The Project Team
Brian Austin 
Brian Austin is the Deputy Director of Improving Chronic Illness Care (ICIC), and the Associate Director of the MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation at the Group Health Research Institute, which he helped found in 1992. He helped to develop and refine the Chronic Care Model, a systems approach to improve the delivery of care to the chronically ill, which originated at MacColl in the mid-1990s.
In recent years a special area of interest for Mr. Austin has been the fostering of regional improvement efforts, which bring diverse players in a geographic area together around a common goal of improvement.
Mr. Austin is also a member of the leadership team of the MacColl Institute’s parent department, Group Health’s Center for Health Studies, which since 1983 has conducted epidemiologic, health services, behavioral and clinical research addressing a wide and evolving range of clinical and public health questions.
Bonni Brownlee, MHA, CPHQ, CPEHR 
Bonni Brownlee, MHA, CPHQ, CPEHR, is a Senior Consultant for Outlook Associates, Qualis Health’s consulting division. She is a healthcare management professional with over 25 years of experience in health program development, operations and quality management in the primary care setting. Environments include public/community health, federally qualified health centers (FQHC), academic medical centers, health plans and managed care organizations.
Ms. Brownlee is currently involved in primary care transformation efforts in eight states, providing expertise in practice re-design towards the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model of care. She has extensive experience with the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration's (HRSA) National Health Disparities Collaboratives, implementing the Chronic Care Model for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Ms. Brownlee has provided leadership to community clinics seeking to attain and maintain Joint Commission (JCAHO) accreditation for clinical and laboratory environments. She has served on the faculty of the American Academy of Family Physicians’ TransforMED national demonstration project, introducing the medical home concept and applied strategies aimed at achieving efficiencies in clinic operations and patient care management.
Ms. Brownlee provides clinic operations expertise to health information technology (HIT) strategic planning, including electronic medical record (EMR) readiness assessments, system selection and implementation planning. Her experience in HIT also includes the design of electronic referral and telemedicine programs in the safety net community, as well as development of stakeholder business cases and technology models for community-wide health information exchange initiatives.
Ms. Brownlee has a clinical background in medical technology and a Master’s degree in Healthcare Administration (MHA) from the University of San Francisco. She carries the Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ) credential and is also recognized for expertise in health information technology as a Certified Professional in Electronic Health Records (CPEHR).
Sandy Clinton, MA 
Sandy Clinton is the Project Coordinator for Qualis Health’s Safety Net Medical Home Initiative. Ms. Clinton is responsible for general administrative and communications support for the project including events and meetings organization, website design and update, publications and database management and webinar organization.
Prior to joining Qualis Health, Ms. Clinton was an Executive Assistant and Marketing Communications Specialist in the healthcare, legal and banking industries. Ms. Clinton spent 13 years working in the communications and entertainment fields in London, UK and holds a Master of Arts (MA) in Law and Communications from the University of Westminster.
Katie Coleman, MSPH
Katie Coleman, MSPH is a Research Associate for the MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation at the Group Health Research Institute’s Center for Health Studies. In her work with the MacColl team, she leads multiple research projects, including a national effort to help safety-net practices become patient-centered medical homes and a randomized trial to develop, implement, and evaluate a toolkit to facilitate efficient and sustainable clinical quality improvement in safety-net organizations. Ms. Coleman also serves as the practice coach to the nine participating primary care teams, working with them in-person and via e-mail and phone to improve care delivery.
Ms. Coleman develops peer-reviewed publications and speaks nationally on her research interests including aligning healthcare financing to support improved chronic illness care and regional collaborative approaches to improvement in healthcare quality.
Prior to joining the MacColl Institute, Ms. Coleman managed the strategic planning and government grants portfolio for Access Community Health Network, the nation’s largest network of community health centers. Ms. Coleman holds a Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) with a concentration in healthcare financing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Donna M. Daniel, PhD 
Donna M. Daniel, PhD is the Director of Technical Assistance for the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative. She serves as the Initiative’s technical assistance lead supporting the Medical Home Facilitators from the five Regional Coordinating Centers. Previously, Dr. Daniel served as corporate director for quality measurement and improvement at a large, multi-hospital healthcare system in north central New Jersey.
She trained with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) with emphasis in quality improvement methodology, registry development, measurement and data tracking, and spread theory. In this capacity, she served as improvement director and technical advisor for several state and national IHI-like Breakthrough Series Collaboratives in a variety of clinical topics and healthcare settings as well as a faculty member with IHI for the national Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) training program on the Breakthrough Series Collaborative model.
In 2004, she began her training in Lean methods specifically applied to healthcare and currently conducts workshops on Lean, 5S, value-stream mapping and other improvement tools. Dr. Daniel also serves as faculty for the AAFP’s Performance Enhancement Program. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and statistics from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and her Doctorate in biometry and epidemiology from Medical University of South Carolina.
Sharon I. Eloranta, MD
Sharon Eloranta, MD, Qualis Health’s Medical Director of Quality and Safety Initiatives, has more than 20 years of experience in healthcare. She provides training and consultation in the field of healthcare quality nationwide, and is a frequent speaker on quality and safety improvement methods. During the 2004-05 academic year, Dr. Eloranta served as a George W. Merck Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). During her fellowship, she concentrated on the study of sustaining and spreading change, prevention of surgical site infections, and innovations in the prevention of birth trauma. Prior to the fellowship, she was Qualis Health’s Vice President for Federal Programs.
Under Dr. Eloranta’s leadership, Qualis Health has conducted multiple local, regional and national Breakthrough Series Collaboratives on diabetes care, primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease, prevention of surgical site infections, and nursing home improvement on pain and pressure ulcers. These Collaboratives have been cited in multiple peer reviewed publications and have involved hundreds of teams nationwide. Dr. Eloranta also has served as a core member of IHI’s 100,000 Lives Campaign team.
Dr. Eloranta is a graduate of the Georgetown University School of Medicine, and she completed a residency in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Services at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine.
Kathryn E. Phillips, MPH
Kathryn Phillips, MPH, is the Director of the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative at Qualis Health. Ms. Phillips directs the overall activities of the Initiative, coordinates dissemination efforts and supports the Project Team. She also has responsibility for regional policy activation and works with regional leaders to enhance the sustainability of practice transformation efforts.
Prior to joining Qualis Health, Ms. Phillips managed grant programs for the Center for Prevention and Health Services at the National Business Group on Health (Business Group), a nonprofit membership organization of Fortune 500 employers. Ms. Phillips led the Business Group’s Maternal and Family Health Initiative and Clinical Preventive Services Translation Project. Ms. Phillips managed advisory boards and expert panels, developed purchasing guidelines, conducted evidence reviews and authored and edited issue briefs, manuals and toolkits on a wide range of health topics.
Ms. Phillips holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) with a concentration in health behavior and health education from the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Nirmala (Nimi) Sandhu, MPH is the Clinical Analyst for the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative at Qualis Health. Ms. Sandhu gathers and analyzes the measurement data that the various partner sites in the SNMHI deliver. She has extensive experience in data management and analysis in healthcare research .
Prior to joining Qualis Health, Ms. Sandhu worked at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle with the MacColl Institute for Health Care Innovation as a Programmer/Analyst.
Ms. Sandhu earned a Master in Public Health (MPH) with a concentration in epidemiology and biostatistics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Judith Schaefer, MPH
Judith Schaefer is a Senior Research Associate with the MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation, located at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. She is past Director of the Self-Management Support Learning Community, New Health Partnerships: Improving Care by Engaging Patients, a program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston. She authored “Partnering in Self-Management Support: A toolkit for clinicians” in culmination of that program.
Ms. Schaefer co-chaired the Self-Management Workgroup for the Bureau of Primary Health Care’s Health Disparities Collaboratives and is a “T Trainer” for Stanford Patient Education Research Center’s Chronic Disease Self-Management Program. She speaks frequently on helping people and systems change.
Ms. Schaefer received her Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Washington in social and behavioral science research. Her publications include studies on measurement of patient experience of care, case management and collaborative management of chronic illness.
Jonathan R. Sugarman, MD, MPH
Jonathan R. Sugarman, MD, MPH is President and CEO of Qualis Health, an independent, private not-for-profit health care quality improvement organization headquartered in Seattle. Under his leadership, Qualis Health has become a national leader in the generation, application and dissemination of knowledge to improve the quality of healthcare delivery and health outcomes.
Dr. Sugarman has served as an advisor for a number of government and private sector quality measurement and improvement initiatives, and has authored over 75 papers and book chapters. He has conducted research and led quality improvement efforts related to a broad range of acute and chronic conditions, with particular emphasis on diabetes mellitus, health problems of American Indians and quality of care among Medicare beneficiaries. Dr. Sugarman serves as attending physician at the Seattle Indian Health Board, a federally-qualified health center, where he is a member of the family medicine residency faculty.
Dr. Sugarman is a graduate of Harvard College, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine. He is the immediate past president of the Washington Academy of Family Physicians, past president of the American Health Quality Association, past chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians Commission on Quality and a member of the Executive Committee of the American Medical Association Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (PCPI). Dr. Sugarman is Clinical Professor in the Departments of Family Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Washington.
Nicole Van Borkulo, MEd
Nicole Van Borkulo, MEd is a QI Consultant for the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative at Qualis Health. With nearly a decade of experience in quality improvement (QI) support and collaboration direction, she leads the coaching and development of materials related to the Initiative’s QI strategy.
Before she joined Qualis Health, Ms. Van Borkulo was the principal of her own consulting firm, NVB Consulting, Inc. where she directed many QI collaboratives including those for the Washington State Department of Health, Acumentra Health in Oregon and the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality (NICHQ).
Ms. Van Borkulo holds a Master in Education from Seattle University. She has presented on quality improvement methodology and issues at numerous national conferences and her work has been published in JAMA and Pediatrics.
Ed Wagner, MD, MPH, FACP
Edward H. Wagner, MD, MPH, FACP is a general internist/epidemiologist and Director of the MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation at the Group Health Research Institute. His research and quality improvement work focus on improving the care of seniors and others with chronic illness.
Dr. Wagner is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and was the recipient of the 2007 NCQA Health Quality Award and the 2007 Picker Institute Award for Excellence in Patient-centered Care.
