Beth Franke

Staff Vice President, Payment Integrity Coordination of Benefits

Elevance/Anthem

Beth Franke started her career in the healthcare industry over 30 years ago. During that time, she has held management and leadership positions within large healthcare organizations such as Elevance Heath, Humana, Inc. and Kindred Healthcare and served as principal consultant for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, launching the state’s first self-funded health insurance model. She has also managed multi-discipline teams within special investigations, claims, enrollment and billing, corporate applications, mobile strategy, care management and enterprise project management office. Her current role as Staff Vice President has positioned her to oversee the Coordination of Benefits organization in Payment Integrity with over 500+ associates.

Beth has a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from Centre College. She is a Project Management Professional (PMP), a Certified Professional Coder (CPC) and earned a Master Six Sigma Black Belt (MBB) certification from Villanova University. She also serves as a certified professional coach and was recognized as an Emerging Leader at Elevance Health.

Beth and her husband line in Louisville, KY and have five adult children. She enjoys hiking, biking and traveling with her family and is also active with several volunteer organizations, providing food, shelter, and other needed services for those less fortunate.

Helen Liu, Pharm.D.

Health Plan Leader

Independent

Helen Liu, PharmD, brings 29 years of diverse pharmacy experience, blending clinical expertise, operational efficiency, technological innovation, and management across various healthcare settings.
Over the past four years, Helen has successfully led pharmacy operations at ATRIO Health Plans (Medicare), achieving significant milestones in PA/ST, FWA, MTM programs, resulting in over $4.5M in savings. She’s conducted formulary analyses to support actuary Medicare annual bid submissions, including IRA and M3P programs, collaborated with partners and the Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) to identify cost-saving opportunities through formulary alternatives, biosimilars, and rebate strategies, and partnered in the RFP PBM selection process and resolved complex pharmacy-related issues through cross-departmental collaboration.
Before ATRIO, Helen spent seven years at Kaiser Permanente, where she served as Regional Assistant Director to implement hospitals Drug Use Management Program. Her efforts led to over $20 million in savings through inventory management, drug cost-saving initiatives, and the standardization of clinical content/practice guidelines.

Christopher Draven

Senior Director of Payment Integrity Analytics & AI

HCSC

Christopher Draven is Senior Director of Payment Integrity Analytics & AI at HCSC where he leads a cross-functional team focused on delivering actionable insights and savings. He has over 25 years experience in healthcare, starting in direct patient care.

Monique Pierce

Payment Solutions & Operations

Cohere Health

Monique is a Strategic Executive Healthcare Leader with proven ability to develop solutions and maximize the benefits of Payment Integrity programs.  She is known for having excellent domain knowledge and being driven, high performing, and having a deep dedication to recruiting and developing top talent.

 

Monique started her Payment Integrity career at Oxford HealthPlans in the COB and Subrogation Department after spending time in Payment Policy.  When United Healthcare acquired many health plans in the early 2000s like Oxford, Monique was tagged as part of the Optum team to integrate the processes and people into the COB systems that she had built at Oxford.  She led systems development, quality, reporting, operations, vendor management and was responsible for creating innovative proactive programs that more than doubled savings to $1.4B in three years.

 

Monique developed a successful program that reduced interest expense on late claims for UHC, assisted a communication company to develop COB tools and assisted in strategic system projects before joining SCIO Health Analytics in 2014 to develop new products - specifically prepayment programs.

In 2015 she became the product owner of SCIOMine, the company’s internal audit application and managed the roadmap.  Monique also owned

strategic direction for operational metrics and reporting including executive scorecards. Monique was promoted to VP of Business Opportunities and Client Engagement where she improved Audit Recovery TAT by 39% and reduced client implementations TAT by 11% and the Level of Effort by 18% while increasing the count of implementation projects by 126%.

 

In 2020 Monique joined Devoted Health, a startup company with the goal of building the first ever integrated Payment Integrity Program.  The company has one system, great data, and a great mission; to change health care by treating every member as if they are family.

 

In her spare time, Monique volunteers her time in the community on the Board of Directors of SCARE NH and works in her family business LARP Portal with her husband Rick.

Catherine Pesek Bird

Physician Advisor

Lakeland Regional Health – Florida

Before coming to LRH, Dr. Pesek practiced as an academic cardiologist at a large Big Ten medical center, leading teams of fellows, residents, and medical students.  She provided direct patient care to cardiac patients, including transplant recipients and pregnant patients with either acquired or congenital heart disease. She worked on quality improvement programs in heart failure, sepsis, cardiac catherization, and medication adherence.

Prior to medical school, Dr. Pesek taught high school chemistry. She has written a book on understanding and determining end-of-life medical choices. She enjoys playing tennis and golf.  She is a proud alumna of the University of Notre Dame.

Kelly Bennett, JD, CFE, AHFI

Medicaid Program Integrity Chief

Agency for Health Care Administration

Kelly Bennett graduated from the University of Tampa and Florida State University College of Law.  She has been a member of the Florida Bar since 1997 and is a Certified Fraud Examiner and an Accredited Health Care Fraud Investigator.  She has worked at the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration since 2001 and has served in several roles, including as a Senior Attorney within the Medicaid Division of the Office of the General Counsel, the Assistant Bureau Chief for the Bureau of Medicaid Program Integrity, the Agency’s Medicaid
Fraud Liaison, and is currently the Chief of Medicaid Program Integrity, where she has served since July of 2014.  She is currently the President for the National Association for Medicaid Program Integrity and is an active participant in training and collaboration initiatives with the National Health Care Antifraud Association.