Home > Outreach > Healthcare : Speaker Biographies
Speaker Biographies
Dr. Henry Blissenbach is President of Osprey Enterprises, Inc., a health care and investment consulting company. From 2005 to 2006, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of BioScrip, Inc., a specialty pharmacy company that was formed by merging Chronimed, Inc. and MIM Corporation. Chronimed was a prescription drug company specializing in medications for individuals with low incidence diseases, including those treated with biotech injectables, post transplant medications, and people with HIV/AIDS. Dr. Blissenbach served as President, Chairman and CEO of Chronimed from 2000 to 2005. From 1997 to 2000, he was the company's President and COO. Prior to that, he was President of Diversified Pharmaceutical Services, a pharmacy benefit management subsidiary of United HealthGroup, Inc. From 2006 to 2007, he also served as Interim CEO and Chairman of the Board of Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biotech pharmaceutical company. He holds a doctorate in pharmacy and an academic appointment at the U of M College of Pharmacy. He is a past member of the Minnesota State Pharmaceutical Association's board of directors and a founding member of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy.
Bob Carey is the Director of Planning and Development for the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, an independent authority established pursuant to Massachusetts' landmark health reform law of 2006 to expand access to affordable health insurance for Commonwealth residents. In this role, Mr. Carey works closely with the Executive Director of the Health Connector to implement new health insurance programs, including designing health benefit plans and developing health care financing arrangements.
Prior to joining the Health Connector, Mr. Carey served for several years as the Director of Policy and Program Management for the Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission, the state agency responsible for providing health and welfare benefits to over 265,000 state employees, retirees and their dependents. His work experience also includes senior research and policy positions with non-governmental research organizations and government oversight boards, as well as policy positions with the U.S. Congress and the Maine Legislature.
Mr. Carey received an M.S. degree in public policy and management from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.A. in English from the University of Maine at Fort Kent. He lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife and two children.
Prof. Dr. med. Dr.iur. Christian Dierks is an attorney with Dierks + Bohle law firm in Berlin. He also is president of the German Society for Medical Law and a member of the Berlin Scientific Society. His main areas of consultancy are the legal aspects of statutory health insurance: structure, insurance models, supply of drugs, reference pricing system, benefit assessment, Rebate agreements, panel doctor law, drug law, legal aspects of telemedicine, eLearning, litigation and data protection.
Dr. Dierks studied medicine at the Universities of Regensburg, Hamburg, and Cape Town (1979-1986) and in 1986 received his license to practice medicine. He studied law at the universities of Regensburg and Munich (1988-1992). Since 1996 he has been working as an attorney specialized in social law. He holds a professorial degree (Habilitation) from the Humboldt University, Berlin, and regularly teaches seminars on health care systems at the Center for Human and Health Sciences, Charité Universitätsmedizin, Berlin.
Regierungsdirektor Ulrich Dietz is head of the Department of Pharmaceuticals in Germany’s Ministry of Health. He studied at the universities of Cologne and Warsaw and received degrees in economics and business administration. He also trained with the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce and worked as a controller at Ford Motor Company in Cologne.
Over the past dozen years, Mr. Dietz has accumulated substantive expertise in the areas of public health care. In 1992 he first served as a consultant in the department of pharmaceuticals at the German Ministry of Health and Social Security, which then also covered payments to hospitals. From 1999 to 2001, he was a consultant on health care in the German Chancellor’s office. In 2001, he became an advisor to the Minister of Social Issues in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He served two years in this position. Since March 2003, he has been working for Germany’s federal government in the Ministry of Health.
Nina Graves, Pharm. D., is Epilepsy Program Director at Medtronic Neuromodulation. She joined Medtronic in 1998 as a Clinical Study Manager and has held positions of increasing responsibility in the Epilepsy therapy development team. She is currently a Clinical Professor at the College of Pharmacy at the University of Minnesota, a Medtronic Technical Fellow and a Program Director in the Neurological Sector's Emerging Therapies organization, and is responsible for managing the therapy and technology development efforts within the Epilepsy portfolio. Ms. Graves holds a Doctor of Pharmacy from the U of Minnesota.
Franz Knieps is Director General for Health Care and Long Term Care Insurance at Germany's Federal Ministry of Health, a post he has held since 2003. Mr. Knieps studied law and political science at Bonn University and Freiburg University. In 1986 he began his long involvement with health care issues as desk officer for foundational principles of legal policy at Germany's Federal Association of Local Sickness Funds (AOK Bundesverband). The next year, he moved to the Federal Ministry for Labor and Social Affairs for preparatory work on the government's 1988 Health Care Modernisation Act. Later he worked as a researcher for the parliamentary committee charged with reforming the structure of Germany's statutory health insurance system. In 1990 he was dispatched to the GDR's Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs and the Director of Social Security to support the process of German reunification as a political advisor. From 1989 to 1998 he headed the policy staff unit at the Federal Association of Local Sickness Funds (AOK). His responsibilities included legislation and policy consulting in social insurance law and health policy; political, economic and social principles of the health care system; the guiding principles of AOK operational policy and operational strategy; and press and public relations work. From 1998 to 2003, he was the AOK's Policy Manager and provided expert advice on social policy and health care system development to the World Health Organization, the European Union and the German Federal Government. Since 2003, Mr. Knieps also serves as the editor of the journal Gesundheit und Sozialpolitik (Health and Social Policy).
Joshua Riff, M.D., MBA is the medical director for Target Clinics and a clinically active Emergency Medicine physician in Minnesota. He grew up in Montreal, Canada and was exposed to retail at an early age working in his family's department store business. After completing a biology degree at McGill University, Joshua moved to Boston where he completed his M.D./MBA in healthcare administration at Tufts medical school in conjunction with Brandeis and Northeastern University. From Boston he moved to Baltimore where he completed his residency in emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Pursuing his love of triathlons Joshua moved to Tucson, Arizona where he practiced as a full-time emergency medicine physician. In 2007 Joshua moved to Minneapolis to become medical director for Target clinics where he provides the medical leadership for 23 retail clinics and one employee-based clinic in Minnesota and in Maryland. Special interests include quality of care, consumer empowered healthcare, and addressing access issues to care. When not at Target, Dr. Riff can be found working in the emergency department, swimming, biking or running, or spending time with his wife Jennifer and his son Asher.
Steven H. Sheingold, Ph.D., is Senior Health Economist and Director of the Division of Health Financing Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Sheingold’s areas of responsibility include policy analysis of Medicare’s payment systems, analysis and evaluation of Medicare’s drug benefit, technology assessment/cost effectiveness issues, quality of care issues and economic issues related to health care markets.
Prior to joining ASPE, Dr. Sheingold held several managerial and senior analyst positions within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), was a Research Scientist for Battelle's Human Affairs Research Centers, and a Principal Analyst for the Congressional Budget Office. He has published articles concerning reimbursement systems, cost effectiveness analyses, performance measurement and technology assessment in Journals such as Health Affairs, Journal of the American Medical Association, Medical Care and PharmacoEconomics.
Simon Stevens is CEO of Ovations, UnitedHealth's health and wellbeing company serving people aged 50+ (www.ovationshealth.com). Ovations is the nation's largest seniors healthcare organization, serving one in every five Medicare beneficiaries, and with 2007 revenues of more than $26 billion. Ovations is also the Medicare partner of AARP, the world's largest voluntary organization, and through the Ovations Global Chronic Disease Initiative is sharing approaches to the management of chronic disease with developing countries.
Mr. Stevens was previously president of UnitedHealth Group's international businesses, and before joining UnitedHealth, he served as British Prime Minister Tony Blair's health policy director at 10 Downing Street, where he oversaw reform of the UK National Health Service. Prior to that he was a senior healthcare executive in the US and Europe, with periods working in Africa and South America.
Stevens is visiting professor at the London School of Economics, a council member of the Carlson School of Management's Medical Industry Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota, and serves on the boards of several non-profits and public policy think tanks. Stevens was educated at Oxford University, Strathclyde University, and Columbia University and lives in Minneapolis.
Dr. Thomas Werner is Senior Vice President GlaxoSmithKline and Managing Director GlaxoSmithKline Germany. He joined Glaxo in September 1997 as Managing Director of the German subsidiary. He started his professional career as product manager with Squibb in 1983. Having held various positions in marketing he was promoted to Director Central Business Development. When the Squibb Corporation and Bristol-Myers merged, he became General Manager of the oncology business unit in Germany. He assumed international responsibility as Head of Central Europe of Convatec, the medical device subsidiary of Bristol-Myers Squibb. In 1993 he was appointed General Manager of Bristol-Myers Squibb Germany. Dr. Thomas studied Chemistry, International Economics, and Pharmacology at the University of Göttingen.
Anthony J. Zappa, Pharm.D., MBA, is Director, Specialty/Infusion Operations and IS/IT for Fairview Pharmacy Services (FPS). He oversees all operations for its specialty and mail order pharmacies, home infusion services and ambulatory infusion centers. He also sets the strategic direction for systems and technology for FPS’s outpatient pharmacy business, including its retail sites. Prior to joining FPS, Dr. Zappa spent five years with BioScrip Inc., a top ten specialty pharmacy services company. His last position with BioScrip was President, Community Pharmacy, which made him responsible for over 30 specialty retail pharmacies representing over $550 million in sales. These pharmacies cared primarily for people with HIV/AIDS or organ transplants, providing full-service prescription services and disease management programs. Under its model, BioScrip was able to raise adherence levels to above 90%, more than 10-20% better than unmanaged models. Dr. Zappa’s career also included over eight years in the pharmacy benefit management (PBM) industry, an Internet pharmacy start-up, and over six years of hospital-based clinical practice.