Board members

Members are responsible for:

• Establishing three advisory committees, one of health care stakeholders, another on data issues, and another on primary care.
• Identifying the types and sources of data needed to annually calculate total health care expenditures and cost growth, and to establish the health care cost growth benchmark.
• Working collaboratively together and with experts to explore issues and developing recommendations to lower health care costs.
• Helping develop the reports to be submitted to the Legislature.
• Considering and integrating public input into board recommendations as appropriate.

Susan E. Birch, MBA, BSN, RN, director and chair

Director, Washington State Health Care Authority (HCA)

Appointed by Governor Jay Inslee in January 2018, Birch oversees efforts to transform the health care system, helping ensure Washington residents have access to high-quality, affordable health care. HCA purchases care for nearly 2.7 million residents through Washington Apple Health (Medicaid), the Public Employees Benefits Board Program, and the School Employees Benefits Board Program. HCA also is responsible for the state community-based behavioral health system.

A nurse by training, Birch is passionate about improving population health and reducing overmedicalization by focusing on the social determinants of health. She has led efforts to combat the opioid public health crisis through increased access to treatment and public education, eliminate Hepatitis C through innovative value-based purchasing, and implement a Medicaid benefit for supportive housing and supported employment.

Before joining Governor Inslee's Cabinet, Birch served as the executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. She led the state's successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which expanded coverage to more low-income Coloradans while focusing on cost containment and improved service delivery. She also has served as chief executive officer of the Northwest Colorado Visiting Nurse Association.

Birch has completed appointments to the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services and served as the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Livingston Fellow and the Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow.

Jane Beyer

Jane Beyer has served as Senior Health Policy Advisor to Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler since January 2017. She was legal counsel to the Washington State House of Representatives for twenty years, working on a broad range of health and human services issues. Jane served as Washington State's Medicaid director from 1995 through 1998, and as Washington State's Behavioral Health Commissioner from 2012 through 2015.

She began her career as a legal services attorney in Tacoma, Washington, graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina School of Law, and is admitted to the Washington State and District of Columbia bar. 

She serves as Chair of the Executive Committee at the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP).

Eileen Cody, RN, BSN, CRRN

Eileen Cody earned an associate degree in nursing from the College of Saint Mary and a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing from Creighton University.

Eileen retired after working at Kaiser Permanente (formerly Group Health Cooperative) in Seattle for over forty years. She worked as a neuro-rehab nurse certified in both rehabilitation nursing and multiple sclerosis care. In addition to her work at Kaiser Permanente, Eileen is a founding member of District 1199 NW/SEIU Hospital and Health Care Employees Union.

First appointed and subsequently retained to the House of Representatives in 1994, she served constituents in the 11^th district and then the 34^th district through 2022. Eileen dedicated her legislative career to achieving affordable, quality health care for all residents of Washington State.

Lois C. Cook

Managing member, America's Phone Guys

Ms. Cook owns and operates America's Phone Guys in Vancouver, Washington with her husband, Caleb, who started the business in 2001. The company sells telephone equipment and VoIP phone services to other businesses in the northwest. She also serves as a member of the Business Advisory Council for the Washington State Department of Revenue and is the chair for the NFIB's Washington State Leadership Council.

Bianca Frogner, PhD

Professor, Department of Family Medicine; Director, Center for Health Workforce Studies; Director, Primary Care Innovation Lab
University of Washington

Dr. Frogner is a health economist (NIH T32 trainee) with expertise in health services delivery, health workforce, labor economics, health spending, health insurance coverage and reimbursement, and international health systems. She is the principal investigator of two Health Resources and Services Administration Health Workforce Research Center grants, one focused on allied health and another focused on the training and education of health professionals to address health equity.

In 2016, Dr. Frogner served on an Institute of Medicine Consensus Study Committee on Educating Health Professionals to Address the Social Determinants of Health. She serves on the editorial boards of Medical Care Research and Review and Health Systems. She received the 2019 John M. Eisenberg Article-of-the-Year Award as lead author of a study investigating physical therapy as the first point of care for low back pain treatment published in Health Services Research.

Dr. Frogner has over 100 publications including peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and reports. Her research has been shared in over 200 scholarly presentations and has appeared in popular media outlets including CNN, NPR, Wall Street Journal, Vox, and Politico.

Dr. Frogner completed a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. She received her PhD in health economics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and BA at University of California, Berkeley in Molecular and Cell Biology.

Jodi Joyce

Chief executive officer, Unity Care Northwest

Jodi has extensive experience in improving access to and affordability of health and health care in large and small organizations and multi-system collaborations. At Unity Care Northwest, Jodi oversees the integration of health care services and delivery of innovative, whole-person care that has reduced health care cost growth.

Before working for Unity Care Northwest, Jodi served as the chief quality officer and associate vice chancellor for Quality & Patient Safety at the University of Illinois Hospital & Clinics. In this role, Jodi led a seven-year "improvement journey" that included improving price transparency for patients and achieving large reductions in health care costs. This work was accomplished through implementing key programs that reduced a patient's barriers to access.

Jodi has also served in senior leadership roles at Kaiser Permanente and Portland-based Legacy Health. In addition, she is an inaugural member of Washington State's Bree Collaborative. Jodi earned her MBA at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and her BSN at Northwestern University, and served as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow.

Greg Marchand

Greg Marchand is the senior director of Global Benefits for the Boeing Company. He is responsible for developing policy, strategy of the company’s Global Benefits and Health Services, which includes health care and well-being; financial and retirement benefits; occupational health and clinical services. Greg is also a member of Boeing’s Human Resources Leadership team. 

He also serves as the Boeing representative on the Washington Health Alliance and ERISA Industry Committee Board of Directors and was formerly on the Boards of the Purchaser Business Group on Health and The Leapfrog Group.

Greg has also been recognized as a 2019 Healthcare Leadership honoree by the Puget Sound Business Journal for being one of the first private employers to launch its own accountable care organization. Greg holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Hiram College and a Master of Science in Health/Fitness Management from the American University. Prior to joining Boeing, he served as a consultant to the Kellogg Company and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. 

Mark Siegel

Director, Employee Benefits, Costco Wholesale

Mark Siegel is a director of Employee Benefits at Costco Wholesale based in Issaquah, Washington. Mark received a Bachelor of Accounting and Finance degree from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Margaret Stanley

Consumer representative

Margaret Stanley has served in executive positions in health care in both the public and private sectors. She was the first administrator of the Washington State Health Care Authority and served as vice chair of the Washington Health Care Commission and Chair of the Public Employees Benefits Board. She later chaired the Washington State Health Benefits Exchange Board.

Ms. Stanley also served as the executive director of the Puget Sound Health Alliance, now the Washington Health Alliance. She has held executive positions at the California Public Employees' Retirement System, Group Health Cooperative, Premera Blue Cross, and Regence BlueShield. She has served on many health care boards. She has a master's degree in health care administration from the University of Washington.

Ingrid Ulrey

Chief executive officer, Washington Health Benefit Exchange

Ingrid Ulrey is the chief executive officer for Washington Health Benefit Exchange. She is a health care executive with an extensive history and passion for expanding access to care, driving health system transformation, and advancing equity. In her role as Exchange CEO, she oversees the entirety of the Exchange’s activities and works closely with the Governor-appointed Exchange Board, leadership, and staff to define and execute their mission.

Prior to her appointment as Exchange CEO, Ulrey served in the Biden Administration as Regional Director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — serving Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and the 272 federally recognized tribes. Before HHS, Ulrey was Policy Director for Public Health — Seattle & King County, where she was a lead strategist of the region’s COVID-19 response.

Ulrey’s leadership in the health sector is informed by work at the national level, including five years with the Service Employees International Union based in Washington, DC; at the state level, including eight years state legislative sessions in Olympia as Advocacy Director for AARP; and with a global perspective on health from more than five years in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, most recently with PATH, based in Yangon, Myanmar. She has a master’s in public policy, public policy analysis from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s in cultural anthropology from University of California, Santa Cruz.

Kim Wallace

Medical administrator, Office of the Medical Director, Washington State Department of Labor & Industries

Over the past 25 years, Kim has held numerous public and private sector leadership positions in health care policy and finance, health IT, health benefits management, and public health. She has an MBA from Wharton and a B.S. in Clinical Dietetics from the University of Washington.

Carol Wilmes

Director, Member Pooling Programs, Association of Washington Cities (AWC)

Carol Wilmes oversees AWC's Employee Benefit Trust, Risk Management Service Agency, Workers' Comp Retrospective Rating Program, and Drug & Alcohol Consortium. For most of her 38 years with the AWC, Carol administered the Employee Benefit Trust, insuring 36,000 members from over 280 municipalities and special purpose districts. She serves as a resource for labor-management task forces addressing the complexities of health care coverage, and frequently speaks at the state and national level on governmental entity health pools and public sector risk management trends.

She was appointed to the Washington State Health Benefit Exchange Advisory Committee in 2015; serves as chair to the Board of Directors to the National League of Cities Risk Insurance Sharing Consortium; and serves on the Washington Health Alliance Board of Directors and Executive Committee.

Edwin Wong, PhD

Research associate professor, Department of Health Services, University of Washington

Dr. Edwin Wong works at the University of Washington and is a core investigator at the Center for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Care within the VA Puget Sound Health Care System. Dr. Wong is a health economist and health services researcher with a diverse portfolio of federally funded research.

His work applies big data analytics to address questions in four key areas:

1. Understanding economic and policy factors influencing health care utilization and costs.
2. Examining the economic implications of large-scale health system interventions.
3. Assessing the economic burden of chronic disease.
4. Developing novel methods applications to improve measurement of health system performance.

Dr. Wong also serves as a mentor to numerous graduate students, and postdoctoral and clinical fellows. He received his BS in Computer Science from Texas Christian University, and his MA and PhD in economics from the University of Washington.

Board consultants

Michael H. Bailit, MBA

President, Bailit Health

Michael founded Bailit Health in 1997 and has since worked with a wide array of state agencies and employer-purchasing coalitions in over 30 states. Michael's professional interests focus on how purchasers and regulators can influence health care markets to operate as effectively and efficiently as possible. Michael has worked with clients on payment and delivery system reform, including ACO, Medical Home and episode-based payment strategy design and implementation, performance measurement, value-based purchasing, and multi-stakeholder change process guidance and facilitation. Since 2018, he has worked with Connecticut, Delaware, Oregon, and Rhode Island to design and implement cost growth target strategies.

Prior to founding Bailit Health, Michael served as the assistant commissioner for Benefit Plans in the Massachusetts Division of Medical Assistance, the state Medicaid agency. His responsibilities included the management of all of the division's benefit plans, including the HMO, behavioral health, primary care case management, and senior care programs. Also while with Massachusetts, Michael founded the Massachusetts Healthcare Purchaser Group and served as its chairman and president.

Previously, Michael worked for Digital Equipment Corporation and was engaged in health and welfare benefit planning and management activities for Digital's 60,000 U.S. employees. Michael earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wesleyan University and earned an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Rachel Block

Program officer, Milbank Memorial Fund

Rachel Block is a program officer at the Milbank Memorial Fund where she focuses on a variety of state health policy issues. She has previously served in numerous executive roles in the public and private sectors, including spearheading development of New York state's health information technology strategy as deputy commissioner for Health Information Technology Transformation in the New York State Department of Health, and as the founding executive director of the New York eHealth Collaborative.

Ms. Block has also worked at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, where she held several senior management positions directing policy development and operations for Medicaid, State Children's Health Insurance, and federal survey and certification programs. She was the founding executive director for the Vermont Health Care Authority and had senior health policy staff roles in the New York State Legislature.

January Angeles, MPP

Senior consultant, Bailit Health

January has over 20 years of experience in health care policy and management. Her expertise includes legislative and policy analysis, program development and implementation, and program management and evaluation, with an emphasis on publicly-financed health care. January's current work focuses on helping states establish health care cost growth target programs, working with Connecticut and Washington on developing the target methodology and assessing performance against the target. She also works with states to leverage procurement and contract oversight processes to strengthen their Medicaid managed care programs.

Most recently, she assisted North Dakota on its Medicaid managed care procurement for expansion adults. January's past work at Bailit Health includes providing technical assistance to Mississippi and New Jersey on strategies to implement value-based payments in their Medicaid managed care contracts and facilitating a work group to advise the Rhode Island on future telemedicine policies.

Prior to joining Bailit Health, January served as deputy Medicaid director for Managed Care and Oversight and as CHIP director for Rhode Island. She led cross-functional teams responsible for managed care contracting, delivery system reform, policy and regulatory compliance, data analytics, and program integrity. Her accomplishments include spearheading the successful renewal of Rhode Island's Section 1115 waiver, developing, and implementing processes and measures for better oversight of the Medicaid program's contracted health, dental and transportation programs, and directing the Accountable Entities program's transition from pilot to implementation phase. Her Rhode Island state work also included serving as interagency operations manager for HealthSource RI, the state's health insurance exchange. In this role, January facilitated coverage for thousands of Rhode Island residents by strengthening Medicaid and HealthSource RI's eligibility policy and operations.

Before working for the state of Rhode Island, January was a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where she worked on Affordable Care Act legislation and implementation, with a focus on expanding Medicaid, implementing the premium tax credits, and coordinating eligibility for health and human services programs. January's other health policy experience includes working at the Center for Health Care Strategies, American Institutes for Research, and Mathematica Policy Research.

January earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Oberlin College, and a Master of Public Policy Degree from the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy.