. Chris is a Fellow of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Chris is the 2019 recipient of the American Medical Rehabilitation Provider Association’s National Leadership Award and the 2019 Stanley Coulter Lecturer at ACRM. Chris has represented CARF International at international, national, regional and local meetings to promote and interpret standards and the use of accreditation as a quality business and clinical strategy throughout the continuum of care. She is part of the medical rehabilitation team responsible for the training of CARF surveyors and also the development and revision of CARF standards.

U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals for Rehabilitation: Upcoming Changes to Ranking Methodology
Ben Harder, Chief of Data Analysis, U.S. News & World Report
Wednesday, October 7, 2020 at 3:00 p.m. ET

In July 2021, the U.S. News Best Hospitals for Rehabilitation rankings will for the first time incorporate patient outcomes and other objective measures into its evaluation of the nation’s 1,000-some inpatient rehabilitation facilities and rehabilitation units. In this session, U.S. News’ analytics chief will describe how his team’s analysis and rankings will incorporate data from CMS IRF Compare website, the American Hospital Association Annual Survey Database, and other data sources. Participants will have the opportunity to provide input into how U.S. News’ evaluation of rehabilitation facilities should evolve in the future.

Ben Harder oversees U.S. News & World Report's portfolio of data-driven patient decision-support tools. Harder is a healthcare journalist whose work has appeared in BMJ, JAMA, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Science News, USA Today, the Washington Post and other publications, as well as the anthology Best American Science Writing 2005. He graduated from Harvard University and completed a journalism fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002. He has been an editor at U.S. News since 2007.

Evidence-Based Leadership & The Silver Lining
Craig Deao, MHA, Senior Leader, Managing Director, Author and National Speaker, Studer Group
Tuesday, October 6, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. ET

Admist the disruption and suffering caused by the pandemic, healthcare organizations also find themselves in a rare moment of grand experimentation. Fueled by sweeping changes to regulation, reimbursement and patient preferences, there has been an unprecedented wave of innovation, from the rise of telehealth to the flexability of working from home. This session will share a perspective on where to look for innovation, how to nurture the positive changes so they endure, and practical advice for ensuring you continue to build trusting relationships with your employees and communities, based on the timeless Evidence-Based Leadership principles refined over the past twenty years. 

Since 2006, Craig Deao, MHA, has been an integral part of Studer Group as a senior leader for the organization's speaking and conference teams, and he now directs thought leadership across Huron's broader healthcare practice. Craig is a highly regarded national speaker on leadership, engagement, quality and patient safety. He works with medical staffs and healthcare executives to create highly reliable organizations where employees want to work, physicians want to practice and patients want to recieve care. In addition to his full-time work with Studer Group and Huron, he serves as faculty for the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE). 

Trends and Forecasts for Inpatient Rehabilitation
Sam Fleming, Director, Fleming-AOD/eRehabData®
Thursday, October 8, 2020 at 11:45 a.m. ET

As the Director of eRehabData®, Sam Fleming is an expert in variance and complications of regulatory compliance. Fleming will discuss trends from eRehabData®, as well as current topics in medical rehabilitation quality and payment systems, including QRP, IRF-PAI and PPS.

Sam has worked with the rehabilitation industry since 1990 providing services to both individual rehabilitation facilities and the various incarnations of the national trade association for inpatient rehabilitation facilities. His work with providers includes reimbursement policy interpretation and hospital performance optimization. Sam designs and builds industry-wide econometric models of Medicare policy and performs industry-wide data analysis and outcomes interpretation for the American Medical Rehabilitation Providers Association. As the President of Fleming-AOD, Inc. his responsibilities include policy analysis, advocacy and education, as well as the design, construction, maintenance and development of the AMRPA’s outcomes systems: eRehabData®.

Perspectives from Inside the Industry & Inside the Beltway: Looking at 2020 and Beyond
Kate Beller, JD, EVP for Government Relations and Policy Development, AMRPA
Martha Kendrick, JD, AMRPA Washington Counsel; Partner, Akin Gump
Thursday, October 8, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. ET

Kate Beller, JD, has served as the American Medical Rehabilitation Providers Association (AMRPA) Executive Vice President for Policy Development and Government Relations since February 2019. In her current role, Beller helps AMRPA identify current and emerging policy issues affecting the rehabilitation industry, including patient access issues, regulatory burdens, IMPACT Act implementation, and the inpatient rehabilitation facility (IRF) prospective payment system and Quality Reporting Program, among many other issues. Prior to joining AMRPA, Ms. Beller served as a principal at a healthcare-focused consulting/lobbying firm, where she developed and helped lead the legislative and regulatory strategies for post-acute care providers and other entities across the health policy spectrum. She also held positions at AARP and the Center for Excellence in Assisted Living working on long-term care and post-acute care payment and payment access issues. She received her Juris Doctorate at Georgetown University Law Center and her undergraduate degree at Duke University.

For more than 25 years, Ms. Kendrick has represented clients before Congress in virtually every major piece of health, Medicare and Medicaid legislation. Her clients consist of large corporations as well as national and state trade associations; state, local and tribal governments; health providers; universities; and pharmaceutical companies.

She regularly represents and counsels clients on matters before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) relating to Medicare and Medicaid as well as regulatory and funding issues before agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the National Institutes of Health, the Indian Health Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Ms. Kendrick’s broad legislative advocacy encompasses congressional authorizing and appropriations committees, including the tax writing Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees. She has significant experience organizing and representing major national coalitions, including the Patient Access to Transplantation Coalition.