SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
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Senior Attorney, American Medical Association
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Wes Cleveland, JD is an attorney in the AMA’s Advocacy Resource Center. Prior to joining the AMA, Mr. Cleveland served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the Texas Attorney General, an attorney in the Texas Medical Association’s Office of General Counsel, and in private practice in Austin, Texas, where he represented physicians, hospitals, and individual and institutional health care providers. Mr. Cleveland advocates for physicians on a wide variety of concerns, including but not limited to issues related to fraud and abuse, antitrust, the Employee Retirement Income and Security Act, physician employment, and state and federal manage care requirements. |
Senior Washington Counsel, American Medical Association
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Debra Cohn, JD is a Senior Washington Counsel in the Division of Legislative Counsel in the AMA’s Washington office, where she provides legal analysis and counsel on legislative and regulatory proposals to AMA Advocacy and other staff, senior management, Board members, the Council on Legislation, and the Federation of Medicine. Ms. Cohn has over 35 years of health law and policy experience and has been with the AMA for over 15 years. During this time, she has been the lead counsel in Advocacy with responsibility for federal health care reform, including the Affordable Care Act’s provisions relating to access to care and health insurance coverage, health insurance market reforms, and exchanges, as well as efforts to repeal the ACA and to improve it. Her issue portfolio also includes Medicaid, CHIP, and public health from A-Z, including the opioid epidemic, gun violence, and women’s health. She has written numerous reports for the Council on Legislation and the Board on AMA strategic priorities and resolutions referred by the House of Delegates. Prior to joining the AMA, Ms. Cohn worked for two medical specialty organizations; a large public university system with five academic medical centers, medical schools, and health professional schools; a large health insurance trade association; a major academic medical center in New York City; the New York State Legislature; and practiced law for four years. She received her law degree from Georgetown University and her undergraduate degree in history (with honors) from Brown University; she is from Albany, New York.
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Director, Division of Legislative Counsel, Amercian Medical Association
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George Cox, JD is the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Director, Division of Legislative Counsel, providing high-value legislative and regulatory analysis and counsel to AMA Advocacy staff, Board members, Council on Legislation, and specialty and state medical societies. He has a broad substantive knowledge of major health care laws and is recognized in particular for his expertise in and contribution to medical liability reform and patient safety issues. George serves on the Board of the American Tort Reform Association and represents the AMA on the Executive Committee of the Health Coalition on Liability and Access (HCLA). Prior to joining the AMA, George worked on Capitol Hill serving as counsel to two Members of Congress. George received his Bachelor of Science degree in economics from Ithaca College and law degree from the University of Miami School of Law. |
Senior Attorney, American Medical Association
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Ashley Delosh, JD is an attorney for the American Medical Association’s Division of Legislative Counsel, where she provides legislative and regulatory analysis and counsel on a broad array of healthcare issues, including matters of digital health and augmented intelligence, telemedicine, and recently the emerging interest in the use of digital tools to support solutions aimed at cost and price transparency. Ashley earned her B.A. from Penn State University in international politics and a J.D. with a concentration in Health Law & Science, from the Duquesne University School of Law.
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Senior Attorney, American Medical Association (ARC)
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Kim Horvath, JD is a senior attorney in the Advocacy Resource Center at the American Medical Association where she leads multifaceted advocacy campaigns across the 50 states on top level healthcare issues, including scope of practice, telehealth, physician-led team based care, physician licensure, workforce, and truth in advertising. Kim works in strong collaboration with the 50 state medical associations and national medical specialty associations across the country to help shape and inform state laws, regulations, and policies in support of patients and physicians. Kim has advocated before national policy making organizations, state legislatures and state regulators. |
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Senior Legislative Counsel, American Medical Association
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Bryan Hull JD, MPH, serves as senior legislative counsel for the American Medical Association (AMA) where he advocates for physicians on Medicare payment issues. He is experienced in leading national campaigns to educate providers on appropriate health care delivery practices and emerging changes to healthcare reimbursement and coding systems. Bryan received his Bachelor’s degree (BS) from Stony Brook University where he majored in Health Science, his Master of Public Health degree (MPH) from Drexel University with a focus on health care management and policy and his Juris Doctor (JD) from the University of Maryland where he concentrated in health law. |
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Shareholder, Bernstein Shur, Sawyer & Nelson, PA
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Ken Lehman, JD is a shareholder in Bernstein Shur’s Litigation Group and he co-chairs the firm’s Health Care Group. Ken has practiced health care law for more than 35 years. He is a former Maine Assistant Attorney General where he had responsibility for cases before Maine’s professional licensure boards that license physicians and PAs, nurses and nurse practitioners, dentists, psychologists, social workers, professional counselors, chiropractors, and other health care providers. He has been recognized by Best Lawyers in America since 2001 for his work as a health care attorney, and Best Lawyers has also listed him for many years for his work as an administrative and regulatory attorney in Maine.
Ken concentrates his law practice on advising and defending health care providers regarding a wide range of issues that arise in health care practices, including: quality of care; ethics and professional conduct; licensure complaints and grievances; challenging patient care issues; confidentiality and HIPAA compliance; substance use disorder; prescribing controlled substances; medication assisted opioid treatment; mandated reporting and duty to warn; regulatory compliance; and many other day-to-day practice and licensure issues. He regularly counsels and provides defense for individual health care providers, for FQHCs and other clinics, for licensed mental health, substance treatment, social service and other agencies, and for institutions. Ken also represents other non-health care professionals and organizations in licensure cases and regulatory matters before State agencies.
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Shareholder, Nason Yeager Gerson Harris & Fumero, PA
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Richard H. Levenstein, JD is a shareholder at Nason Yeager. He practices in the area of complex commercial, civil litigation, physician and medical staff representation. Mr. Levenstein represents clients with business disputes, including actions arising from contracts or torts; his practice also has a heavy concentration in representing individual physicians, professional medical practices and the physician leadership of organized medical staffs around the State. He has successfully challenged the policies of major hospitals and has won several substantial victories that have shaped the law to protect physicians and medical staffs. Mr. Levenstein is a Board Certified Business Litigation Lawyer and a Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Civil Mediator. He represents clients in state and federal court, and in administrative proceedings. Originally from the Bronx, New York, Mr. Levenstein earned his bachelor’s degree in 1973 from Tulane University in New Orleans and earned his Juris Doctor in 1976 from Tulane University Law School. He has practiced in the State of Florida since 1977 and has experience both as a sole practitioner and as a partner in several major firms. He practiced in Boca Raton for 18 years, before relocating to Martin County. In addition to his legal work, Mr. Levenstein is the founding President of the Justice Major B. Harding American Inn of Court and former President of the Martin County Bar Association. He has served on several Florida Bar Committees and serves on the Board of many national organizations including the American Inns of Court Foundation, The Lawyers Committee of the National Center for State Courts and the American Judicature Society. He is deeply committed to educating the public about the importance of a fair and impartial judiciary, and trains lawyers and judges around the Country how to do so, through the Our Courts America initiative. Mr. Levenstein is also a Supreme Court Certified Circuit Civil Mediator, serves as Adjunct Professor of Healthcare Law at Tulane University Law School and a lecturer at Tulane University Medical School.
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Senior Washington Counsel, American Medical Association
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Lisa Myers, JD, CIPP/US is Senior Washington Counsel in the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Division of Legislative Counsel. She provides legal advice and regulatory analysis on data privacy, with an emphasis on HIPAA, GDPR, and consumer privacy protections. Focused on patient privacy in health care generally, Lisa advises on federal advocacy aligned with the AMA’s policy objectives. Prior to joining the AMA, Lisa worked with the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, contributing to several recently published Proposed and Final Rules including those on modifying HIPAA to increase care coordination, protecting reproductive health information privacy, and aligning the confidentiality protections for SUD patient records, with those of HIPAA. Lisa previously served as Associate General Counsel and Chief Firewall Officer of the American Nurses Association, and AGC and Corporate Secretary for subsidiaries for the largest health insurance provider in the Mid-Atlantic region. She is CIPP/US certified and received her undergraduate English degree from the University of Virginia and law degree from Tulane University in New Orleans, LA.
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Senior Strategic Health IT Policy Consultant, American Medical Association
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Matt Reid, MS (Bio coming soon) |
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Of Counsel, Whatley Kallas, LLP
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Ms. Deborah Winegard, JD focuses her practice on healthcare litigation, primarily representing physicians, hospitals, physical therapy practices, ambulatory surgery centers, and other healthcare providers in reimbursement disputes with third party payers and in antitrust and ERISA litigation against health insurers. Ms. Winegard also represents medical societies and organizations advocating for physician interests with payers and government and patients seeking coverage for wilderness therapy and other mental health treatments under the Parity Act. Ms. Winegard speaks widely on healthcare and reimbursement issues. She has given presentations for the American Medical Association, the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association, the American Society of Medical Association Counsel, the Medical Group Managers Association, and several state and specialty medical associations. Ms. Winegard has published articles in several publications, including Connecticut Medicine, published by the Connecticut State Medical Society, and Texas Medicine, published by the Texas Medical Association. A webinar on RAC and other medical audits Ms. Winegard conducted for the Physicians Advocacy Institute is available on that organization’s website. Ms. Winegard’s prior experience includes serving as the General Counsel and Director of Third-Party Payer Advocacy for the Medical Association of Georgia, as General Counsel and Senior Vice President for the California Medical Association, as Law & Government Affairs Vice President for four states for AT&T, and as an Associate on King & Spalding’s Healthcare Team. Ms. Winegard graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Politics from Wake Forest University in 1979, where she was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. She earned her J.D. with honors from George Washington University in 1982. She is admitted to practice in Georgia, as well as in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia and the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. |
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