Our Team

Sheila Sankaran is Chief Executive Officer at KNG Health Consulting. She leads the day-to-day management of corporate functions, as well as qualitative research tasks and projects, drawing from her 26-year career in the public and private sectors.

Ms. Sankaran directs the KNG team supporting the learning system for CMS’s Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) initiative and Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) model. She oversees the development and production of newsletters and other communication vehicles, focus group and interview protocols, and data presentations. Ms. Sankaran’s work at KNG Health also includes supporting the implementation of Medicare disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payment policy through analysis of public comments submitted in response to the Inpatient Prospective Payment System proposed rule each year. Her other areas of expertise include: communications and publishing, structured interviews/discussions, stakeholder consultations, training and course development, and survey design and management.

Prior to joining KNG Health, Ms. Sankaran worked for the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). At the ERS, she was Executive Editor of Amber Waves, the agency’s flagship magazine devoted to agricultural economics research. At the BLS, she worked for two national survey programs: the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey and the Consumer Expenditure (CE) survey.

Ms. Sankaran has an MA in economics from the University of Maryland College Park and a BS in economics from the University of Delaware.

Lane Koenig is President and Founder of KNG Health Consulting and Director of the Healthcare Reform and Payment Innovation Practice. He is a healthcare economist with over 20 years’ experience in the public and private sectors. As President of KNG Health Consulting, Dr. Koenig has overall responsibility for the quality and direction of KNG Health’s research. He serves as Project Director and Principal Investigator for many studies, particularly those related to healthcare reform proposals, healthcare provider payments, value-based purchasing, and delivery system innovations. With expertise on hospital and post-acute care payment and quality issues, his work regularly assesses the potential impact on hospitals and other providers of proposed legislation or regulations. He has assisted both industry and Federal and state governments in the development and assessment of healthcare provider payment policies and value-base purchasing initiatives.

Prior to founding KNG Health in 2007, Dr. Koenig was the senior economist in the Office of Policy at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Before joining CMS, Dr. Koenig was a Senior Scientist in the healthcare finance practice at The Lewin Group.

Dr. Koenig has led over 100 quantitative and qualitative health policy and health economic studies and has published over 20 peer-reviewed studies in journals, such as Health Affairs, Health Services Research, and Medical Care. He graduated with Honors from the University of Florida, Gainesville and earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Inna Cintina is a Principal Research Associate in the Evaluation and Health Economics Practice. Dr. Cintina is an applied microeconomist with over a decade of research experience in the area of health economics.

At KNG Health, Dr. Cintina is leading evaluations of the impact of managed care on high-need Medicare beneficiaries. Specifically, in work supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures, she is studying the distribution of high-need beneficiaries across enrollment types (Traditional Medicare, Accountable Care Organization (ACOs); and Medicare Advantage (MA)), healthcare services utilization and health outcomes in high-need beneficiaries attributed to ACOs relative to those in MA; and characteristics of MA plans associated with better health outcomes among enrollees. In other work, she studied disparities in utilization of new cardio- and neuro-vascular technologies and impacts of post-acute care settings on beneficiary outcomes.

She is an expert in using matching techniques, difference-in-difference methodologies, and other quasi-experimental statistical approaches, as well as producing client-oriented materials, white papers, and manuscripts. She has authored/co-authored more than a dozen articles, which have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as World Bank Economic Review, Health Economics, JAMA, Value in Health, and the American Journal of Managed Care.

Prior to joining KNG Health, Dr. Cintina worked at the Lewin Group/OptumServe and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has extensive experience in developing and implementing methodologies for identification of causal relationships, advanced analytics, project management, economic burden/cost of illness studies, and impact evaluations of alternative payment models, such as CMMI’s Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative and Oncology Care Model.

Dr. Cintina has a PhD in economics from Clemson University, a MSC in European Economics and Public Affairs from University College Dublin, and an MA and a BA in economics from the University of Latvia.

Robert C. Saunders is a Principal Research Associate at KNG Health Consulting in the Healthcare Reform and Payment Innovation Practice.

Dr. Saunders is an expert in the development, testing and reporting of quality and value measures from administrative and clinical data systems. While at the National Committee for Quality Assurance, he developed the Plan All-Cause Readmission measure that would result in a suite of risk adjusted utilization measures for health plans to use in private and public accountability programs. He is an expert in the design of public reporting programs for health care organizations, having developed or consulted on the design of NCQA’s Health Plan Ratings program, the Office of Personnel Management’s Clinical Quality, Customer Service, and Resource Use (QCR) incentive program for federal health insurance plans, the Quality Rating System for plans on the federal and state Exchanges, and a variety of state and special population reporting systems. At Vanderbilt University Dr. Saunders led quality of care and utilization analyses of children’s behavioral health services in Medicaid and military health systems.

Dr. Saunders earned his PhD in Health Services Research and MPP in Policy Development & Program Evaluation from Vanderbilt University and his BA in Political Science from Loyola College (Md.).

Emily Burgen is a Research Director in the Healthcare Reform and Payment Innovation practice at KNG Health. With over a decade of research experience, Ms. Burgen provides analytic expertise and leverages data-driven insights to inform health policy decisions and enhance care delivery. Her expertise extends to health policy, public health, and health services research including analyzing clinical and claims datasets to identify trends, evaluate interventions, and advance quality improvement across healthcare.

Prior to joining KNG Health, Ms. Burgen led funded research projects at the National Committee of Quality Assurance, focusing on improving healthcare quality through quality measurement for Medicaid and Medicare specializing in vulnerable populations. She also has experience leading quality assurance projects at the hospital level and developing data driven policy briefs at the state level. She possesses a strong track record of success in both federal and state-level initiatives.

Ms. Burgen holds a BA in Mathematics and a BA in Economics with Honors from the University of Kansas and an MPH in Biostatistics from the University of Arizona.

Katie Fujimori is a Research Assistant in the Evaluation and Health Economics practice at KNG Health. Their work includes assisting with quantitative analyses as well as conducting literature reviews on topics such as value-based payment programs and financial indicators associated with hospital closures.

Prior to joining KNG Health, Fujimori taught Geometry and Algebra at UIC College Prep in Chicago. They have a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Connecticut College.

Elizabeth Hamlett is a Senior Research Associate in the Evaluation and Health Economics practice at KNG Health. Ms. Hamlett has extensive experience in project management, the design and implementation of qualitative research (e.g., systematic literature reviews, surveys, and interviews), and in conducting analyses using Medicare inpatient and post-acute care claims data.  Since joining KNG Health in 2015, her work has focused on evaluating the efficiency, effectiveness, and value of medical interventions, and supporting the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement model through learning system activities, such as dissemination of information and data analysis.

Ms. Hamlett has experience performing quantitative analyses with a variety of health care data sources, namely Medicare claims and Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission data. Specifically, she has performed facility-level and condition specific outcome analyses and provided statistical support to multiple pharmaceutical companies in obtaining approval for New Technology Add-on Payments.  In addition, Ms. Hamlett has led the design and development of interactive spreadsheet models for multiple projects including the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee’s proposed Hospital Value Incentive Program (HVIP) and CMS State Innovations Model (SIM) Maryland All-Payer Model. She has also performed statistical evaluation of quality measures proposed for inclusion in CMS’ ASC Quality Reporting Program in terms of reliability, validity, feasibility, and interpretability based on data collected through pilot testing for the Ambulatory Surgery Center Quality Collaboration (ASC QC).

Prior to joining KNG Health, Ms. Hamlett managed a social psychology laboratory and worked with the non-profit organization, the Dialysis Clinic.

Ms. Hamlett earned a Bachelor of Science in policy analysis and management from Cornell University in 2015.

Boomer Kelley is a Research Associate in the Evaluation and Health Economics Practice.

Mr. Kelley is focusing on utilizing hospital data from Medicare cost reports to measure the financial strength of hospitals and overall Medicare and Medicaid spending trends on hospital services. Mr. Kelley has experience with modeling the financial impacts of healthcare policy. This experience includes modeling the impacts of the DSH Health Reform Reduction Methodology and modeling the impacts of the inpatient and outpatient prospective payment systems on state outlays.

Prior to joining KNG Health, he worked as a research assistant with the Open Health Team at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he focused on telehealth regulations. Mr. Kelley also has prior experience in the finance sector.

Mr. Kelley has a Master’s degree in Economics from George Mason University and a Bachelor’s degree in Integrated Studies from Weber State University.

Jermaine Piper is a Research Assistant in the Healthcare Reform and Payment Innovation Practice.

Mr. Piper’s work focuses on conducting environmental scans on topics such as value-based payment programs, socioeconomic disparities in health care technology access, and financial indicators linked to hospital closures. In addition, Mr. Piper’s work includes data visualization for the construction of health sector chartbooks and quantitative cost-criterion analyses for new technology add-on payment (NTAP) applications for CMS. Furthermore, Mr. Piper also models payment adjustment factors for outpatient prospective payment systems (OPPS) and ambulatory surgical centers (ASC) settings for a state workers compensation program, utilizing proposed and final rules provided by CMS.

Prior to joining KNG Health, Mr. Piper worked directly in health care as a Phlebotomist and Medical Laboratory Assistant for a local hospital. In this role, he provided direct patient care and facilitated the running of the hospital’s outpatient clinic and laboratory.

Mr. Piper has a Master’s in Public Health with a concentration in Health Policy Analysis and Evaluation at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and has a BS in Public Health from the University of Maryland College Park.

Mehmet Sari is a Senior Research Associate at KNG Health Consulting in the Evaluation and Health Economics Practice.

Dr. Sari is a health services researcher with expertise and training in health systems and policy analysis, health informatics (data mining and machine learning), and health economics. He has experience in health policy analysis, program evaluation, and competition in the health care market. He applies advanced machine learning algorithms and econometric techniques in quantitative data analysis. His work includes, but is not limited to, market share analysis, predictive health outcome modeling, analysis of healthcare provider behavior, and estimation of healthcare payment models.

Prior to joining KNG Health in 2022, he conducted research, funded by the Altarum Institute, studying how hospital and insurer market power affects community health. In this research, Dr. Sari utilized IRS Form 990 data from nonprofit hospitals and hospital discharge datasets. He has worked with both claims (Medicare and private payer) and hospital discharge datasets, as well as several health care datasets. He is primarily interested in how to combine both theoretical and atheoretical quantitative approaches for economic modeling and enhanced decision-making in health services research.

Dr. Sari earned his PhD in Health Services Research from George Mason University, MA in Economics from Clemson University, and BA in Economics from Fatih University (now a part of Istanbul University).

Kaylee Scarim is a Research Associate in the Evaluation and Health Economics practice at KNG Health. She has over seven years of experience in healthcare analytics, quality improvement, and program evaluation. At KNG Health, Ms. Scarim conducts detailed analyses to support health policy decisions and enhance care delivery for healthcare providers and insurers. This work involves leveraging Medicare, Medicaid, and private-payer datasets to identify trends, evaluate interventions, and inform quality improvement and health equity initiatives.

Prior to joining KNG Health, Ms. Scarim led projects centered on evaluating patient safety and quality data at the national and facility level. This role included overseeing benchmarking analyses of hospitals and ASCs, leading extensive project management efforts, and presenting insights to executive leadership to drive strategic decision-making. Kaylee also has experience with clinical trial programming and conducting statistical analyses for Phase I-III clinical trials in the pharmaceutical industry.

Kaylee earned a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience from Virginia Tech, graduating as co-valedictorian in 2017.