Meet Our Team

What kind of person does it take to launch a company that exists entirely to empower independent doctors? As the Founder and President of DataDX, Kate Othus would say her childhood gave her a boost with the empathy she absorbed from her mother, a lifelong nurse, and the drive her entrepreneur father imparted along the way.

Kate realized shortly after completing her Bachelors in Exercise Science that she could have a greater impact by earning her Masters in Healthcare Administration from Portland State University. She expanded her expertise by becoming an educator herself.

As an adjunct professor at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU), Kate taught Strategic Planning and Organizational Development courses within the Healthcare Certificate and MBA programs. Working side-by-side with physicians as a practice CEO and Administrator for various specialty groups, she witnessed outdated and often error-prone data repeatedly lead to poor business decisions by providers.

Kate carried that experience forward as she transitioned to healthcare business consulting. There she developed a high-performing consulting team to serve private practices and formed a personal philosophy that propels her next steps to this day. It’s all about the people who feel valued and are willing to become lifelong learners for the purpose of helping others.

When emotions are calmed by data-driven decisions and logic can inform the plan, a shared sense of understanding and respect will follow. Building and executing winning strategies, so that doctors can focus on giving the best possible care for their patients, has become monumental to her life’s mission.

Now Kate serves as President for both DataDX as well as Healthcare Professionals Alliance (HPA) and practices nationwide are better for it.

From the start of DataDx, Glen has held a key role in bringing ingenuity and foresight to our core mission. His career in healthcare goes back to his time as a teenager working in a hospital cafeteria after school and on the weekends. There Glen had interactions with patients and providers that helped shape his empathy for the many complexities within the healthcare industry and how they affect people.

He went on to earn his undergraduate degree in Business Administration and Finance from Portland State University, while continuing to work in the hospital’s diagnostic imaging department. From there he built a solid business foundation as an accountant for four hospitals within a regional health system then became senior accountant for their regional services before joining a hospital consulting startup.

Glen gained extensive experience utilizing large claims datasets along with financial and clinical data to impact operational and strategic decision-making for 60 hospitals, before transitioning into a tactical role performing budgeting, financial reporting, productivity, and benchmarking activities for an academic medical center’s hospitals and clinics.

Eventually, his educational journey expanded as he received his MBA in Healthcare Management from Oregon Health & Science University and began working as a management consultant for single-specialty, multi-specialty, and university-owned clinics. Over these years, Glen gained an inside view of the vast operational disadvantages private medical organizations have suffered and how patients are negatively impacted when doctors have fewer opportunities to maintain their independence.

After dedicating over twenty years to the healthcare industry, Justin has grown into the purposeful role he always envisioned for himself. With a Bachelor of Science in Healthcare Administration from Oregon State University and his Master of Business Administration from Oregon Health & Science University and Portland State University, his trajectory was cultivated early on.

Due to his many years consulting with clinics, hospitals and health systems, as well as earning his Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Justin has forged several specialized skills. His work shines brightest when directed towards medical practice management, operational and financial improvement, benchmarking, rural health clinics, needs assessments, and strategic planning. Whether working with private, public, for-profit or not-for-profit single provider clinics, medical conglomerates or even academic health centers, Justin helps his clients increase efficiency, reduce waste, build capacity and maximize productivity. He loves working in an industry that is always changing so that he can find new ways to help healthcare practices thrive.

Justin’s guiding philosophy is simple and has been proven time and again over the years. Always act in the best interest of the provider, and the rest will take care of itself. That’s the best kind of person to give you advice for your practice and we’re lucky to have him.

As Director of Analytics and Development for DataDX, Jon has spent nearly a decade immersed in the use of statistics and artificial intelligence to advance healthcare for the better. He has a passion for using his expertise as a data scientist to ensure valuable information makes it into the hands of medical professionals, whose daily decisions so strongly impact the lives of others.

Poor analytics can lead to devastating outcomes in healthcare which is why Jon has devoted himself to improving the operational effectiveness of providers across organizations of all sizes. He believes that in order for healthcare to ever become more affordable and available, doctors need access to accurate modern analytics to help shape their next steps. Working with both clients and development partners, Jon makes sure DataDX is always at the cutting edge of analytics and can provide each practice with the unique insights it needs to succeed. He’s definitely someone you’ll be glad to have in your corner.

As one of Health Professionals Alliance core members, Eric brings over two decades of experience to bare as a champion for medical practices nationwide. Not only is he recognized for his academic pursuits with a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Oregon and a Masters of Business Administration in Healthcare Management from OHSU; but Eric is well-known as a nice guy who loves what he does.

Our VP of Business Development believes that the best outcomes rise from people who are empowered to do their best. His passion for lifting up others professionally-led him back to OHSU to serve as an Adjunct Professor, teaching executives in both the MS and MBA in Healthcare Management programs. Eric was drawn to healthcare because he sees so many opportunities to help fix a broken system that is structured to focus on disease over people, and treatment over health. Having seen up close with his own loved ones some of the best and worst experiences our healthcare system has to offer, he decided every human deserves only the best.

So, Eric works every day to help medical practices fine-tune their operations so doctors can spend their time and energy on the people they serve. That’s why he is widely recognized as a healthcare leader in his own right with a fierce commitment to impart organizational development, improved services, cost controls and operational efficiency to all of HPA’s members and clients. Isn’t it nice to know you have someone on your side?

Courtney brings over a decade of fine-tuning a career dedicated to the healthcare industry. She realized early on that if she could somehow combine her love of health with her passion for maintaining meaningful relationships, she might find a way to have a lasting positive impact on people’s lives.

Courtney began her professional journey by earning a Bachelors in Health Management and Policy from Oregon State University as well as a Certificate in Healthcare Administration and Management from OHSU. Prior to joining DataDX and HPA, she managed a provider relations team for a nationwide insurance company and coordinated member services for a large health plan in Oregon. This experience gives Courtney an edge in the industry because she understands what motivates payors to come to the table. Her payor contracting and credentialing philosophy is one of open communication and straightforward negotiations because she knows what motivates payors to meet her halfway.

With a proven track record of going to the mat for her clients every time it is warranted and helping them adjust expectations when necessary, Courtney brings that balance necessary to facilitate success in the small pool that is the Oregon healthcare industry. Her deep commitment to providing detailed, comprehensive analysis of your payor contracts is deep-seeded and always fruitful. If a path exists for your practice to negotiate the best reimbursement rates among your competitors, Courtney will find it. She’s the perfect addition to any payor contracting endeavor.

Denise joined HPA as a consultant with nearly a decade of recruiting experience in various industries, but healthcare has become her favorite. For her, the unending mission of healthcare professionals to enhance an industry that benefits every single person is inspiring.

Executive recruitment has given Denise a chance to connect with what drives people both professionally and personally, so she can match candidates to their dream job. This is a responsibility that inspires her philosophy to build strong relationships with both candidates and clients that will foster a successful transition for everyone involved. For Denise, a company is only as good as their greatest assets that generate future prosperity, their people. Understanding the skills gap and needs of an organization looking to bring on a new hire is just as essential as understanding the candidate’s ideal future role.

By gaining sourcing and recruiting skills from some of the country’s top independent recruiters, Denise routinely creates an unforgettable candidate and client experience. We’re fortunate to have her working so hard for our members.

As someone who values a sense of purpose in everything she does, Noelle spent over a decade taking on multiple administrative roles inside the medical arena before joining HPA. Working as a support to patients, physicians, surgeons, hospital leadership and other healthcare executives, she learned the importance of fostering an openness to new ideas and learning how to adapt to unforeseen circumstances.

Noelle is no stranger to a strong work ethic with Midwestern roots helping to drive her tenacious approach as our Payor Enrollment Specialist. Her work helps our members identify procedural redundancies and other areas in need of an administrative overhaul.

Exploring new avenues to increase efficiency is fun for Noelle and she harbors a passion for reducing drag in medical organizations so doctors can focus on what matters most, delivering excellent patient care. She is also adept at helping people from diverse backgrounds come together for heightened productivity and the cultivation of healthy work relationships. Noelle is a powerful force working to streamline healthcare operations for our members and we are thrilled to have her on our team.

Born into a family of doctors and nurses, the healthcare industry was a natural fit for Jayme. Realizing early on that direct care was not her niche, she found another avenue to play a supportive role in making the provider/patient experience better. Jayme earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Corporate Communications which launched her firmly into the healthcare marketing path. After spending nearly a decade working with hospital executives and physicians within multiple lines of business, she brought her unique marketing approach to DataDX and HPA.

As Director of Marketing, Jayme’s main focus is to shine a light on the incredibly smart, talented and driven team she feels fortunate to be a part of. Primarily, that comes in the form of overseeing and implementing marketing campaigns, collateral, social media content, and special events. As if that weren’t enough, she goes beyond her many marketing duties by providing support in organizing large projects such as clinic development and growth, physician recruitment, service line marketing plans, and physician education events.

Jayme loves knowing her work to showcase the DataDX and HPA mission means doctors and dentists nationwide are better equipped to care for their patients. What better reason to get up in the morning!

From a very early age, Ben was drawn to everything technology and computers related and would spend hours tinkering with his family’s IBM Aptiva running Windows 95. That passion only grew as he got older, but it conflicted with his natural interest in healthcare.

Just as Ben was fully debating whether to enroll in a Computer Science or Medical degree, he became aware of an accelerated program that nourished both pursuits. As a result, he went on to earn his BS in Computer Science from Portland State University with a Master of Biomedical Informatics from OHSU and has since been certified as a Registered Health Information Administrator by the American Health Information Management Association.

This gave Ben the perfect intersection between healthcare and information technology that he was looking for. Working with clinicians, payors, and quality improvement analysts to support population health initiatives as well as using health information exchange to report on clinical quality metrics prior to joining our team gave him a clear sense for what the DataDx software could achieve. Ben has since grown our platform by helping to develop its Anomaly Detection system and enjoys making sure we are staying up to date with the latest in machine learning, cloud computing, and application development.

It should come as no surprise that he loves solving complex problems and views software creation as a vast teaching opportunity for those who utilize it. For these and so many more reasons, Ben is a valued member of our HPA/DataDx team and continues to aid in our mission daily.

What makes Patrick a great fit for DataDx is more than his extensive expertise, although that certainly helps. His capacity for thinking big and mindfully looking for opportunities to make the world a better place is completely in line with our mission to impact healthcare in a positive way.

For Patrick, working on a revolutionary healthcare technology platform provides an opportunity to do something he has always had a passion for; to help people. This work also feeds his natural drive to solve complex problems so overall, becoming our associate data engineer nourishes his belief that one should make every moment count in this life. The road to gaining the professional expertise necessary to take on this position began with a client-facing tech position which gave him a solid understanding of clinical workflows, healthcare reporting, and translating technology to end-users.

From there, Patrick moved into software engineering where he developed some significant expertise in Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and put those skills to work for a coordinated care organization. This experience has made him especially adept at creating the kind of interactive and user-friendly data analytics platform that healthcare providers can use to streamline their practice operations and deliver better care.

We at DataDx love Patrick’s passion for problem-solving as well as his love of doing good in this world and our team is so glad that he’s putting these attributes to work for our clients.

In the field of data analytics, Dorothy is a standout human being. After serving in Iraq for the U.S. Army, she came home and took on an active role in her community by working in local politics and continues to serve the Clark County Chart Review Commission to this day. Needless to say, having an impact on the well-being of others is meaningful to Dorothy.

As a data specialist, she was drawn to healthcare for several reasons. Of course, the field is growing in the medical realm but most crucially, she loves being a part of an industry that everyone needs and benefits from when it works well.

Dorothy was initially drawn to the DataDx mission of keeping small to medium-size healthcare organizations solvent through affordable intelligence tools because it evoked that sense of purpose that fuels her ongoing intention to become a better version of herself. That feeling has only grown as she has seen firsthand the empowering impact real-time data analytics can have on patients and doctors alike. This undertaking, beyond monetary compensation or any other incentive, makes even the most tedious parts of her job worthwhile.

Her home life is a worthy reflection of Dorothy’s incredible character with a little organic farm that houses a bunch of spoiled chickens as well as a variety of fruit trees and berry plants to make delicious jams or jellies from. One thing is clear, while her Bachelor’s in Mathematics gave her the academic experience she needed for data analysis, her heart and passion for meaningful work made her a perfect fit for DataDx.

With a long list of academic achievements, a CPA license and certifications to support her more than 20 years spent in the fields of healthcare and finance, Sheila’s expertise is second to none. She has been able to combine her experience in Finance & Business Intelligence, Operations, and Technology to help medical practices achieve their optimal performance time and again.

Working for health organizations led Sheila to create an Enterprise version of a physician directory with her software developer husband Niels, which Washington State Healthcare Exchange, One Health Port subscribed as a service. Her unending passion for improving the health of American citizens drives her to advance better patient outcomes, reduce costs, and inspire more joy for healthcare workers by drawing on her wealth of knowledge. This personal mission has complimented her work for medical practices all along and propels her to seek new ways of accomplishing it.

In HPA, Sheila has found a like-minded partner to ensure independent doctors can thrive in the increasingly competitive healthcare landscape and we’re so glad she’s on our team.

Fueled by a true entrepreneurial spirit, Ashley has owned several small businesses and has experience in a variety of fields including Project Management, Finance, Operations and Human Resources. Armed with a BA in Psychology from the University of Arizona, her passion for continued education has given her the skills to take on any challenge posed by an ever-evolving technological field.

To that end, she has pursued her Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ 900) Certification and becoming a Certified Scrum Master (CRM). As an expert in managing the project lifecycle, she has taken on every phase of our DataDx implementation process, and our customers have reaped the benefits. Ashley’s compassionate nature and innate desire to help others led her to the healthcare field with hopes that her work will help contribute to lower medical costs across the board.

In her free time, she loves to spend time outdoors with her camera for some amateur photography and doing whatever she can to advance the cause of wildlife conservation. We have seen firsthand the dedication and skill Ashley brings to our DataDx family and look forward to watching her expand that positive impact for years to come.

As a native Ohioan, Christa’s path to her current role as HPA’s Marketing Associate was anything but conventional. The issue of healthcare became an outlier for her early in life when she began her lifelong battle with Lyme disease at 14-years-old. Christa went on to first attend an Arizona college in the mid-1990s where she developed a love of writing. Sadly, she was thrown off course with the passing of three close family members from cancer within a short period. Despite the interruption of her education, Christa promoted personal wellness by developing a successful hypnosis practice where she guided hundreds of clients through various medical obstacles.

Over the course of her practice, she became increasingly focused on the politics of healthcare and decided she should finish her degree to have a greater impact. After starting over as a non-traditional student, she graduated summa cum laude earning her bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Portland State University.

Since then, she used the research and writing skills she honed during school combined with her communication expertise to launch a freelance marketing career working with multiple companies she believed in.

Before long, HPA became one of those organizations which gave her an authentic opportunity to fall in love with our mission to advance independent healthcare nationwide. Now, Christa works full-time to get our message out to doctors and grow our alliance.

 data analyst for DataDx, Ben Elders has had a passion for statistics his entire life. Growing up, he fulfilled this interest by spending hours on his computer pouring over statistics for his favorite sports: football, basketball, running, and cycling.

Today, Ben still loves sports analytics in his spare time but has found a more meaningful way to exercise his love for statistics and helping people day to day. That led him to pursue a degree in Business Analytics from the University of Notre Dame.

Ben went on to work for an Athletic wear startup committed to paying their factory workers a fair wage which made him realize you can make a difference for others. After gaining more experience and exploring the field of data analytics, he realized there was a way to make his work even more meaningful by choosing a company with a healthcare mission. Lucky for us, DataDx fit what Ben was looking for.

One way you can tell Allister is a native Portlander is his love for the rain which he just can’t get enough of. As a web and software developer working freelance since 2015, he has a lot of experience managing projects for a variety of clients at once.

Now that Allister is part of our DataDx team, he will get a chance to do what he loves with his full focus on building software to help people. Even though his love for problem solving is what led him to this field, having a positive impact on the world led him to a healthcare software company like DataDx.

Allister is looking forward to grounding himself in our mission, developing new skills along the way and working in a team atmosphere for the first time. In his free time, he loves to play guitar and go outside for a walk in the neighborhood with wildlife. We are thrilled to have Allister on board to bring his special skillset to our platform now and into the future.

As a Palestine born transplant to the Pacific Northwest with an affinity for hiking, it didn’t take Ahmed long to fall in love with our lush green landscape and dynamic Portland metropolis. When he’s not home cooking new recipes, he loves learning more about his new city and connecting with our rich soccer community. Upon his arrival, he enrolled in PCC where he studied English and took some introductory business classes before volunteering for Legacy Health Information Systems department. Prior to joining the DataDx team, Ahmed worked as a Data Analyst for an emergency physicians’ group called the Northwest Acute Care Specialists. His goal is to continue his pursuit of a career in data analytics, and he holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems to help that dream come to fruition. Ahmed is passionate about data mining and generating new avenues of information by using visualization tools to make sense of large data bases. Applying his skills to an industry as vital as healthcare contributes to a sense of purpose and makes his workday much more fulfilling. For these and many more reasons, Ahmed is a perfect match for our DataDx mission, and we’re thrilled to have him on our team.