The Center for Health Policy Evaluation in Long-Term Care

​David Gifford, MD, MPH, serves as Director of the Center for Health Policy Evaluation in Long Term Care at the American Health Care Association, where he also serves as the Sr VP for Quality and Regulatory Affairs since 2011. He established the Center and the Quality Department at AHCA. His interests are in improving and measuring quality in LTC as well as how regulatory and payment policies impact quality. He has developed 8 new quality measures for nursing homes that all received NQF endorsement. 

He oversees a team of data analysis working with national MDS data, Medicare Claims, and Cost Reports to develop quality measures and conduct policy evaluations. Dr. Gifford also serves on the Board of the Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes campaign and the Baldrige Foundation Board and chairs the Department of Veterans Affairs Geriatric and Gerontology Advisory Committee. He serves on the NQF Measures Applications Partnership (MAP). 

He is a former Director of the Rhode Island State Department of Health, where he received the National Governor’s award for Distinguished Service Award for State Officials. He led efforts to expand public reporting of quality for home health and nursing homes and to make the nursing home survey process more person centered. Prior to that he served as Chief Medical Officer for Quality Partners of Rhode Island where he directed CMS’ national nursing home-based quality improvement effort. He also is on the Brown University faculty in the Schools of Medicine and Public Health as well as being a member of Brown’s Center for Quality and Innovation in LTC. He received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and conducted his geriatric fellowship at UCLA where he also earned his Master’s in Public Health while a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar.

​Kiran Sreenivas is a Research Director at American Health Care Association (AHCA) in Washington, DC. He supports AHCA’s Quality Initiative, LTC Trend Tracker, and other projects aimed at improving lives and delivering solutions for quality care. His passion is helping others use data to make informed decisions.

Prior to joining AHCA, he worked four years at America’s Essential Hospitals on a collaborative to reduce hospital readmissions and hospital-acquired conditions, such as pressure ulcers and surgical site infections. Kiran is currently working on earning a Doctor of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. He received his master’s in health policy at George Washington University and his bachelor’s in biology at Northwestern University.

​Holly Harmon, RN, MBA, LNHA, FACHCA brings both passion and a wealth of practical, real-world, clinical and operational experience to her role as Associate Vice President, Quality & Clinical Affairs at AHCA. Her extensive service in a wide array of settings including post-acute care, long term care, residential care, assisted living, independent living, a psychiatric hospital and occupational health have provided her with insights, knowledge, skills and innovative ideas which she exuberantly shares with others.

 

In addition to her vast clinical experience, Ms. Harmon has put her dynamic energy into leading the statewide Maine Culture Change Coalition/LANE as President, the Maine Partnership to Improve Dementia Care in Nursing Homes as Co-Chair, Vice-President of American College of Health Care Administrators, Maine Chapter and the Maine LANE Co-Convener for the national Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes Campaign. She also served as the Director of Quality Improvement & Regulatory Affairs at the Maine Health Care Association.

 

She puts her boundless energy and warm and energetic personality into training, education and presenting both, nationally and locally. She has made simplifying the complex world of long term and post-acute care policy and practice an art.