Alternative Health Plan Strategies: Balancing Cost, Quality, and Employee Experience

Mary Amend leads consultant and broker partnerships at Garner Health, working with some of the country's largest advisory firms to bring Garner's high-performance navigation benefit to employer clients.

She comes to this work with an unusual combination: a background spanning sales, employee benefits consulting, and actuarial science. That mix lets her engage directly with the people employers rely on most - HR leaders, benefits advisors, and actuaries - and translate complex healthcare data into decisions that actually move the needle on cost and care quality.

At Garner, she focuses on one of the most persistent challenges in employer benefits: helping organizations get better health outcomes for employees without paying more to get there. Her work sits at the intersection of plan design strategy, healthcare navigation, and member experience.

Mary is based in Omaha, Nebraska. When she's not thinking about healthcare affordability, she's likely traveling the world or on her Pilates reformer.

Patti is a senior vice president for the Health Transformation Team, part of Aon’s national Health Solutions practice. She assists self insured clients in leveraging value-based care to transform the delivery of healthcare and also leads Aon’s national Care Delivery team.

Patti joined Aon in 2019. She has an extensive background in leadership positions across health system, health plan, and employer organizations. Her experience includes negotiating, implementing and operationalizing complex value based contracts across diverse patient populations of Commercial, Medicare Advantage, Medicare and Managed Medicaid for a large health delivery system. Additionally, Patti served as a leader of a health plan where she led the development of its first consumer-directed health plan. Patti also served as a leader of a regional employer purchasing coalition where she assisted employers on their journey from volume to value. She led complex, multi-stakeholder community initiatives that brought together employers, providers, payers and consumers to think creatively and work collaboratively to improve health, care quality and affordability.

Patti has served as a purchaser representative to the National Quality Forum’s Measure Application Partnership Clinician Workgroup. She is a former president of the Missouri Chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives. She first began working in the industry in 1995.

Patti’s expertise includes an extensive background in leadership positions across health system, health plan, and employer organizations. She is frequently asked to speak to national audiences and has expertise in designing client solutions that include: Alternative Health Plans, Value-Based Care, Virtual Care, Accountable Care Organizations, Patient-Centered Medical Homes, Clinically Integrated Networks, Advanced Primary Care, Bundled Payments/Surgical Networks/Centers of Excellence, Direct Contracting, Transparency and Reference-Based Pricing.

Mary is a Senior Vice President in Aon’s New York City office. She supports U.S. Health Solutions for mid and large market clients.

Mary came to Aon in June 2021 from Mercer, after holding senior healthcare consulting and leadership roles for most of her career.

Mary has guided clients for over three decades on a multitude of strategic, financial and legislative issues. Mary helps organizations of all sizes navigate evolving healthcare market trends, changing regulations, and increasing cost pressures.

She has vast industry experience designing and implementing health and welfare strategies. Her work covers benefit plan design and optimization, program cost-sharing and containment, funding strategies and financial projections and market reviews. Mary has done substantial work integrating point solutions and pharmacy programs.

Over her career, her clients spanned many industries including consumer products, retail, finance and healthcare. Mary has deep experience consulting on all aspects of organizations’ benefit offerings; partnering with HR and finance leaders to develop data-driven benefits strategies that balance cost, competitiveness, and member experience. She connects with key stakeholders and understands both the complexities of program design, as well as activating on the healthcare strategy. Mary connects analytical data and practical insights for actionable decisions.

Mary earned a B.S. in mathematics from University at Albany and an M.B.A. in actuarial science from The College of Insurance (now part of St. John’s University).

Mary is a Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS) and is licensed in life and health insurance in New York State. She also holds non resident licenses in several other states where her clients conduct business.

Mary is also an active member of NEBGH and HFMA.

Janaera Gastón provides oversight for content, design and execution of NEBGH’s educational programs and managing related strategic partnerships.  

Prior to joining NEBGH, Janaera worked for two New York City public hospitals as the special assistant to the deputy chief financial officer at Coler-Goldwater Memorial Hospital and as a human resources manager at Kings County Hospital Center.

Janaera has represented NEBGH on advisory boards and guest lectured at local colleges presenting the employers’ role in health care.  She has served on several local not-for-profit boards.

She received her B.A. from Syracuse University and her M.P.A. from the City University of New York, Baruch College of Public Affairs.