About

Our preference is relationships that leverage the collective knowledge between our company clients and us. This leverage creates a professional atmosphere that allows everyone to invest themselves wholeheartedly into the complex work at hand.

At Rowinski Group our collective knowledge for our clients is rooted in the fact that we communicate and work with representatives from coding agencies such as the American Medical Association (AMA) and the CMS Workgroup and representatives from U.S. commercial healthcare payers and Medicare. As a result we need to keep abreast of U.S. healthcare payer policy decisions and developments in a myriad of coding and reimbursement systems by maintaining our professional coding and practice certifications and society memberships.

Susan has 26 years of combined operating and consulting experience in developing and selling new medical technologies. Her combined experience spans the entire company life cycle and includes raising venture capital, managing strategic corporate partners, securing payer approvals, overseeing three worldwide introductions, and sales responsibility for five western U.S. states.

Prior to starting Rowinski Group LLC in 2004, Susan held operating positions with increasing responsibility; Vice President, Marketing (PharmaSonics; Sunnyvale, California USA), Director of Marketing (Cardiometrics; Mountain View, California USA), Global Marketing Manager (Medtronic Vascular; San Diego, California USA), Product Manager (Quinton Instrument Company; Seattle, Washington USA), and Echocardiography Sales Representative (Advanced Technology Labs (ATL); Seattle, Washington USA).

Ms. Rowinski has been an advisor to boards and accelerators. She served for six years (2013-2018) as a board member on the Purdue University Weldon Biomedical Advisory Board. From 2008-2020 Susan was an advisor on reimbursement strategy and planning for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Commercialization Accelerator Program and the California-based accelerators, the San Jose BioCenter and the Astia Accelerator.

Susan holds a Master of Science in Engineering from the University of Washington (Seattle, Washington) and a Bachelor of Science in Health Physics from Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana). Susan is a current member of the teaching faculty for the University of Michigan Master of Engineering program (MSE) and for the Georgia Institute of Technology Master of BioMedical Innovation and Development (MBID).

Ms. Rowinski is a speaker at global medical technology conferences. Her presentations focus on the critical role reimbursement plays in the successful launch and commercial adoption of new medical devices, digital health platforms and diagnostics. A summary, starting in 2004 to present, of some of Susan’s industry presentations and academic lectures can be found by clicking on the “What We Do” tab.

Dr. Lace has over 24 years of consulting experience for a wide range of businesses that include managed care, pharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics. In addition to his consulting experience, he has held executive operational roles. Dr Lace has been the Medical Director for U.S. based managed care organizations and global medical device and pharmaceutical companies.

As a result of his consulting and his executive experience in the managed care and life science industries, Dr. Lace is uniquely qualified to provide healthcare payer access and coding, reimbursement and coverage advisory services related to the convergence of managed healthcare insurance markets, disease and healthcare cost effectiveness outcomes, and the integration of new medical technologies and services into clinical care models.

Dr. Lace is a licensed physician. He is also a board-certified physician executive in medical management, a certified Fellow of the American Association for Physician Leadership (FAPPL) and is CPE certified from the American Association for Physician Leadership. Dr Lace holds a Bachelor of Art from Northwestern University and an MD from the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

Katherine is an accomplished professional with over 25 years of experience within healthcare program management, including medical coding, billing, reimbursement and revenue cycle operations. Ms. Smith is a Certified Professional Coder (CPC) through the American Academy of Professional Coders, is a Certified Professional Practice Manager (CPPM), a Certified Professional Medical Auditor (CPMA) and a Certified Revenue Cycle Representative (CRCR) through the Healthcare Financial Management Association .

Katherine held numerous program management roles for over 15 years within an Honor Roll Academic Trauma Center. She has led process improvements leveraging Six- Sigma methods to enhance operational efficiency and improve organizational financial performance.

Ms. Smith works in the Silicon Valley office and specializes in reimbursement analysis for new medical technology therapeutics and diagnostics. She uses novel data mining techniques for analyzing Medicare and commercial payer data for the purpose of designing reimbursement and monetization plans for inclusion into clinical and product development plans, product launch, business planning and marketing strategy for new medical technology. Katherine has assisted clients within the private and academic sectors with applying for, securing new codes for reimbursement and has represented clients at the ICD Coding Coordination and Maintenance Committee held at CMS headquarters.

She is proficient in all aspects of physician revenue cycle and practice management, Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) audits and denied commercial payer claims resolution for private physician practice and inpatient and outpatient sites of services in a teaching hospital environment. Ms. Smith has many years of experience in revenue cycle performance process improvements, operational and clinical workflow optimization and root cause denial analysis and reporting. She has served as the Project Director for developing reimbursement plans and timelines that can include clinical trial integration and alternative monetization pathways to traditional reimbursement.

Additionally, Katherine has experience determining the required clinical documentation and medical necessity prerequisites for medical technologies perusing payer coverage subsequent to receiving 510(k) clearance, de novo designation (510K) and Pre-Market Approval (PMA).

John has over 18 years of experience in the field of Information Technology. Including working with large US commercial healthcare payer medical claims databases such as Premier Healthcare and Optum, Medicare Standard Analytical File databases and private and public medical technology companies US FDA 510K, DeNovo 510K, and PMA datasets and non-FDA clinical trial datasets.

Mr. Leaderbrand is proficient in the Strata coding software. Strata is one of the only two current coding software programs approved for use the the US FDA and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). John uses many different analytical methods for his work including longitudinal analysis. This analytical method is necessary to review historical events such as a healthcare providers or payer historical rates with readmissions, repeat procedures, complications and comorbidities.

John has assisted many medical technology companies by leveraging his Information Technology experience, his broad array of analytical methods and his deep expertise in mining large healthcare payer claims datasets for the submission of numerous N-TAP submissions to CMS, to aid companies with their device and drug development and US market insights by prioritizing and stratifying hospital and physician procedure/service utilization, reimbursement, readmissions, complications and costs, to provide US market insights by providing companies highly customized models using current and actual (not forecasted or an aggregate) data and longitudinal analysis for historical rates.

Dr. Martinson’s commercial experience includes 20 years of clinical trials, health economics and outcomes studies in both medical device and pharmaceutical companies. Her clinical commercial experience includes submitting Investigational Device Exemptions (IDEs), Denovo and regular 510Ks and Pre-Market Approvals (PMAs) to the FDA.

Melissa is well versed with reviewing and analyzing clinical benefits and cost data from clinical trial, payer claims databases and third party data and journals. Some of the applications from her analysis include demonstrating to payers the trade-offs between initial costs and related saving for a medical technology and identifying the patient subgroups that achieve the greatest clinical success per dollar.

She holds a B.A. in Biology from Swarthmore College, and an M.S. in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Health Services Research from the University of Minnesota. She holds an Adjunct Professorship at the University of Minnesota in the School of Public Health.