Scott Young, MD
Co-Executive Director and Senior Medical Director of CMI
Scott Young, MD, serves as associate executive director for Clinical Care and Innovation at The Permanente Federation. He also serves as the Executive Director and Senior Medical Director of Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute. He leads a nationwide team that is integral to Kaiser Permanente’s commitment to improve the care and wellness of its 9.3 million members. His work includes commissioning the discovery, development and spread of programs and best practices focused on care delivery, education and member experience.
Dr. Young is former director for Health IT at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Prior to joining that agency, he served as a senior clinical advisor at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Dr. Young’s policy experience also includes service as a Robert Wood Johnson health policy fellow in the office of U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico.
He is former executive vice president of the Utah HealthCare Institute, a not-for-profit organization providing clinical care, outreach programs, medical education, research, informatics and health policy services. Dr. Young is a founding member of Intermountain Health Care’s Utah Valley Family Practice Residency.
Dr. Young received his medical degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1987 and completed his training at the Fairfax Family Practice Residency. He is board certified in family medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Joan Gelrud, RN, MSN, CPHQ, FACHE
Senior Vice President of National Health Plan and Hospital Quality and the Co-executive Director of CMI
Joan Gelrud leads work to advance Kaiser Permanente’s nation-leading excellence in quality, safety and experience. She oversees Care Experience, Risk and Patient Safety, the Design Consultancy, Quality Governance, Accreditation, Licensing and Regulation, and the Performance Institute. As the Co-Executive Director of the Care Management Institute, Joan, with her partner Scott Young, MD oversee the award-winning work of the interdisciplinary CMI team for Kaiser Permanente.
Joan joined Kaiser Permanente in September of 2015. In her position as Vice President of Quality, Regulatory and Risk Management for Mid-Atlantic States, Joan provided strategic leadership for Kaiser Permanente to compete as a quality leader in health care. She had responsibility for the quality and safety of care, treatment and services provided to members, including outcomes and accreditation, licensing, clinical risk management, peer review and credentialing. Joan was responsible for leveraging best practices across the region and served as the Chief Nurse Executive. Joan was also responsible for Infection Prevention, Employee Health, Regional Patient Care Services, Clinical Staff Education, Outreach to members and communities via mobile van services. Under the safety umbrella, Joan was responsible for patient and workforce safety across the region. She completed Kaiser Permanente’s Executive Leadership Program at Harvard University while in Mid-Atlantic States.
Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente, Joan was Vice President at MedStar St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown, Maryland where responsibilities included Quality, Safety, Data and Analytics, Clinical Resource Management, Stroke Center, Organizational Learning and Research, Community Health Outreach, Human Resources, Imaging, Risk Management, Cardiology, Neurology, Respiratory Therapy, Rehabilitation Services, Patient Advocates, Pharmacy and Laboratory. Some of Joan’s operational accomplishments included opening practices to improve access to pediatric neurology, cardiology and pulmonary outpatient services, working with Children’s National Medical Center and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. She expanded local interventional radiology and tele-neurology services with the MedStar Washington Hospital Center and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. Her team achieved a Health Enterprise Zone designation in St. Mary’s County and a competitive state grant to improve access to healthcare, reduce readmissions and address social barriers to health.
Jim Bellows, PhD
Managing Director
Jim Bellows leads CMI’s research and development work, which includes supporting care delivery innovation projects, identifying specific population care practices that contribute to superior performance, and supporting and studying the spread of the most promising practices.
He is also responsible for CMI’s efforts in demonstrating the value of population care and consults with a variety of Program Office leaders and departments on areas related to program evaluation and performance measurement.
Dr. Bellows has been a lecturer at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health, where he taught Health Care Quality – Measurement and Improvement from 2004 to 2007. He earned his PhD in health services research and health economics from the University of California Berkeley and joined CMI in July 2001 after several earlier careers. He received a master’s degree in public health from University of California Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California Santa Cruz.
Maria A. Butler
Director of Business Operations
Maria Butler is the Director of Business Operations at Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute. Maria joined CMI in 2006 and oversees the business function of the department; managing finance activities, human resources and administrative operations that support the department’s ability to achieve its business objectives. This management function works closely with the CMI Executive Directors, leadership, managers, and staff to ensure the smooth running of the organization by carrying out the department’s plan, anticipating risk, and solving problems creatively and effectively. Maria has a BA degree from San Francisco State University and over twenty years of experience in finance and administration having worked at APL Global Logistics, Crowley Maritime Corporation, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, and Saatchi & Saatchi Corporate Communications.
Tracy Cameron
Senior Director
Tracy Cameron leads the Care Management Institute’s work in Care Experience. In this role, she partners with regional and national leaders to improve access to care and provide our members with an excellent care experience across settings. She previously served as Director of Performance Assessment for The Permanente Federation and Director of Medical Economics in Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California region.
Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente in 1987, Tracy was a research scientist at Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center and the University of California at Berkeley, where she worked in public health research.
Tracy holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Purdue University, as well as a master’s degree in Sociology and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Carol Cain, PhD
Senior Director, Clinical Information Services
Carol Cain, PhD, directs the Care Management Institute’s Clinical Information Services, including Kaiser Permanente’s Clinical Library, guideline and evidence services, and care delivery informatics. She co-leads the Permanente Federation’s Clinical Education portfolio, including national Continuing Medical Education activities and conferences, and quality improvement for Maintenance of Certification. She also coordinates the Care Management Institute’s partner relations with organizations outside Kaiser Permanente.
Carol has worked on care delivery improvement in several clinical pathways, including the transition from hospital to home, reducing hospital infections, managing chronic pain, and others, with the goal of expanding physician capacity in guiding clinical improvement projects, sharing pathways across Kaiser Permanente, and looking at ongoing reliability and quality in those pathways. She has also worked on design of the transition from hospital to home from a patient and caregiver perspective; spread of successful innovations; and care delivery implications of technology. She has a background in clinical informatics from Stanford and is currently teaching a biomedical informatics graduate course on designing IT innovations. She previously managed the health IT portfolio at AHRQ, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Jeff Convissar, MD
Medical Director
Jeff Convissar, MD is the Medical Director at Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute. He has been with Kaiser Permanente since 1992. Jeff was previously the Executive Director of National Risk Management. Prior to that, for 12 years he was an attending physician in the Emergency Department at the Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center in Northern California. At Santa Clara, Jeff also served as the Assistant Chief of Quality. Jeff has a BA in Biology from Brown University, his MD is from the UCLA School of Medicine and ED residency training was completed at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Jeff is responsible for a variety of improvement initiatives at Kaiser Permanente.
Rivka Gordon, PA, MHS
Chief of Staff
Rivka Gordon is Chief of Staff to the Associate Executive Director of the Care Management Institute and is a member of the leadership team. Rivka is a Primary Care Physician Assistant with a Masters degree in Health Sciences from Duke University. In addition to her work at Kaiser Permanente, Rivka serves on Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s National Medical Committee and on the San Francisco Women’s Community Clinic and Tara Health Foundation boards of directors.
Craig W Robbins, MD, MPH
Medical Director, Clinical Information Services
Dr. Craig Robbins serves as Medical Director of the Center for Clinical Information Services in the KP Care Management Institute. He also serves as Medical Director for the KP Maintenance of Certification Portfolio at The Permanente Federation. He has been a family physician with the Colorado Permanente Medical Group since July 1998. In his CMI role, Dr. Robbins is the lead physician for the KP National Guidelines Program which has been an organizational member of the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N) since 2010. He is a current member of the G-I-N Board of Trustees, the Executive Advisory Board for the Kaiser Permanente Research Associates Evidence-based Practice Center (KPRA-EPC), and the Editorial Board for the National Guideline and Quality Metric Clearinghouses (NGC/NQMC). Dr. Robbins received his BS (1990) and MD (1993) from the University of Michigan and his MPH (1998) from the University of Pittsburgh. He completed his Family Medicine Residency (1993-6) at the University of Virginia and a Faculty Development Fellowship (1996-8) at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center-St Margaret Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA.
Lisa Schilling, RN, MPH
Vice President
Lisa Schilling, RN, MPH, is national Vice President, Healthcare Performance Improvement and Director of Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health System Performance. She leads the strategy to develop and implement a performance improvement system and planning to adopt its total health strategy in care delivery.
A leader with more than 20 years’ experience, Lisa serves on the editorial board of the Joint Commission Journal for Quality and Safety and has authored several publications on related topics.
Prior to Kaiser Permanente, she was the national director of critical care services at VHA Inc., focusing on improving delivery system performance.
Matthew C. Stiefel
Senior Director
Matt Stiefel directs Population Health in Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute. He was a 2008-09 fellow with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and continues as a faculty member for the IHI Triple Aim. Matt joined Kaiser Permanente in 1981 as a medical economist, and later held management positions in Kaiser Permanente Northwest, directing planning, marketing, and medical economics. He joined the Care Management Institute in 1998. Prior to Kaiser Permanente, he served as a policy analyst on the Carter Administration Domestic Policy Staff and in the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and as a local health planner in the San Francisco bay area. He completed an MS in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2013, holds an MPA from the Wharton School, and a BA in psychology from Stanford.
Winston Wong, MD
Medical Director
Dr. Wong serves as Medical Director, Community Benefit, National Program Office, and is responsible for developing partnerships with communities and organizations in advancing population management and evidence based medicine, with a particular focus on health disparities and vulnerable populations. Previous to Kaiser Permanente, Dr. Wong served as a Captain in the U.S. Public Health Service and was awarded an Outstanding Service Medal. In addition to playing various advisory roles with CMMS, NIH and the National Academy of Medicine, and most recently to DHHS as an advisor on minority health, Wong currently serves on Boards representing public hospitals and school based health centers addressing issues of access and quality for diverse populations. He is also a Board member of the California Endowment, one of the nation’s largest health philanthropies. Bilingual in Cantonese and Toisan dialects, Dr. Wong continues a small practice in Family Medicine at Asian Health Services in Oakland, a federally qualified health center, where he previously served as Medical Director. Dr. Wong was featured as a “Face of Public Health” in the American Journal of Public Health. Dr. Wong received his undergraduate and Master’s degrees at UC Berkeley, his medical degree from UC San Francisco, and an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the A.T. Still School of Osteopathy.