About Us - Healthy People Team Members

Katharine Iskrant, MPH, CPHQ, CHCA

Practice Leader

Katharine is the practice leader for our firm. She is a member of the NCQA Audit Methodology Panel. Katharine has been a Certified HEDIS^® Compliance Auditor since 1998 and has directed more than one thousand HEDIS^® audits.

Katharine is a frequent speaker at HEDIS^® vendor and health plan conferences. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MPH from UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She is a member of the National Association for Healthcare Quality and is published in the fields of healthcare and public health.

Joan Spiegler, CPC, CPHQ, CHCA

Director, MA/MA-PD Reviews and Data Validation

Joan Spiegler has been with Healthy People since 2010 and is our Data Validation Director. Joan is also one of our NCQA Certified HEDIS Compliance Auditors, assisting health plans with her strong health plan background. Joan is a MA/MA-PD Claims Expert with 20 years experience in Medicare Managed Care. In her previous job at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, she was a subject matter expert in MA/MA-PD claims, enrollment, and disenrollment, and assessed all related company policies and procedures to ensure process compliance with federal regulations. Joan was responsible for review and submission of the Part C and Part D quarterly claims data to CMS.

Joan strategically administered CMS Risk Adjustment Data Validation audits at KFHP. Joan played a pivotal role as compliance partner on IT projects and was liaison to Federal Government regulators. She successfully translated complex CMS regulations to operational processes working with cross-functional teams. Joan also ensured conformity with CMS regulatory requirements in designing, formulating and implementing multiple automated monitoring tools based on current business and systems processes. She has extensive experience reviewing Medicare claims and medical records data.

Rhonda Farrar, RN, BSN, CHCA

Clinical HEDIS Supervisor and Lead HEDIS Auditor

Rhonda Farrar is Healthy People's Clinical HEDIS Supervisor, as well as a Lead HEDIS Auditor. Prior to joining Healthy People, Rhonda was AdvantMed’s HEDIS and Quality Principal Program Manager and served as the Senior Manager of HEDIS Data Analytics. Prior to working at AdvantMed, Rhonda lead HEDIS and NCQA Accreditation programs at a health plan. Across her seven years of HEDIS work at the health plan, Rhonda developed a provider-based incentive program including quality and pharmacy measures. Rhonda also created health care integrated delivery network (IDN) system-wide initiatives to support HEDIS population health improvements. Rhonda shares her vast performance improvement expertise with Healthy People’s clients. Rhonda is a frequent speaker at national healthcare conferences, including RISE.

Shiela Thier, MBA, CHCA

Lead HEDIS Auditor

Shiela Thier has worked in managed care since 1995. Shiela was the HEDIS Manager at Cigna Medicare for seven years, a Quality Manager at Anthem/Amerigroup for two years, and worked at Cariten Healthcare for twelve years. Shiela was a Product Director for the certified HEDIS vendor Centauri Health Solutions for six years. In her role as a lead HEDIS auditor with Healthy People, Shiela shares her performance measure expertise with the plans she works with.

Shetal Patel, BS, CHCA

Lead HEDIS Auditor

Shetal Patel is one of Healthy People’s lead HEDIS auditors. Shetal has over fifteen years of HEDIS experience, with fourteen years producing, leading and facilitating HEDIS audits at health plans.

James Deich, PhD

Source Code Review Director

Dr. Deich directs the HEDIS source code review team. Dr. Deich is proficient at many programming languages and is an information systems and database systems testing expert.

Wendell Hicken, CISO

Chief Information Security Officer

Wendell Hicken is Chief Information Security Officer and is responsible for ensuring our data, assets and technologies are properly protected. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Engineering and Applied Science, has published a book on web application testing, and holds numerous patents. He’s worked as Chief Technology Officer at both small and large organizations, giving him a broad range of experience. Most recently he was Chief Technology Officer for Yellowpages.com, with over 60 million visitors per month. His responsibilities included overseeing security, IT compliance and protecting PII and other sensitive data.

Duke A. Phan, MD

Medical Director

Dr. Phan is our medical director and has a private practice in California. The audit team and nurse review team directly report to Dr. Phan on all medical questions.