On the State of the Art in Costing Methods Workshop

State of the Art in Costing Methods Workshop: Key People

Biographies

Workshop MC

Mr. Don Husereau

Don Husereau is a Senior Associate with the Institute of Health Economics. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at The University of Ottawa and a Senior Scientist at the University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology in Hall in Tirol, Austria. Between 2001 and 2011, he worked for the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH), where he was a Director and Senior Advisor. Don’s current research focuses on appropriate and innovative approaches to the use of evidence and economics to inform health policy based on sound principles of social justice, epistemology, and judgment and decision-making. This includes work on the pricing and mechanisms to evaluate and manage innovation. He is currently Chair of an International Task Force that has developed consolidated health economic evaluation reporting standards (CHEERS) that is now endorsed by leading biomedical and health policy journals. Don formerly served on the Board of Directors for the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) and is currently an Editorial Advisor for their biomedical journal, Value in Health. Don received both his BSc in Pharmacy (1993) and his MSc (2000) from the University of Alberta's faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Ayman Chit

Ayman Chit is the Senior Director of Health Economics, Modelling and Market Access in North America at Sanofi Pasteur. Prior to this role, Ayman was the Canadian Medical and Scientific Affairs Director for the influenza vaccines portfolio at the company. Ayman has also held multiple other roles with in industry, most notably heading up the Health Economics and Outcomes Research group responsible for Oncology and Vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline Canada. He was also previously a medical and scientific affairs advisor and a clinical development manager also focusing on vaccines and oncology products. Additionally, Ayman has an active academic affiliation teaching a course on the pharmaceutical industry at the University of Toronto (UofT) school of Pharmacy.

Ayman holds an Honors Bachelor Degree in Chemistry, a Master in Biotechnology and a PhD in Pharmacy all from UofT. His doctoral thesis was focused on the economics of vaccine and drug development.

Mrs. Lesley Curtis

Lesley Curtis has worked as a research officer in Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent since 2000. Her role during this time has been as principal author of the Unit Costs of Health and Social Care volumes, an annual publication which brings together information from a variety of sources to estimate the most up-to-date nationally-applicable unit costs for numerous health and social care services in England. She has also managed the databases, the collation and the dissemination of the Unit Costs volumes. Since 2005, she has had five journal articles published relating to the working lives of professionals and how they impact on the cost of training.

During her time at the University of Kent, Lesley has gained a Masters degree in the Methods of Social Research.

Dr. Carolyn Dewa

Carolyn S. Dewa, MPH, PhD is an Full Professor of Psychiatry at University of Toronto and the Head of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s (CAMH) Centre for Research on Employment and Workplace Health. She received her doctoral degree in health economics from Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and her MPH in health services administration from San Diego State University School of Public Health. She did a fellowship at the Harvard Medical School Department of Health Policy and Management.

Since joining CAMH in 1998, Dr. Dewa has become a national leader in workplace mental health research, particularly in disability related to mental illness among workers, the effects of mental illness on productivity and interventions to improve disability outcomes. Her awards include a Canadian Institutes of Health Research /Public Health Agency of Canada Applied Public Health Chair for her research in mental illness in the working population. She has also received a Career Scientist Award from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

Mr. Ken Eng

Ken Eng is a senior health economist with the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Ken has a MA in economics and worked extensively in the areas of health status valuations, economic evaluations and economic burden studies. He has worked at the Institute of Health Economics as a research associate, concentrating on the valuation of health status. He published articles on health related quality of life measures that compared variations in population health and the determinants of health. He has also worked on health technology assessment to inform health policy. Currently at the Public Health Agency of Canada, he provides methodological and contextual advice on a variety of health economic policy issues and contributes to the development of the Economic Burden of Illness study which estimates the costs of illnesses of major conditions.

Ms. Michele Evans

Michele is a pharmacist who worked for a number of years in the private sector – both in small community pharmacies and with large international pharmaceutical companies. She started her career with the Alberta government with the Ministry of Health and has also worked with the economic development groups within the Government of Alberta, supporting the Alberta Competitiveness Council and serving as the Director of the Red Tape Reduction Task Force. In 2013, Michele returned to the Ministry of Health where she is now the Executive Director, Pharmaceuticals and Supplementary Health Benefits responsible to provide leadership and direction to the team that oversees approximately $1 billion in government spending on community-based health benefit programs for Albertans.

Michele is a passionate about the Alberta public service and believes strongly in working collaboratively and making connections. Michele has a Masters in Health Science (Health Administration) degree from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Saskatchewan.

Mr. Dan Friesen

Dan Friesen is the senior health economist at the Alberta Medical Association. His role focuses on enhancing the payment system to achieve equity amongst physicians and providing general economic advice. Prior to joining the AMA, Dan spent several years with the Government of Alberta analyzing health expenditures and designing and evaluating policy options. He started his career in the private sector, designing and simulating macroeconomic models, providing economic outlooks, and performing business case analysis.

Mr. Anyk Glussich

Anyk Glussich is the Program Lead for the Canadian Patient Cost Database at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), where he is responsible for the collection, use and promotion of Canadian patient cost data. Previously, Anyk was the Program Lead for the operations functions of the Canadian MIS Database (CMDB) at CIHI, working on projects that evaluate the data quality of jurisdictional MIS data submissions. As a Senior Analyst with the CMDB, he participated in projects that use MIS data for external reporting.

Prior to joining CIHI, Anyk spent two years at University Health Network in Toronto, where he was an analyst in the Clinical Informatics department. Anyk holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics with Computer Science from the University of Western Ontario and a Master of Business Administration from McMaster University.

Dr. Unto Häkkinen

Unto Häkkinen is Research Professor in National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) in Finland. He is working at the Centre for Health and Social Economics (at THL). He has been a Finnish co-ordinator in many international comparisons and a project director in EuroHOPE (European Health Care Outcomes, Performance and Efficiency) -project funded by European Commission.

His academic and applied research has mainly focused on health economics and topics related to it covering topics such as: cost, financing and outcome of health services, equity in health and health care, demand and utilisation of health care, payment systems in health care, health care reforms, allocation of health care resources, regional variation of health care, hospital productivity, care of the elderly and register-based analyses of costs and outcomes in health care.

Dr. Eric Latimer

Dr. Latimer is Research Scientist at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University. He obtained a PhD in economics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989 and, before joining the Douglas Institute and McGill University, was Assistant Professor of Health Economics at the Harvard School of Public Health from 1989 to 1996. His research interests focus on community-based supports for people with severe mental illness, including assertive community treatment, supported employment, Housing First and, more recently, the strengths model of case management. He has carried out economic evaluations and reviews of the economic evidence for various interventions for people with mental illness, notably supported employment. Recently, he was lead investigator for the Montreal site, and lead economist nationally, of the $110 million Chez Soi / At Home research and demonstration study on homelessness and mental illness. This study tested the Housing First approach using nine concurrent trials in five Canadian cities. Currently he is principal investigator of a CIHR-funded, $1.2 million study evaluating the strengths model of case management in seven sites across Ontario, Québec and Newfoundland. He has served as consultant to the Québec government as well as research teams in Europe and North America. He is an associate editor of the Canadian journal, Healthcare Policy. He teaches economic evaluation in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University.

Ms. Karen Lee

Karen Lee is the Director of Health Economics at the Canadian Agency for Drugs & Technologies in Health (CADTH) and an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Epidemiology, Public Health & Preventative Medicine. She has worked with CADTH for over 10 years. Her work has focused on the evaluation of pharmaceuticals through the development and assessment of epidemiologic models.

Ms. Eleanor Risling

Eleanor Risling is the Director, Integrated RAI Initiatives with the Quality, Information Management, Projects and Evaluations (QIPE) of Community, Seniors, Addiction and Mental Health, Alberta Health Services. In this role, Eleanor has oversight for use of the RAI 2.0 assessment instrument and quality initiatives resulting from the outputs of RAI 2.0 in the facility living sector within Alberta. Eleanor is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Nursing and has been practicing in the area of LTC in a variety of capacities for the past 20 years. Prior to assuming her current role, Eleanor was the Project Manager for the Continuing Care Systems Project (RAI 2.0 implementation) and the PathWays Automated Waitlist Management System in the Edmonton Zone.

Dr. Jennifer Prah Ruger

Jennifer Prah Ruger, PhD, is an internationally recognized health economist. Dr. Ruger has conducted all four types of economic evaluations, cost-minimization, cost-effectiveness, cost-utility and cost-benefit analyses. Dr. Ruger has completed the first micro-costing studies of their kind in multiple areas of substance abuse prevention and treatment services and health disparities research. Dr. Ruger has led a research team that has pioneered a micro-costing research paradigm for health and medicine, particularly substance abuse prevention and treatment programs. Dr. Ruger and colleagues have conducted costing research for smoking cessation and relapse prevention among low-income pregnant women, for motivational enhancement therapy coupled with cognitive behavioral therapy for pregnant substance abusers, for HIV prevention and substance abuse treatment for out-of-treatment drug-using women, for heroin addiction in Malaysia, and for emergency department services by frequent users. Dr. Ruger and colleagues have also conducted scholarly reviews of micro-costing. Dr. Ruger is currently leading an international collaboration with leading economic evaluation researchers and the medical journal, the British Medical Journal (BMJ), to develop a checklist for the conduct, reporting and appraisal of micro-costing studies in health care. Dr. Ruger and colleagues have also conducted cost-effectiveness studies of peer-delivered interventions for cocaine and alcohol abuse among women; cost-utility of motivational interviewing for smoking cessation and relapse prevention among low-income pregnant women; cost-effectiveness of buprenorphine and naltrexone treatments for heroin dependence in Malaysia; cost-effectiveness of interventions to prevent HIV and STDs among women; and analysis of optimal allocation of resources in the emergency department. Dr. Ruger and colleagues have also conducted scholarly reviews of economic evaluations of substance abuse prevention and treatment research.

Mr. Michael Stewart

Michael Stewart is the Director of Quality-Based Procedures Branch at the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. As part of Ontario’s Health System Funding Reform (HSFR) strategy, Michael provides strategic direction on the province’s shift towards a case mix reimbursement model that better reflects the types of patients treated, quality of services provided and aligns funding with quality.

Michael is an integral player in accelerating the Ministry’s transformation agenda through leading the identification, development and implementation of Quality-Based Procedures from both a clinical and technical lens. His work entails providing oversight over decision support and knowledge translation to strengthen hospital readiness, quality audits and use of information.

A trained nurse by background, renowned case costing expert across the province and a Director of Decision Support at St. Michael’s Hospital for many years, Michael utilizes his clinical expertise and knowledge of decision support to ensure a successful and meaningful implementation of the HSFR policies and strategies.

Michael has considerable experience with MIS applications, case costing, the various funding methodologies and related decision support systems in Ontario hospitals. He has presented numerous papers, chaired several conferences and has also written and facilitated workshops on Decision Support/ Resource Utilization Management and health records coding.

Dr. Siok Swan Tan

Siok Swan Tan graduated from Business Administration and Health, Policy & Management at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam in 2002. She worked on several healthcare-related research projects before joining the institute for Medical Technology Assessment, Erasmus MC University Medical Center, as a health economist in 2006. In 2009, she defended her dissertation entitled 'Microcosting in economic evaluations: issues of accuracy, feasibility, consistency and generalisability'. Current research topics include the Dutch DRG-like DBC casemix system, the development of reliable costing methodologies and the establishment of reference unit prices.