Katie was one of ECG’s advisers and the primary driver of the development of the Illinois Partnership for Health (IPH), an accountable care entity created to care for the shared Managed Medicaid population across nine separate healthcare systems and 54 counties in Illinois. Katie exhibited extensive diplomacy and great facilitation skills, as well as high levels of professionalism and accountability throughout the application development and submission process. Katie was key in getting the nine unique systems to work collaboratively on this unique endeavor. Her network development experience, in addition to her thorough attention to detail, made her a formidable resource for the challenging role of guiding us through this unprecedented work. Without Katie’s involvement in the early stages, IPH may have never come to fruition.
—Dennis P. Hesch, Executive Vice President/Chief Financial Officer, Carle Health System
Katie is intensely focused on helping define and implement practical managed care strategies to position providers for long-term success. Her deep expertise in provider contracting and reimbursement enables her to identify immediate revenue enhancement opportunities through existing or new managed care arrangements as well as solutions to address payer operational challenges that often reduce expected reimbursement for providers.
Since joining ECG in 2008, Katie has conducted managed care reimbursement assessments and led contract negotiations with academic and nonacademic health systems; small and large, single- and multispecialty physician practices; skilled nursing facilities; and behavioral health providers, resulting in an average annual revenue enhancement of 5% to 15%. As the reimbursement market has shifted, Katie’s focus has broadened to support major health systems across the nation in the development of commercial, Medicare Advantage, and managed Medicaid payer contracting strategies. In addition, Katie has supported many providers and private equity firms in the completion of facility and professional black box analyses and the successful transition of payer contracts required as the result of provider mergers and acquisitions.
In recent years, the demand for behavioral health payer contracting support has increased dramatically, largely as a result of the opioid epidemic, demand for increased adolescent behavioral health services, and increased payer focus on controlling overall healthcare expenditures through enhanced behavioral healthcare management.Katie has supported behavioral health providers’ transition from out-of-network to in-network status with commercial payers and has helped negotiate commercial payer agreements for behavioral health providers across the country, including addiction medicine providers, autism therapy providers, and other various psychotherapy providers. Katie has also begun working with providers on identification of opportunities to integrate behavioral health services in a primary care setting.
