An ASC Town Hall Event: Learning From 2020 to Succeed in 2021

William Prentice

Chief Executive Officer | Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (ASCA)

Chief executive officer of ASCA since October 2010, Bill Prentice has more than 25 years of experience in association management, government affairs, health care advocacy and public relations. Before accepting his current position at ASCA, Prentice was the senior vice president of government and public affairs and director of the Washington Office of the American Dental Association (ADA). Previously, he served as ADA’s senior congressional lobbyist, director of government affairs at the New Jersey Dental Association and vice president of a large New Jersey public affairs firm. Prentice started his career as legislative staff on Capitol Hill. He holds an undergraduate degree in political science from George Washington University, a master’s degree in government administration from the University of Pennsylvania and a law degree from Rutgers School of Law.

Nelson Gomes

NJ President Senior Vice President of Development | Medicus IT

An information technology veteran with 30-plus years of IT experience, Nelson Gomes serves as Senior Vice President of Business Development and General Manager (New Jersey) for award-winning, healthcare-focused managed services provider Medicus IT (MIT). Nelson brings impressive healthcare industry knowledge and experience to his position at MIT, where he focuses on enhancing client relations, bolstering the company’s healthcare industry visibility, and helping more and larger practices get preventive with their IT rather than triage it. Before his work with the company, he spent more than 20 years building long-term relationships with clients, healthcare organizations and partner vendors as founder and leader of PriorityOne Group (P1). Founded in 1997, P1 was an award-winning Rutherford, N.J.-based provider of integrated managed IT services to healthcare organizations. Key to P1's success was Nelson's and the company's unwavering commitment to core values that guided the company's decision-making. In 2019, P1 merged with MIT.

Lisa A. Austin

Independent Consultant 

Lisa A. Austin, RN CASC, has been an RN for almost 40 years and in ambulatory care for the majority of those years. Her extensive operational development, management, and consulting experience provides clients with expertise in facility administration, budget development, regulatory compliance, staff recruitment and retention, equipment procurement, policy and procedure development and implementation, and organizational interfacing. Austin's national ASC and hospital department development and management expertise affords clients opening new facilities with unparalleled success. She has developed numerous surgery centers working in concert with investors, corporations, hospitals, architects, builders, and equipment manufactures/distributors through all phases of surgery center development and management. Austin is a current board officer of the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (ASCA) and a past board member of the Colorado Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (CASCA), where she served as president. Austin has also served on multiple state and national committees to further the advancement of the ASC industry.

Daniel Frier

Co-Founder Partner | Frier Levitt Attorney at Law

Daniel B. Frier, Esq. co-founded Frier Levitt in 2000, and has practiced exclusively in the field of health care law since graduating from Temple Law School in 1994, where he graduated with honors, and was editor of the Temple Law Review. Dan co-chairs of the firm's Healthcare Department and focuses his extensive practice on the representation of a wide range of health care clients, including physicians, medical and dental practices, management services organizations (MSOs), clinically integrated networks (CINs), hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers and other ambulatory services centers, laboratories, health care information technology (IT) companies, and private equity-backed investors. For these clients, Dan handles a wide range of corporate, transactional and regulatory issues, including corporate formations and restructuring, super-group medical practice formation, counseling on clinical integration, value-based and other payer negotiations, M&A transactions, state and federal fraud & abuse counseling, HIPAA compliance hospital-physician ventures, data contracts, MSO structuring, employment matters, ASC syndication, start-up counseling, medical staff representation and actions against physicians’ hospital privileges, state board of medical examiners’ actions, and a variety of other work.

Ann Geier

Chief Nursing Officer | Surgical Information Systems

Ann Geier is Chief Nursing Officer for Surgical Information Systems SIS), a leader in perioperative information systems. In this role, she consults with clients on best practices and strategies to enhance efficiency, improve compliance and deliver high quality patient care. Ann Geier has worked in the ASC industry for over 30 years, and is a recognized expert. She has been responsible for every aspect of ASC financial & clinical operations, and has been a surveyor for Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) since 2006. Ann’s extensive clinical background is in the operating room, where she served in every capacity. She is an active member of AORN and ASCA, and she represented ASCA on the Board of Directors of AAAHC. She was selected by the Board of Ambulatory Surgery Certification (BASC) Nominating Committee to serve on the BASC Board through 2021 and is the currently the secretary/treasurer

Ann has an MS in Health Services Administration from the University of St. Francis. She is CASC & CNOR certified. She regularly speaks at national meetings and contributes articles to Outpatient Surgery Magazine, ASC Focus, Becker’s ASC Review. She has written an e-book, Admin 101: What Every New ASC Administrator Needs to Know available at www.sisfirst.com.

John Goehle

Chief Operating Officer | Ambulatory Healthcare Strategies, LLC

John Goehle is the Chief Operating Officer and partner with Ambulatory Healthcare Strategies, LLC - a Rochester, New York-based ASC management and consulting services company. Prior to forming AHS, Mr. Goehle developed and managed two Rochester New York-based ambulatory surgery centers, and provided management consulting services for a wide range of health care organizations, primarily in the Northeast. Mr. Goehle has a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh Scotland, and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from Ithaca College in Upstate New York. He holds the prestigious Certified Administrator Surgery Center (CASC) credential. He is also a Certified Public Accountant in the State of New York. Mr. Goehle is also an accreditation surveyor with the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Healthcare (AAAHC). Mr. Goehle is the host of the ASC Podcast with John Goehle available on iTunes and Google Play. He is also a frequent speaker on health care finance, technology and administration and has authored or co-authored eight books related to the ASC Industry including Ambulatory Surgery Center Governance - A Guide for Ambulatory Surgery Center Owners & Governing Body Members and The Survey Guide for ASCs – A Guide to the CMS Conditions of Coverage & Interpretive Guidelines for Ambulatory Surgery Centers. He is a former board member with the Federated Ambulatory Surgery Association and one of the founders of the New York State Association of Ambulatory Surgery Centers.