Emeritus Board

R. Phillip Baker, MD

Current Positions: AVP and Chief Medical Revenue Officer, Self Regional Healthcare; Chairman of the Board, Health Partners of the Lakelands CIN; Board of Directors; Medical Director Case Management, Southeastern Health Partners ACO
Years on ACPA BOD: 5

After practicing as an OB/GYN, Dr. R. Phillip Baker assumed the responsibility to develop the role of an internal physician advisor program for Self Regional Hospital, a sole community hospital in Greenwood, SC in January of 2013. While attending the Southeastern Physician Advisor Symposium (SEPAS) which ultimately evolved into the National Physician Advisor Conference (NPAC), he was introduced to the American College of Physician Advisors (ACPA). It was obvious that the vision of the organization was becoming a voice for the field of physician advisors.

Dr. Baker joined the ACPA in January of 2016, served on the Government Affairs Committee, and was approached the following year to become a member of the Board of Directors. Dr. Baker became known for his work in dealing with Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. He encouraged the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to outline the requirements MA plans must follow for non-contracted facilities based on traditional Medicare regulations. He also informed providers of opportunities to involve CMS directly with issues they faced while negotiating with MA plans. This work led to his honor of being included in the inaugural class of Hirsch’s Heroes and developing a course on MA plans which became part of The Learning Center.

Larry Field, DO, MBA, CPC, CHC, LHRM

Current Position: Medical Director, Provider Resources
Years on ACPA BOD: 7 (Treasurer 2014 - 2020)

Dr. Larry Field is one of the founding members of the American College of Physician Advisors (ACPA) from 2014. He was elected as the initial corporate treasurer and served in that role into 2020. He was responsible for the development of the method to initially fund ACPA – developing, monitoring, and reconciling all financial aspects for cash, credit, merchant accounts, banking, and insurance relationships for the College. In addition, he compiled all financial reporting as required by law.

Dr. Field was an integral decision-maker within the Executive Committee and Board of Directors from 2014 – 2020 and over that span of time, successfully guided the financial well-being of the organization from a start-up into an organization that has the financial resources and stability to support the physician advisor community at the highest level free from commercial bias. He is the recipient of the 2023 Dr. Ronald Rejzer Distinguished Achievement Award.

Larry Hegland, MD

Current Position: Vice President of Medical Affairs, North Memorial Health in Minneapolis, MN
Years on ACPA BOD: 8 (Vice President 2019 – 2020, Treasurer 2020 – 2021)
Recipient of the 2019 Distinguished Achievement Award

Dr. Hegland is a board-certified anesthesiologist who practiced cardiac anesthesia and cardiac surgical intensive care.  After a decade of practice, he transitioned into a variety of senior leadership positions in hospitals, health systems, and large group practices.  In the late 1990s he started his first physician advisor program before the term had been coined.  With the advent of the Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program, he took on new roles in utilization, audit, and denial management for a large Wisconsin health system.  He was one of the initial members of the American College of Physician Advisors.  For the last 20-plus years he has been at his happiest helping develop new physician advisor programs as well as helping new physician advisors adapt to their role. 

Edward P. Hu, MD, ACPA-C

Current Position: System Executive Director, University of North Carolina Health Care System
Years on ACPA BOD: 7 (President 2016 – 2019, co-director of The Learning Center)
Recipient of the 2019 Distinguished Service Award
Recipient of the 2022 Dr. Ronald Rejzer Distinguished Achievement Award

Dr. Edward Hu joined the ACPA Board of Directors in 2014. An internal medicine physician by training, he first received his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1999, followed by an internal medicine residency at Duke University Hospital completed in 2002. He practiced as a hospitalist at UNC Rex Hospital in Raleigh, NC, from 2002 through 2016. After a full year of study of Medicare regulations and evidenced based literature, he co-founded the physician advisor program at UNC Rex in 2012. In 2016, he became the UNC Health executive director of inpatient physician advisor services. His areas of expertise stem from his passion for reading and study, and include utilization review, denials/appeals, compliance, revenue cycle, quality measurement, and clinical documentation integrity.

He joined the ACPA Board of Directors in 2014 when ACPA merged with the American Society of Physician Advisors, on whose board he also served. When ACPA's founding President, Dr. Ron Rejzer, stepped down in 2016, he was nominated and confirmed by the ACPA BOD to serve as ACPA's second President, serving from 2016-2019, which included a transitional year to ACPA's third President, Dr. Charles Locke. ACPA's major accomplishments under his tenure include advancing ACPA's membership and reach, creating the ACPA physician advisor biennial survey, transitioning ACPA to its current website with greatly enhanced member functionalities, expanding ACPA's educational offerings, and transitioning the highly successful SEPAS conference, created by Dr. Nick Ulmer, into the National Physician Advisor Conference. He has been a driving force behind the ACPA inpatient only lists, two midnight education, The Learning Center, the creation of the ACPA President's Corner, and the ACPA website. Undoubtedly, one of his greatest decisions as President was to hire Elizabeth Lamkin as ACPA COO in 2017, with whom he worked closely in a dyad leadership model to advance ACPA to greater heights.

Dr. Hu served as immediate past president from 2019-2021, and continued as a member of the ACPA Executive Committee until 2021. He is honored to be part of the inaugural ACPA Emeritus Board. He looks forward to continuing his contributions to ACPA through educational development and participation on the ACPA Government Affairs Committee, as an expert in Medicare and Medicare Advantage.

Elizabeth Lamkin, MHA

Current Position: Retired, CEO, Consultant and Advisor
Years on ACPA BOD: 7 (Chief Operating Officer 2016 – 2020)
Recipient of the 2022 Distinguished Service Award

Ms. Lamkin is a national author and speaker on revenue integrity and operational systems. Prior to retiring in 2021, she provided consulting services on sustainable improvement in operational effectiveness with a focus on systems of compliance, quality management, licensure, utilization management, margin improvement, physician engagement, and enterprise communication. She believes healthcare must operate as a continuum with information sharing critical to success, starting with the Mission and Vision.

After 20 years as a successful hospital CEO, Ms. Lamkin formed PACE Healthcare Consulting, LLC in 2011 along with business partner Amanda Berglund, MS, MBA and served a broad array of clients from national health care systems to individual hospitals. Her systematic methodology for organizational effectiveness and improvement has proven to be successful in diverse organizations and settings. As a hospital CEO, her reproducible methodology resulted in repeated success and quality awards in the hospitals she led. She gives attribution for success in the RAC demonstration project to the hospital Physician Advisor and Director of Case Management from whom she learned a tremendous amount.

Ms. Lamkin has successfully led teams in system wide and departmental redesign and improvement. Engagements include: Crisis intervention for multi-facility organization to bring them into compliance with CMS Conditions of Participation including external and post-acute services, leading strategic planning, national HCAHPS consulting team; redesign of quality function including medical staff for multi-hospital system; redesign of utilization management function, physician engagement; design and implementation of Physician Advisor program in multi-facility system; enterprise wide quality system redesign including risk and patient experience.

In 2012, Ms. Lamkin worked with Dr. Ronald Rejzer on design of a physician advisor program. Over several years, they continued to collaborate as volunteers toward the definition, expansion, and impact of the physician advisor role. After the ACPA was formed in 2014, Ms. Lamkin provided strategic planning and consulting to the organization as a volunteer. As ACPA grew, she become a staff and Board member and in 2016 became the ACPA Chief Operating Officer under the leadership of ACPA presidents Edward Hu, MD and Charles Locke, MD. 

Ms. Lamkin assisted the College with strategy, networking, and creation of a sustainable infrastructure and operating systems. Multi-year strategic plans led by ACPA physician leaders resulted in the growth of ACPA from a handful of members to the robust and active organization of today.  She retired in 2021 and when presented with the 2022 Distinguished Service Award commented, "it was one of the best honors of my career having been a part of the ACPA."

Ms. Lamkin holds a Master’s in Healthcare Administration and a B.A. in Business Administration from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.

Publications:

1. ACPA/ABQAURP Certification Module “Speaking the Language of the C-Suite”, Lamkin, Elizabeth
2. The Revenue Integrity Training Toolkit, HCPro 2016, Lamkin, Elizabeth and Berglund, Amanda
3. The RAC Toolkit for Hospitals and Health Systems, HcPro, 2011, Lamkin, Elizabeth and Berglund, Amanda
4. The RAC Toolkit for Physicians, HcPro, 2011
5. RAC Toolkit for CV Services (2014), Private publication for Medtronic, Inc.

Complete article list available at www.pacehcc.com 

Steven Meyerson, MD

Years on ACPA BOD: 5
Recipient of the 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award

Dr. Steven Meyerson graduated from Cornell University. He received his M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and did his training in internal medicine at the Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center, both in New York City. He was board certified in internal medicine and geriatrics and practiced in Newtown, Connecticut and Miami, Florida. He was certified in health care quality and management by the American Board of Quality Assurance and Utilization Physicians (ABQAURP) with physician advisor specialty (CHCQM-PhyAdv).

Dr. Meyerson was a developer of an early, physician-owned HMO in Connecticut and after he moved to Miami, Florida in 1980 he served on the founding board of directors of the Baptist Hospital of Miami physician hospital organization (PHO) which developed into a joint physician-hospital owned HMO. In 2004, Dr. Meyerson became the full-time medical director of a new hospitalist program at Baptist Hospital of Miami and afterwards was the medical director and physician advisor for care management at that hospital.

In 2010, Dr. Meyerson joined Accretive Physician Advisory Services, Inc. (now R1 RCM) where he was senior vice president of the Regulations and Education Group and lead the case management/Medicare compliance consulting team. He published “UpDate,” a monthly newsletter for the hospital compliance community. Following his work at Accretive, Dr. Meyerson was a national consultant and educator in the physician advisor role and hospital Medicare regulatory compliance space.

Dr. Meyerson is a lifetime member American College of Physician Advisors, where he served as a member of the board of directors, the Government Affairs Committee, and blog editor.

Bernard Ravitz, MD

Current Position: Assistant Vice President Medical Affairs, Medstar Good Samaritan/Union Memorial Hospitals, Baltimore, Maryland (2005 - 2019: Physician Advisor, Medstar Good Samaritan Hospital) Years on ACPA BOD: 9 (Observation Committee Chair)

Dr. Ravitz was one of the founding members of the American College of Physician Advisors and has the honor of holding ACPA membership number 001. He was the creator of the Observation Committee and served as Observation Committee Chair until 2022 along with serving on the Executive Committee. He continues to participate in the Observation Committee as a member/mentor. He expresses he looks forward to the continued growth of the ACPA.

Ronald Rejzer, MD

Years on ACPA BOD: 5 (Founding President 2014 – 2016)
Recipient of the 2016 Distinguished Achievement Award
Recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Service Award

Dr. Ronald Rejzer was a leader in the world of physician advisors for over a decade, and one of the founding physicians of the American College of Physician Advisors (ACPA). He served as the first president of ACPA, and without Ron’s leadership, vision, and dedication, the ACPA would not exist today. He played a major role in the development of the specialty and gaining recognition of the importance of what physician advisors do for their organizations.

Dr. Rejzer received his medical degree from Hahnemann Medical University in Philadelphia and did his residency in Family Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. He was board certified in both family and emergency medicine and practiced emergency medicine for nearly two decades. He was an early believer in the role of hospitalists and took on an administrative role with a hospitalist management company. That experience formed the basis for his interest in the world of physician advisors. His ultimate administrative role was as the SVP/Chief Physician Advisor for Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas. In that role, he developed one of the most progressive and expansive physician advisor programs in the country. He demonstrated the amazing benefit that physician advisors could bring to their organization.

He had a profound effect on all who knew him, and, inspired everyone to care about others while reaching for the highest goals. In retirement, he was able to pursue his passion for family, friends, fishing, hunting and his cabin in Pennsylvania before passing away in 2020.

Howard Stein, DO, MHA, FABQAURP

Current Position: Associate Director of Medical Affairs and Senior Physician Advisor in Care Management, Centrastate Medical Center
Years on ACPA BOD: 9 (RAC Relief Champion 2021 – 2022)

Dr. Stein is a board-certified Family Medicine physician. He served in the United States Air Force for three years largely as an Emergency Department physician. He practiced Family Medicine thereafter for 13 years. He began his utilization review work with the Peer Review Organization of New Jersey in 1992 and worked as a Utilization Review Physician at Centrastate Medical Center in Freehold NJ starting in 1993. His role evolved into a full-time role in 2003. His work centered on length of stay and cost management and he later established one of the first closed Observation Units in 2009.

Dr. Stein is one of the founders of ACPA. He initially focused on membership and educating future physician advisors. Numerous hospitals from throughout the United States observed his multi-disciplinary Rounds which became a standard for many health organizations.

Dr. Stein has given over 25 talks to physician advisors at national meetings. He has given webinars and written articles for various publications over the years. He has served as a consultant with several contractors. As he has worked in this field for over 30 years, Dr. Stein is likely the longest tenured physician advisor in the country. He commented, “It is an honor to join the ACPA Emeritus Board!”

E.G. “Nick” Ulmer, Jr., MD, CPC, FAAFP

Current Positions: Chief Medical Officer, Regional HealthPlus; Vice President, Clinical Integration and Medical Director of Case Management, Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System; Staff Physician, MGC Family Medicine Five Forks
Years on ACPA BOD: 7 (Vice President 2019 – 2020, first NPAC Chair)
Recipient of the 2018 Distinguished Achievement Award

Dr. Ulmer has been a physician since 1991, practicing full-scope Family Medicine for 18 years before transitioning into blended administrative-clinical roles. In 2000, he completed requirements to become a Fellow of the AAFP and in 2002 he became a Certified Professional Coder (CPC).

He joined Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System (SRHS) in 2010 and his roles there expanded from the Medical Director of Case Management to VP of Clinical Integration of SRHS and Chief Medical Officer of Regional HealthPlus, the 750+ member Physician Hospital Organization in the region. His roles include directing the SRHS Physician Advisor Team, overseeing the system ambulatory quality and care transitions initiatives, and participating in coding compliance strategies for both independent and employed providers.

While at SRHS, he spearheaded a system-wide initiative to develop an internal physician advisor team where “colleagues advise colleagues” on inpatient/observation status determination and other UM-related issues. The success of his innovative model has served as a blueprint for numerous healthcare systems nationally. Realizing the need to broaden the education of this team, he crafted a regional educational symposium to educate physician advisors, the Southeast Physician Advisor Symposium (SEPAS). SEPAS grew over seven years to be one of the premier national conferences on physician advising before transitioning into the ACPA National Physician Advisor Conference (NPAC).

Daniel Zirkman, MD

Current Position: Chief Physician Advisor, CarolinaEast Medical Center, New Bern, NC
Years on ACPA BOD: 8 (The Learning Center Champion 2021)

One of the founding members of ACPA, Dr. Zirkman was a practicing nephrologist until transitioning to the physician advisor realm in 2014. While attending a national conference in Orlando, Florida he was fortunate to have been invited to the informal breakfast meeting that ultimately launched ACPA.

He served as secretary on the inaugural Board of Directors and spent many hours working closely with our first president, Dr. Ronald Rejzer, assisting with the formulation of the College's bylaws and initial joint conferences. With a strong interest in educating new physician advisors across the country, the self-described, "Dr. Z." played an integral role in developing and promoting ACPA's The Learning Center (TLC). After completing his tenure on the Board of Directors, he has continued to support ACPA serving on the Advisory Board.