Our Leadership

Impact-Accountable Servant-Leaders

Work With Effective Partners

Value-Based Strategies employs some of the most empathetic, engaging, and effective leaders you could ever have the pleasure of encountering.

Create Social Benefit

To a person, our leaders measure their success by the difference they make in the well-being, productive capacity, and socioeconomic status of individuals, organizations, and communities.

Jan Alvarado, BA

General Manager

Offering more than 30 years of market, corporate, and product development experience for pioneering healthcare companies, Jan Alvarado has led Value-Based Strategies, a third-party payment consultancy (in its various corporate forms), since 1991. With P&L responsibility, a background in cross-functional program and project management, and a demonstrated track record of optimizing organizational performance through M&A events, she has over 25 years of experience securing highly favorable, precedent-setting coverage, coding, and reimbursement policies on behalf of healthcare providers, health industry manufacturers, and patient advocacy groups.

Alvarado offers broad and deep knowledge of healthcare finance, healthcare administration, and healthcare delivery systems—and she specializes in assisting pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, medical food, and healthcare service companies with the development and implementation of creative pre-launch and post-launch strategies, operations, and tactics that minimize third-party payment challenges and facilitate patient access to worthy new treatment modalities. Her market access skills include legislative policy analysis, third-party payment analysis, strategic reimbursement planning, coding analysis and acquisition, insurance verifications, eligibility determinations, prior authorizations, strategic coding, insurance billing, insurance claims management, payment precedent-setting, reimbursement optimization, and denial management.

Having worked on groundbreaking healthcare finance, administration, and innovation projects for startups, small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs), and multinational corporations (MNCs), Alvarado has managed strategic planning programs, new product development projects, reimbursement helplines, patient assistance programs, and insurance billing operations to benefit not only client-company shareholders but also other critical constituencies. She provides mission-critical strategic guidance to a broad range of stakeholders concerned with ensuring cost-effective and medically necessary care is properly covered, coded, and reimbursed.

Alvarado holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Irvine, is involved in a broad range of value-related innovations, and is an industry pioneer in 360-degree impact accountability.

Synthia Molina, MBA

Managing Director

Siddharth Baikar

Chief Financial Officer and Chief Technology Officer

Siddharth Baikar leads highly targeted IT management and governance reviews, digital transformation initiatives, and financial jumpstart and turnaround programs to improve the real-world performance, outcomes, and impacts of enterprise-grade startups, small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs), and lead business units in world-class multinational corporations (MNCs).

He serves innovators, entrepreneurs, and executives within the healthcare, education, and social-service sectors—designing, developing, and deploying information and communication technology (ICT) improvement programs and business process automation projects that enhance corporate culture, competencies, revenue, operating efficiencies, earnings growth, risk mitigation, competitiveness, scalability, salability, speed to favorable liquidity events, and investor-related enterprise performance.

In recent projects, Baikar evaluated IT management and governance frameworks used by new ventures, SMBs, and MNCs; identified opportunities to jumpstart the top and bottom lines; and helped selected clients transition from on-premises to cloud-based or hybrid systems. Along the way, he shared mission-critical ISO 27001 Information Security Management standards, EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) HIPAA-HITECH insights, implications, and imperatives with leadership teams and frontline personnel accountable for maintaining client intellectual property (IP) and patient protected health information (PHI). He also supported a Fortune 500 client’s damage-control priorities around a privacy and security breach associated with hackers on the dark web.

Familiar with Excel-based modeling in the fields of finance, economics, and epidemiology; Baikar has (1) reengineered financial analysis, forecasting, and budgeting tools used by founders, investors, and financial-services organizations; (2) tracked market drivers, trends, and disruptive forces and their economic implications for key clients; and (3) sourced incidence and prevalence figures across multiple disease states—applying real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) to support medical policy, program, and product evaluations.

Baikar is skilled in (1) reviewing historic and proforma financials in support of M&A planning; (2) running meetings with key personnel to better understand COGS, SG&A, and EBIDTA levers; and (3) preparing organizations for successful financial and due diligence audits. He is committed to improving bookkeeping, tax accounting, and finance department missions, visions, objectives, strategies, policies, structures, processes, and standards. He has (1) developed and managed activity-based costing (ABC) and activity-based pricing (ABP) tools for fair and profitable price-setting; (2) reduced days sales outstanding (DSOs) by correcting and semi-automating invoicing after reviewing master service agreements (MSAs) and statements of work (SOWs); and (3) worked with corporate leadership and frontline personnel to identify opportunities to improve organizational efficiencies and effectiveness.

Baikar holds a Computer Engineering Diploma from the Vidyalankar Institute of Technology; a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Information Technology from Xavier Institute of Engineering; and a Master of Science degree in Finance and Financial Management Services from the Drucker School of Management at The Claremont Colleges.

Concerned with mental health literacy, mental health equity, and social determinants of mental health in disenfranchised populations, Baikar is currently studying asset management, angel and private equity investing, and charitable giving among mental health advocates in the U.S. and abroad. He plans to become a leading mental health startup matchmaker—connecting nonprofit innovators and for-profit entrepreneurs in the mental/behavioral health industry with strategic donors and funding sources.

Susan Horn, BA

Director, Client Operations

Susan Horn has more than 25 years of experience developing and implementing third-party payment strategies for health industry pioneers leading cutting-edge pharmaceutical, biologics, medical device, food-as-medicine, acute care, group practice, and alternate site markets.

As Value-Based Strategies’ Client Operations Director, she supports senior managers in developing go-to-market strategies for new medical products; trains leadership teams, market access professionals, and patient access specialists; and oversees payment precedent-setting projects, reimbursement helplines, and compassionate care programs.

With more than 10 years of revenue cycle management experience for durable medical equipment (DME), home healthcare (HHC), and home infusion companies, Horn is an expert in capitated contracting, value-based purchasing, coverage policy solicitation, new code acquisition, insurance billing strategies, claims denial management, and more.

Her career highlights include securing coverage for a category-creating Orphan Drug for Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) that enabled children with the “Bubble Boy Disease” (adenosine deaminase deficiency) to live normal lives, establishing payment precedents (under both medical benefits and pharmacy benefits) for medical foods essential to the survival of children with failure-to-thrive diagnoses, and winning denial-related appeals centered on drugs’ off-label uses in treating cancer patients.

Horn holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Welfare from California State University at Long Beach and earned supplemental credentials in geriatric health optimization.

Atin Patel

Director of Operations

Atin Patel is an operations director, program manager, and business analyst with broad and deep experience in program design, development, and deployment for clients in the life sciences, healthcare, and digital-health industries. He is best known for his work supporting innovators, entrepreneurs, and executives by (1) identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) essential to their missions, visions, and objectives; (2) creating business intelligence (BI) dashboards, scorecards, and reporting templates essential to their revenue development, operating efficiencies, and earnings growth; and (3) applying analytics, visualization, and reporting (AVR) capabilities to identify and bridge competitive performance gaps.

Patel has a practical understanding of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the industry-facing role of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). He has formal training from the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in FDA, CMS, and AHRQ principles and practices around (1) medical product, service, and solution safety and efficacy; (2) health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) including practice-based research (PBR) toward evidence-based medicine (EBM); and (3) post-market surveillance through real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) registries.

Patel helps senior executives, middle managers, and field personnel optimize market access, messaging, and engagement under fee-for-service (FFS) payment and value-based payment (VBP) systems—supporting proof-of-value and preemptive market leadership strategies, tactics, and
operations under volume-based and value-based healthcare (VBHC) systems, He has a broad and deep understanding of coding, coverage, and reimbursement strategies; as well as real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) collaborations, value-based contracting (VBC) and outcomes-based payment (OBC) agreements, and community-impact initiatives. He follows standard-setting organizations (SSOs) and updates of major code sets including ICD-10-CM, ICD-10-PCS, DRGs, HCPCS Level I (CPT), HCPCS Level II, NDCs, HCCs and RAFs, APCs, ASCs, SNOMED, and LOINC. His background in the Biosciences enables him to help clients navigate the PROQOLID database of 2,300 clinical outcome assessment (COA) instruments and patient-reported outcome (PRO) surveys.

Patel has designed and managed hub services for Fortune 500 companies—overseeing highly specialized patient-support call centers focused on health insurance coding, coverage, and reimbursement as well as patient engagement, education, and empowerment. In serving clients like Olympus and Danone, he has reconceptualized, reengineered, and redeployed mission-critical patient-support operations—managing the design, development, and deployment of program charters, project plans, Gantt charts, information and communication technology (ICT) systems, business processes, standard operating procedures [SOPs], and performance standards. He has developed mission-critical content for a broad range of internal and external audiences, including patients, healthcare professionals (HCPs), healthcare provider organizations, third-party payers (TPPs), third-party administrators (TPAs), health plan sponsors and healthcare purchasers (e.g., fully-insurance and self-funded employers and unions), health services researchers, public health policymakers, biopharmaceutical companies, medical device innovators, and HealthTech pioneers.

Patel holds a Master of Business and Science degree from The Claremont Colleges and a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Biology from the University of California at San Diego.

Evelyn Chuang Gerace, BSc, MBA

Value-Based Contracting and Payment Analytics Advisor

Gerace Chuang Gerace is a CxO-level quantitative researcher, analyst, and strategist—and pioneering contract engineer—with more than 25 years of experience evaluating and reengineering stakeholders’ financial relationships to optimize economic, clinical, and humanistic outcomes (ECHOs) of care.

In the early 1990s, as a senior research analyst and strategic project director for HealthIQ, Gerace applied her market-leading understanding of third-party payment drivers in formulating revenue-optimization strategies and developing pioneering business plans for Healthcare 100 companies—ensuring biopharmaceutical, medical device, and healthcare provider organizations would thrive during the transition from indemnity health insurance plans to managed care plans.

In the mid-1990s, Gerace assured quarter-over-quarter earnings growth for FPA Medical Management, a risk-bearing managed care organization (MCO) by co-designing Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) and Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) service offerings; developing clinical, financial, and administrative scorecards and dashboards; and then running technology-enabled multivariate analyses across claims databases, identifying and managing key performance drivers across a $500 million book of business, and 600,000 capitated members. 

In this role, Gerace ran analytics in support of acquisition strategies; pioneered risk-sharing and gain-sharing contracts between self-insured employers, health plans, and regional healthcare provider organizations; and developed quantitative models to support M&A offers, facilitate shared-risk contracts, negotiate rates, audit performance, recover shared-risk settlements, and position contracting parties for improved clinical, financial, and administrative performance over time. She also accelerated the growth of a market-leading health plan by performing industry analyses, due diligence-based organizational performance reviews, and scenario-based valuation appraisals of hospitals, medical groups, and other healthcare entities. Her research work extended from longitudinal claims analytics to quantitative reviews of member Independent Practice Associations (IPAs), ambulatory care facilities, specialty medical groups, and freestanding clinics—all in support of direct-to-employer contracts and quality-assured participating providers. Extending from physician report carding and in-depth service-line analyses to proforma financial statement development for business plans, her quantitative analyses were central to the MCO’s market-leading PPO-network development, capitated contracting, and fee-for-service negotiating strategies.

In the early 2000s, Gerace served as Director of Operations for an oncology management group at the world-renowned City of Hope, overseeing a broad range of operating margin and clinical outcomes determinants including facility management, human resource management, business and clinical process development, information system selection and oversight, and more. 

In a concurrent role, she served as the Manager of Business Development for the City of Hope hospital, running reimbursement forecasts, net present value (NPV), and internal rate of return (IRR) analyses in relation to new business opportunities ranging from new staffing and medical practice acquisition models to new clinical service lines (e.g., building new treatment centers and acquiring new imaging technologies).

Following her time at City of Hope, Gerace co-engineered CxO and VP dashboards and ran high-level analytics for seven senior executives (including the Vice Presidents of Marketing and Sales)—working closely with the information technology teams in running quantitative analyses to support global market reviews, scenario-driven business planning, marketing strategies, capital equipment leasing models and supply pricing, territory realignments, compensation and commission schedule development, and other mission-critical initiatives.

Over the past 15 years, Gerace led an International Arts business, developing an online brand and revenue stream so strong that it grew quarter over quarter even through the Great Recession. She rejoined the original HealthIQ leadership team in 2018, committed to building 360-degree impact accountability into value-based contracts to help critical health industry stakeholders achieve the Triple/Quadruple Aim of reduced per capita costs, improved population health, and enhanced patient/provider experiences.

Gerace earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology with a minor in Social Ecology from the University of California in Irvine. She holds an MBA in Finance and Healthcare from the University of Southern California.

Heather Soss, BA

Reimbursement Manager

Heather Soss is an insurance specialist, medical-records expert, and talent-development professional with nearly 20 years of experience training insurance-billing, data-entry, and customer-service personnel in how to use education-based strategies to (1) promote patient engagement, activation, and adherence; (2) verify insurance benefits, secure prior authorizations, and improve reimbursements; and (3) source, price, and coordinate delivery of best-in-class healthcare products, services, and solutions.

At ReimbursementIQ, she (1) increases billable case volume by applying skills in call center management, insurance verification, prior authorization, medical necessity documentation, and appeals; (2) enhances operating efficiencies by applying knowledge of business process reengineering (BPR), flowchart design, template development, system automation, and quality assurance; and (3) improves team member engagement, competencies, and productivity by assessing their motivation, knowledge, and skills and by applying enterprise resources to better support their well-being, productive capacity, and socioeconomic status.

Prior to joining ReimbursementIQ’s insurance, sampling, and fulfillment helpline—supporting two lines of medical foods—Soss (1) supervised, trained, and developed healthcare administrators for multisite clinical practices; (2) audited medical charts and operative reports to assure coding integrity and regulatory compliance; (3) investigated, appealed, and reversed denied insurance claims; (4) educated patients in health-insurance terminology, insurance-plan selection, and self-advocacy fundamentals; and (5) delivered practice-building administrative services to high-volume/high-value clinicians to protect and enhance patient volume and healthcare provider (HCP) engagement.

Before entering the healthcare sector, mastering electronic health records (EHRs), and gaining a formal designation as a highly proficient medical biller in the early 2000s, Soss earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in special education from Michigan State University, with an emphasis in education for the hard of hearing. In her time away from reimbursement helplines, Soss enjoys life as a military spouse (married to an active-duty serviceman) and as the mother of two wonderful boys, ages five and ten.

Jessica Gonzalez

Reimbursement Manager

Bilingual in Spanish and English, Jessica Gonzalez is a customer acquisition, customer engagement, and customer service expert with a background in value-engineering, operations reengineering, and revenue cycle management in the healthcare, hospitality, and restaurant sectors.

She spent three years with the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) Candlewood Suites hotel chain, which applied best practices from the Residence Inn and Summerfield Suites chains to the extended-stay hotel sector. In her work as a front-desk night auditor and guest inquiry and reservation specialist, Gonzalez gained keen on the service expectations of rate-sensitive business travelers and other corporate transient travelers with longer hotel stays than the typical business traveler stays of one week or less—and learned the top-line and bottom-line benefits of maintaining higher occupancy averages (lessons directly applicable to fee-for-service [FFS] hospitals, health systems, and integrated delivery networks [IDNs]). She also learned how to drive earnings growth through the right balance of average daily rates (ADRs) with revenue per available room sold (RevPAR), ensuring higher occupancy and market penetration through word-of-mouth and repeat customers.

Prior to working at IHG, Gonzalez served as a Restaurant Manager for a Subway Franchisee in the high-volume Disneyland region, protecting and enhancing Subway Restaurant’s culture, competencies, brand equity, revenues, operating efficiencies, earnings growth, risk mitigation, and competitiveness by focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) and tracking performance dashboards, scorecards, and other management reports.

With over a decade of experience in business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, finance, and operations, Gonzalez can quickly identify performance challenges, protect key accounts, and reengineer front-office and back-office business processes to protect and enhance patient and provider satisfaction, lifetime value, and referrals (e.g., positioning practices to report on real-world results [RWRs] using clinical outcome assessment [COA] tools, validated patient-reported outcomes [PRO] instruments, and net promoter scores [NPS]). She is familiar with major code sets including ICD-10-CM, ICD-10-PCS, DRGs, HCPCS Level I (CPT), HCPCS Level II, NDCs, HCCs and RAFs, APCs, ASCs, SNOMED, and LOINC—and she keeps up with the literature on challenged subpopulations and levers that improve economic, clinical, and humanistic outcomes (ECHOs).

In running patient-support programs under both fee-for-service (FFS) payment systems and value-based payment (VBP) systems, Gonzalez applies breakthroughs, best practices, and benchmarks from outside sectors—ensuring patients receive the caring, personalized, and reliable service levels to which they have become accustomed in activities of daily living (ADLs).

Gonzalez grew up in Southern California, studied at Cypress Community College, and continues to live, work, and volunteer in the region—focusing on improving health literacy, health equity, and social determinants of health (SDOHs) for historically disenfranchised subpopulations. She is an advocate for regional, state, and national improvements in health-related quality of life across urban, suburban, and rural settings.

Zenobia Walji, BA, MBA

Value-Strategist and Strategic Advisor

Zenobia Walji is a MedTech industry expert, volume-to-value (V2V) transition specialist, and global marketing strategist with 25+ years of leadership and organic-growth experience serving leading multinational corporations (MNCs) within and beyond U.S. markets. She has held local, national, and global leadership roles in strategic planning, marketing, and sales—navigating both fee-for-service (FFS) payment systems and capitated, value-based contracting (VBC) environments for brand-name medical device companies including Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, and Stryker. Walji’s ability to drive top-line and bottom-line growth (e.g., for established or acquisitive new [$100M], mid-sized [$500M] and large [$2B] medical device businesses) was developed through multidisciplinary, cross-functional, and trans-geographic headquarter roles in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific.

Known for breakthrough business insights, a servant-leadership style, and performance standard-setting by leadership example, Walji has successfully led efforts to build and then implement multi-year worldwide strategic plans across radically varied public health policy and healthcare financing systems. Her passion for people—combined with her insightful understanding of country-specific medical-practice drivers—has won her the support of C-Suite executives; key opinion leaders (KOLs) in science, medicine, and technology (STM); and surgical-allied professionals. She offers unparalleled expertise in influence analytics, complex problem solving, and stakeholder alignment toward improved economic, clinical, and humanistic outcomes (ECHOs).

Having started as a U.S-based sales rep and having quickly moved into international assignments serving teaching hospitals and other world-class healthcare provider organizations, Walji was a pioneer in driving the adoption of new technology, real-world data (RWD) collection, real-world evidence (RWE) building, and real-world value-creation. As far back as 1989, she engineered customer-centric win-win business relationships and executed exclusive multi-year contracts with performance guarantees that positioned both Med Tech manufacturers and their change-resistant customers for sustainable, double-digit earnings growth based on clinical performance, business outcomes, and community impacts.

Walji earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in European Studies and Philosophy from Claremont McKenna College (a top-10 liberal arts college) and an MBA in International Marketing from the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. She is fluent in six languages and is widely viewed as a compassionate “pressure tester” who brings extreme methodological rigor and fresh eyes to client assignments.