The Affirmant Staff is here to support our local chapters and their efforts in Clinical Integration. We do this by bringing together subject matter experts from across our network to share the best practices; negotiating with health plan partners to bend the cost curve and share in the rewards; and using data from tools such as Epic, to help us make higher value decisions at the point of care.
Bill Mayer, MD, MPH, president and CEO
Dr. Mayer has over 25 years of leadership experience in health care and health-related organizations. His roles have included program director at the National Cancer Institute; co-leader of professional health care consulting at The Wyatt Company—now Towers Watson – in Washington, D.C.; corporate medical director, division president and executive vice president at Kellogg Company; medical director at United Health Care; and chief quality officer, chief medical informatics officer and senior vice president for Managed Care and Community Health at Bronson Healthcare. For over 20 years of his career, he also volunteered as a primary care physician at Community Health Centers in the Washington, DC area and Michigan.
Mayer has served on the faculty of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program and the Western Michigan University’s Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine, as a lecturer in epidemiology at The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Hygiene and Public Health, as a committee member at the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, and as a reviewer for the New England Journal of Medicine. He has published a number of peer-reviewed papers and book chapters on such subjects as black/white differences in
cancers of the breast and bladder, cancer prevention in primary care, and assessing and improving health
care quality.
In addition to his professional responsibilities at Affirmant Health Partners, Dr. Mayer advises the director of the Michigan Medicaid program as a member of the State of Michigan Medical Care Advisory Council and is a volunteer with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. He is board certified in Preventive Medicine.
Dr. Karin Proos, clinical transformation executive
Karin Proos, Pharm.D., is Affirmant’s clinical transformation executive. As a clinical leader with 20 years’ experience, Karin facilitates collaboration among other health care leaders across Michigan focusing on post-acute care, care management, pharmacy, chronic disease management, quality and utilization outcomes. These programs have resulted in ACO shared savings across multiple health systems. Prior to working at Affirmant Health Partners, Dr. Proos spent much of her career at Spectrum Health working with over 3000 providers in more than 200 ambulatory offices. She developed sustainable pharmacy and medication-use services for these offices and led teams involved in direct patient care activities with MTM, PCMH and multidisciplinary care models. Karin developed programs for safety culture and ISMP/TJC/NPSG best practices as well as drove value through MACRA, MIPS and payer incentives. She also served as a clinical informatics resource for meaningful use, electronic prescribing and clinical decision support and alerts. Outside of work, Karin enjoys spending time with her husband, walking the dog, oil painting, cooking and reading.
Katy Velten, communications executive
As the communications executive, Katy has been instrumental in the successful launch of the Affirmant brand and messaging around our vision to achieve a healthy Michigan at an affordable cost. Katy is responsible for the engagement of education and communication with our six member systems, seven local Chapters, and over 6,000 participating physicians. Outside of Katy’s professional responsibilities, she serves on the board of directors for the Michigan Society for Healthcare Planning and Marketing, mentors with Southwest Michigan First and received her Master’s in Communications from Western Michigan University. In her free time, you can find her with her husband and two daughters enjoying a musical, reading, traveling or golfing.
Paul Peabody, information technology and business intelligence executive
In October 2017, Paul joined Affirmant following his retirement as chief information officer and senior vice president at Bronson Healthcare. Before his four-year tenure with Bronson, he served as the CIO for Beaumont Health, Michigan’s largest health care system, for 30 years. Paul is a highly regarded health care CIO and has installed and worked extensively with Epic electronic health records platform as an early adopter in Michigan and was instrumental in helping Epic develop the Community Connect program. Paul is active in numerous health industry councils and is a founding member and past president of the Detroit Chapter of the Society for information management. He also is a founding member and former VP and board member of the San Diego Chapter of SIM.
Andrea Charmley, clinical transformation and aco consultant
Andrea Charmley, LMSW, MPH, comes to us from Western Michigan University’s Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine where she was the program manager for a behavioral health and primary care integration project. She has experience working in a variety of health care settings and is passionate about making health care affordable and accessible for all people.
Andrea completed her master of public health and master of social work from the University of Michigan holds Advanced Generalist social work licensure. At Affirmant she is responsible for supporting the coordination, integration and analysis of clinical priorities across Affirmant Chapters. In her free time she enjoys reading, knitting, sewing, running, being outdoors and camping with her partner.
Marla Beyer, analyst II, clinical information systems
Marla Beyer joined the Affirmant Health Partners team in June of 2019. Marla comes from Bronson Healthcare Group and brings over eight years of experience in Information Technology, mainly focused on implementing and supporting Epic, Bronson’s electronic health record.
In her free time she enjoys spending time with her husband, daughter and son. They can be found attending sporting events at Western Michigan University (GO BRONCOS!), or one of the kid’s soccer, baseball, basketball, cross country or track events.
Michael Burns, analyst III, clinical information systems
Michael Burns joined the Affirmant team in April 2020 as a Clinical Analyst, where he works on clinical quality measures and reporting. After spending nearly a decade working with and reporting from a variety of electronic health records, Michael has a keen understanding of how to turn data into actionable insights. Michael holds a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Western Michigan University.
Michael is an avid homebrewer, enjoys tinkering with electronics, and spending time with his wife and son.