Our Thought Leaders

Jean A. Adams, is Geisinger Health System Associate Vice President, Information Technology. She is accountable to plan and direct the development and expansion of the Geisinger Health System electronic health record initiatives which includes Ambulatory, Inpatient, ED and OR services, patient registration and scheduling, patient portal, external physician portal and patient kiosk. She is the primary facilitator and coordinator of all projects and resources within the system's Information Technology department, operational areas and vendors to achieve cost-effective value-added solutions to patients and physicians. She is also a consultant to the system's for-profit Ventures group, contributing to the development and organization of intellectual capital for Venture initiatives. Her 30 years of experience within the Geisinger system includes experience as a Patient Care Nurse Manager and various analyst and management positions within Information Technology. Jean is a Registered Nurse with an emphasis in Health Care Administration.

Frederick J. Bloom, Jr., MD, MMM, is the Assistant Chief Quality Officer for the Geisinger Health System. Specializing in Family Medicine and Geriatrics, his practice is located in northeast Pennsylvania. Bloom earned his bachelor’s degree from Gannon University in Erie, PA, his medical degree from Hahnemann University in Philadelphia and completed his family medicine residency at St. Vincent’s Health Center in Erie. PA. Tulane University awarded him his Master of Medical Management degree.

As Assistant Chief Quality Officer, Dr. Bloom coordinates all performance improvement activities in the Community Practice Service Line and the Geisinger hospitals in northeast PA. He works extensively on systems of care for chronic disease and prevention, creating reliable work flows in the electronic medical record used by Geisinger since 1996. More recent work on population health has helped the Geisinger System to develop a successful medical home model, ProvenHealth Navigator ^SM.

Jan Byron received a BA from Northwestern University and an MPH from the University of Michigan in Medical Care Management. Following two years of employment at the American Hospital Association as the Manager of Public Policy Analysis, Jan accepted a position with the Geisinger Health System in the department of Management Services in 1983.  As a Senior Management Engineer, Jan specialized in workflow redesign, productivity analysis and process improvement.

Jan transitioned to Information Technology in 1995 to join the team that would develop Geisinger's Electronic Health Record. This team assumed responsibility for workflow redesign, system build, application testing, end-user training and clinic implementations. Following the completion of the primary care and specialty clinic implementations, Jan accepted responsibility for the build of the Epic inpatient application. The Geisinger Medical Center implementation occurred October 2007 followed by Geisinger Wyoming Valley and Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre in February 2009.

Alfred Casale, MD, is Chairman of Surgery for the Geisinger Heart Institute, Co-Director of its Cardiovascular Service Line and Associate Chief Medical Officer for Geisinger Northeast. He has been the director of cardiothoracic surgery at the Richard and Marion Pearsall Heart Hospital at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center since he joined Geisinger in 2001.

Dr. Casale graduated from the Johns Hopkins University with a BA in human biology and then earned his MD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He did postdoctoral work at Johns Hopkins University in general, thoracic, and cardiac surgery, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in thoracic surgical oncology and at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Health Care Policy.

Dr. Casale is active in local, regional and national surgical societies within which he has held leadership roles and he speaks often on clinical and policy topics. He joined Geisinger from Atlantic Health System in New Jersey, and has held faculty positions at Johns Hopkins, UMDNJ, College Misercordia, King's University and Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Casale's seminal work in establishing Geisinger's ProvenCare^TM program as a model of value-generating redesign of complex acute surgical care using comparative effectiveness principles has been widely acclaimed in professional and popular media. He has been honored in Who's Who in America and The Best Doctors, (Castle Connolly Medical Ltd.). He maintains an active clinical practice in complex adult cardiac surgery in addition to his administrative responsibilities.

Revonda Cornell, RN, Ed.D., FACHE, is Senior Clinical Consultant, Geisinger Consulting Group, Geisinger Health System. In her role, she serves as project manager for readiness assessments, ProvenCare and Patient Centered Medical Home implementation initiatives. Revonda has more than 15 years of executive experience in the roles of COO/CNE. In the past 10 years, she has served as an independent consultant facilitating change and enhancing organizational financial and clinical indicators of performance. These consulting engagements included the facilitation of the ‘processes of change’ required for health care organizations to experience transformational change, inclusive of the implementation of the electronic health record.

Revonda’s twenty-five years of experience as a healthcare executive and consultant are enhanced by her doctoral education. In 2009, she completed her Ed.D. in Educational Leadership at the University of South Florida. Her doctoral studies provide her with adult learning and organizational change theoretical frameworks to which to draw upon. Her dissertation, Transformational Change Within Three Schools of Nursing Implementing the Electronic Health Record provides her with qualitative research experience.

Duane Davis, MD, is Vice President, Chief Medical Officer of Geisinger Insurance Operations (GIO) which includes Geisinger Health Plan/Geisinger Indemnity Insurance Company/Geisinger Quality Options. Prior to 2000, Dr. Davis served as Senior Vice President and Medical Director of Geisinger Health Plan from 1987 to 2000. As CMO, he is responsible for all health services, including Quality Improvement, Medical Management, Disease/Case Management, Network Management and Pharmacy Management. Dr Davis is part of the senior management team of Geisinger Health System the Integrated Health System parent of GIO.

As part of Dr. Davis’ career long interest in creating Value in Health Care  he has lead the plan to a top 5 National rating and lead the development of Physician Quality Summary, a web based public quality reporting tool. He helped lead the development of Geisinger Proven Care and Geisinger Proven Health Navigator. The former a packaged price warranty for acute care episodes such as CABG that includes hardwiring best practices into the delivery system and the latter an advanced medical home that has shown better outcomes, increased coordination, and increased efficiency resulting in a lower overall medical trend.

Dr. Davis has participated with the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) as a surveyor since 1991.  He has also served on the NCQA Reconsideration Committee and the NCQA Review Oversight Committee (ROC), which he currently chairs.

He is an active member of the Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP) Chief Medical Officer’s committee. A member of the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), where he serves on the Committee for Quality Health Care, Chairs the Chief Medical Officer’s Committee and the Leadership Council. He also serves as a mentor for the AHIP Executive Leadership Program.  

At the State level, Dr. Davis was appointed by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell to the Pennsylvania Chronic Care Commission, part of the Governors RX for Pennsylvania Plan.

Dr. Davis maintains a clinical practice in the Department of Rheumatology at Geisinger and participates in clinical research, as well as the teaching programs for Fellows and Residents. In addition, he is currently a Clinical Professor of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine. He is a Fellow in the American College of Physicians, the American College of Rheumatology, and a member of the American College of Physician Executives.

Thomas Graf, MD, is Chairman, Community Practice Service line for Geisinger Health System. Dr. Graf is responsible for the Community Practice network with additional responsibility for the physician medical group’s advanced medical home pilot process as well as participating on the network wide quality improvement, electronic health record, and physician compensation task forces. He has implemented over 20 NCQA Level III accreditation Medical Home Models in the Geisinger ProvenHealth Navigator model and leads the operations and development of these sites. He has extended this model to include comprehensive nursing home care with dedicated providers tied to ProvenHealth Navigator clinics.

Dr. Graf has established innovative care models for optimizing chronic disease with established systems of care enhanced by MyCare modules of care for individual disease parameters lead by mid-levels through the use of the Delta Innovation Incubator program he established. Dr Graf serves as a content expert for the AHRQ Patient Centered Medical Homes Project.

After graduating from University of Michigan Medical School and completing Family Medicine residency training at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, MI, he served on the faculty of the Henry Ford Family Practice Residency and was Director of the Southwest Georgia Family Practice Residency prior to joining Geisinger.

Bruce H. Hamory, MD, FACP, is Executive Vice President, Managing Partner, Geisinger Consulting Services for Geisinger Health System. He leads Geisinger’s efforts to extend its innovations in healthcare delivery and payment to other groups and health systems. He is a nationally known speaker on care redesign for value and improved quality. 

As Geisinger’s System Chief Medical Officer from 1997 to 2008, he led the growth of a 535-physician multi-specialty group practice to 750 physicians in 40 locations serving 41 counties and the three Geisinger hospitals. He oversaw the installation of an advanced EHR, led the development of a physician compensation model incorporating pay for performance, and a reorganization from discipline-based departments to a service line operating structure. Other responsibilities included compensation, quality and performance improvement, credentialing, clinical operations, capital planning, as well as education and research for the health system.  

Before joining Geisinger, Dr. Hamory was Professor of Medicine and Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at Penn State.  He was Executive Director of Penn State’s University Hospitals and Chief Operating Officer for Penn State’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.    

Dr. Hamory is on the Board of Directors for AMGA and serves on several national committees and panels concerned with improving the quality of medical care and use of information technology in healthcare.

Meg Horgan is Vice President, Department of Innovation for Geisinger Health Systems. In her role, she leads projects for the enterprise-wide transformation program (GAPP – Geisinger Accelerated Performance Program) focused on achieving excellence in clinical quality, cost savings, and growth. Meg has more than 30 years experience in the healthcare quality and informatics arena, with national experience partnering with executive, physician, nursing and quality leaders in developing and executing reliable clinical processes, facilitating change management and enhancing organizational focus on efficiency.

Meg's clinical background was as a staff nurse in the ER and medical/surgical settings, and her career has included roles with the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Allegheny University Health System and the Philadelphia PSRO. Most recently, Meg was Vice President for Premier/CareScience overseeing clinical improvement, client education and consulting, and clinical quality and efficiency analysis and support for more than 700 hospitals nationwide. While at Premier, she launched QUEST, a large scale collaborative in partnership with the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, to assist in driving healthcare to new levels of performance excellence in quality, efficiency and safety with a focus on transparency.

Karla Leiby, RN, is the Ambulatory Program Director on the Epic IT team responsible for the Ambulatory Electronic Health Record (EHR) software products. She is also responsible for supporting the EHR needs of the Henry Hood Center for Health Research. Karla’s expertise includes her clinical experience as a registered nurse in many healthcare settings, management experience and technical experience in Electronic Health Record software development.

Steven B. Pierdon, MD, MMM, is currently the Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice-President for Geisinger Northeast.  Since 2008, he has led the strategic transformation of a 242-bed tertiary care referral hospital operating at two campuses.

Capitalizing on the successful recruitment of more than 60 physicians in two years, inpatient volume growth of over 10% per year has been achieved supporting a $37M bottom line improvement. The development of a team based care process coupled with the comprehensive implementation of the inpatient EHR in 2009 enabled care process improvements resulting in lower HAI rates, improved quality metrics, and a case mix adjusted O/E mortality ratio reduction to 0.89.

In his previous leadership role, Dr. Pierdon was Chief Medical Officer for Clinical Operations and Community Practice for the Geisinger Health System. He worked in conjunction with system leaders to assure the clinical and operating performance of its 650-physician multi-specialty group at three hospitals and multiple clinic locations. In that role, he led a process translating a ‘quality budget concept’ to hierarchal operational leadership goals coordinated by organizational priority themes, measured by cascading metrics, and supported by increased physician performance compensation quality metric weighting.

Dr. Pierdon also established a physician recruiting justification process validating the recruitment of >130 physicians over two years, supplemented by proforma achievement tracking. Dr. Pierdon led Geisinger’s Community Practice network consisting of nearly 200 physicians and 45 mid-level providers practicing at 40 multi-specialty sites across central and northeastern Pennsylvania for over five years. During his tenure, a performance based physician compensation plan was integrated with a staff incentive bonus program resulting in a 14% physician productivity increase. Additionally, improvements in patient access led to multi-year fee-for-service revenue growth of more than 18%, a 50% increase in new patients, and contributed to an $11M improvement in the networks’ bottom line.  He also coordinated a comprehensive service and patient satisfaction improvement program resulting in a 40%tile improvement of overall network score within two years as measured by a national ranking firm.

Dr. Pierdon was the managing partner in a pediatric group practice for 12 years prior to selling the practice to the Geisinger Health System in 1995. He has presented nationally and published articles on Group Practice Change Management, Physician and Performance Compensation systems and Advanced Medical Home implementation.  Dr. Pierdon serves on multiple system committees and work groups. A graduate of Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Dr. Pierdon attended Children’s Hospital of Michigan for his pediatric residency training and chief residency.  Dr. Pierdon received his Master’s of Medical Management degree from Tulane University in 1999.  He is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics and the Certifying Commission in Medical Management.

Nancy L. Rizzo, serves as Sr. Vice President, Strategic Clinical Market Development and Managing Partner, Geisinger Consulting Services for Geisinger Health System. Nancy leads Geisinger’s efforts to extend its innovations in healthcare delivery and payment to other groups and health systems. 

Nancy represents the Office of the President in operationally managing, promoting, fostering and developing the administrative and clinical infrastructure to ensure clinical programs, community provider and business relations and (“partnerships”) that represent Geisinger Health System’s mission, values, and clinical excellence. Nancy provides the system administrative management/leadership for the present portfolio of partnerships including hospital relations, private practice physicians, and joint ventures, including consulting for hospital organizations.

Nancy was recruited to the Health System in July 1997 from the Lahey-Hitchcock Clinic in Boston, MA, where she served as Chief Administrative Officer over the ambulatory group practice. She received a Bachelor of Science from Tufts University, a Master of Science in Management at Lesley College. She served as a Fellow on the Labor and Human Resources Committee of the United States Senate from January – July 1984. She has published articles in the field of Rehabilitation and Laser Surgery and has lectured nationally in the fields of rehabilitation, research, and health administration.

Nancy’s professional memberships include: Member and past Chair, Steering Committee, Group Practice Improvement Network (GPIN); Member, Board of Governors, American Medical Group Association (AMGA); Member, American Medical Group Association Education Committee; Member, American Hospital Association (AHA) Task Force Committee; Founding member, National Clinic Research Consortium; Member, GHS Foundation Development Committee; Member, Geisinger HealthSouth Governance Committee; Member, Geisinger Fox Chase Strategic Alliance Advisory Committee; Co-Chair, GHS Advisory Council.

Glenn D. Steele Jr. MD, PhD, is President and Chief Executive Officer of Geisinger Health System. Dr. Steele previously served as the dean of the Biological Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Medicine and as vice president for medical affairs at the University of Chicago, as well as the Richard T. Crane Professor in the Department of Surgery. Prior to that, he was the William V. McDermott Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, president and chief executive officer of Deaconess Professional Practice Group, Boston, MA, and chairman of the department of surgery at New England Deaconess Hospital (Boston, MA). Widely recognized for his investigations into the treatment of primary and metastatic liver cancer and colorectal cancer surgery, Dr. Steele is past Chairman of the American Board of Surgery. He serves on the editorial board of numerous prominent medical journals. His investigations have focused on the cell biology of gastrointestinal cancer and pre-cancer and most recently on innovations in healthcare delivery and financing. A prolific writer, he is the author or co-author of more than 460 scientific and professional articles.

Dr. Steele received his bachelor’s degree in history and literature from Harvard University and his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine.  He completed his internship and residency in surgery at the University of Colorado, where he was also a fellow of the American Cancer Society. He earned his PhD in microbiology at Lund University in Sweden. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and serves on their Committee on Reviewing Evidence to Identify Highly Effective Clinical Services (HECS), the New England Surgical Society, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the American Surgical Association, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and past president of the Society of Surgical Oncology. He was a member of the National Advisory Committee for Rural Health, the Pennsylvania Cancer Control Consortium and is presently a member of the Healthcare Executives Network, the Alliance for Advancing Non-profit Health Care, the Commonwealth Fund’s Commission on a High Performance Health System, and he serves as a member of the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s (NCQA) Committee on Performance Measurement.

In addition, Dr. Steele was Chair for the American Hospital Association Systems Governing Council and now serves on the AHA Long-Range Policy Committee. He is currently Honorary Chair of the Pennsylvania March of Dimes Prematurity Campaign. Dr. Steele serves on several boards including Bucknell University’s Board of Trustees, Temple University School of Medicine’s Board of Visitors, the American Hospital Association’s Board of Trustees and Executive Committee, and Premier, Inc.  Additionally, he serves on the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s Healthcare Leadership Council, the HFMA Healthcare Leadership Council, the Northeast Regional Cancer Institute, the Global Conference Institute, and previously served on the Simon School of Business Advisory Board (University of Rochester) 2002 - 2007.

In 2006 Dr. Steele received the CEO IT Achievement Award, given by Modern Healthcare and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) for promoting health information technology.  In 2007, Dr. Steele received AHA’s Grassroots Champion Award and was named to Modern Healthcare’s 50 Most Powerful Physician Executives in Healthcare.

Janet Tomcavage, RN, MSN, is Vice President of Health Services, Geisinger Health Plan. In this role, she is responsible for the administrative oversight of health services including medical management, appeals and grievances, quality improvement, clinical reporting, accreditation, medical home, disease/case management, and wellness. Ms. Tomcavage has worked for more than 20 years in the specialty of diabetes management, developing a comprehensive diabetes self-management education program and specialized care management programs for insulin pump therapy and high-risk pregnancy. More recently her work has focused on the development and implementation of enhanced medical management strategies including medical home, disease management and case management interventions that optimize quality and efficiency outcomes.

Ms. Tomcavage earned her bachelor of science in nursing from Bloomsburg State University and her master of science in nursing from College Misericordia. Ms. Tomcavage has held certifications as a certified diabetes educator and advanced practice for diabetes management. She has co-authored several articles on diabetes management and disease management and has lectured nationally on diabetes management, disease and case management, medical home, and other medical management strategies.

Joan E. Topper is Vice President, IT Optimization within the Division of Clinical Innovation for the Geisinger Health System. She directs the development and expansion of Geisinger's Innovation initiatives, specifically as they relate to streamlining use of the electronic health record and IT applications to improve quality, patient safety, and clinical operations. She is accountable for achieving best practices in the optimal use of IT resources. Joan serves as a primary facilitator to transform the delivery of healthcare, using Health IT as an enabler. She has operational responsibility for the patient and physician portals and the system's clinical data warehouse operation.

Joan's 25 years of Healthcare experience include clinical performance improvement, healthcare finance as well as clinic and hospital operations, with expertise in the use of the electronic health record and information technology.

She is a graduate of The Pennsylvania State University with a BS degree in Health Administration.