About Yegian Health Insights
Jill Yegian, Ph.D., launched Yegian Health Insights in 2018, providing consulting services to clients in health care and philanthropy. Throughout her career, she has been committed to improving the health care system on behalf of patients, providers, and payers.
Jill has held leadership positions in a variety of health care organizations; in each, she has focused on applying expertise in health policy, payment, and delivery to problems and opportunities. Most recently, she served as vice president for Public Policy and Strategic Initiatives at Brown & Toland Physicians, a large independent practice association in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Previously, Jill was senior vice president for Programs and Policy at the Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA), a multi-stakeholder leadership group that promotes high-quality, affordable health care in California, where she managed a 10-member team of professional staff responsible for performance measurement and payment innovation in California’s commercial market and Medi-Cal. At IHA, Jill led a coalition of delivery systems and other partners committed to reducing inappropriate use of health care services in successful bid for a Choosing Wisely grant from the ABIM Foundation. She also launched Smart Care California, a public-private partnership promoting safe and affordable care in California co-chaired by Covered California, CalPERS, and the California Department of Health Care Services. Prior to IHA, she co-directed the American Institutes for Research (AIR) Health Policy and Research Group, a team of more than 70 health services research professionals.
Jill was among the first staff members of the newly-created California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), where she spent 13 years working to improve the California’s financing and delivery systems for health care. At CHCF, she led efforts to increase coverage among California’s uninsured, prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and created a new research and evaluation department.
She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, authored a book, and presents regularly to research, policy, and industry audiences. She received a bachelor’s degree in human biology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in health services and policy analysis from the University of California at Berkeley.
Expertise
Health Care Markets and Managed Care
California's Physician Practice Landscape: A Rapidly Changing Market with Limited Data
Jill Yegian and Marta Green, CHCF Issue Brief, 2022
Health Information Exchange in California: Assessment of Regional Market Activity
Mark Elson, Jill Yegian, Alex Horowitz, and Sokkim Lim, CHCF Advancing Data Exchange in California, 2021
Los Angeles: Vast and Varied Health Care Market Inches Toward Consolidation
Jill Yegian and Katrina Connolly, CHCF Regional Market Study, 2021
Humboldt/Del Norte: Community Collaboration in the Face of Health Adversity
Jill Yegian and Katrina Connolly, CHCF Regional Market Study, 2020
A Large Community Health Center Adapts to a Changing Insurance Market PDF
Jill Yegian, IHA Issue Brief, 2015
Encounter Data: Issues and Implications for California’s Capitated, Delegated Market PDF
Ann Hardesty and Jill Yegian, IHA Issue Brief, 2015
Status, Challenges, and Opportunities of the Delegated Model in California
Jill Yegian and Tom Williams, California Journal of Politics and Policy, 2014
Affordability in a Mandated Environment
by Jill M. Yegian, PhD , Grace Wang, PhD, MPH American Journal of Managed Care, 2013
Cost, Quality and Transparency
Making the Case for Primary Care Investment in California PDF
Jill Yegian, CHCF Explainer, April 2022
Health Care Payments Data Program Legislative Report PDF
Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development – Jill Yegian served as lead author on Executive Summary, Introduction, and Chapters 1, 4, 5, and 9, March 2020
Benchmarking California Health Care Quality and Cost Performance PDF
Dolores Yanagihara, Angela Kline, Jill Yegian, IHA Issue Brief, 2016
Value Milestone: Public Reporting By Physician Organizations Of Costs Alongside Quality
Jill Yegian, Dolores Yanagihara, Lindsay Erickson, Health Affairs Blog, 2016
Piloting Performance Measurement of Physician Organizations in Medi-Cal Managed Care: Findings and Implications PDF
Ann Hardesty and Jill Yegian, IHA Issue Brief, 2015
Engaged Patients Will Need Comparative Physician-Level Quality Data and Information About Their Out-of-Pocket Costs
Jill Yegian, Pam Dardess, Maribeth Shannon, and Kristin Carman, Health Affairs, 2013
Payment Innovation and Value-Based Models
Using Value Based P4P Results to Target Performance Improvement PDF
Dolores Yanagihara, Jill Yegian, and Lindsay Erickson, IHA Issue Brief, 2016
Charting a Course to Value in Physician Group Payment: Key Pay-for-Performance Design Decisions PDF
Jill Yegian, Lindsay Erickson, Dolores Yanagihara, IHA Issue Brief, 2016
California's Medi-Cal Managed Care Pay for Performance Landscape PDF
Sarah Lally and Jill Yegian, IHA Issue Brief, 2015
Bundled Payment: Learning from our Failures
by Tom Williams and Jill Yegian, Health Affairs Blog, 2014
Value-Based Pay for Performance: Rewarding Affordability Alongside Quality
by Jill Yegian and Dolores Yanagihara, Health Affairs Blog, 2014
Testimonials
Jill Yegian is a consummate professional. From strategy to evaluation, her sophistication and technical acumen is matched by her commitment to excellence. Jill is the kind of consultant you hire for one piece of the project only to realize that her diverse talents allow her to integrate complex material, provide leadership across different stakeholders and communicate process, data or summary findings with confidence and accuracy. Jill Yegian was the Hail Mary pass that we needed for a fourth quarter turnaround on a complex healthcare workforce project. In 2019, she brought her technical skills to lean hard into a project that required swift intellectual ramp up, political savvy and dogged project management. Jill was both the organized anchor and the spark of light we needed to cross the finish line. I stand in deep appreciation of her professional integrity and fidelity to the rigor of the assignment.
Mélange Matthews, MPH, MCP, Chief Operating Officer
Jill brings extensive health care policy experience and a strong research background. She was integral to building program policies, collaboratively with critical stakeholders, to establish an All-Payer Claims Database in California. In a dynamic public policymaking environment, Jill repeatedly demonstrates her shared commitment to the success of the program—a rare and welcomed quality. She is organized and flexible and can work as an integrated member of the team or as a lead who can independently oversee projects to completion. The opportunity to work with Jill has been a true pleasure.
Michael D. Valle, MPA, Deputy Director, California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development
The breadth and depth of Jill Yegian’s experience with and understanding of the health care market is exceptional. She has led teams and worked individually in the analysis of numerous payment and organizational structures, with an emphasis on how they can be improved. She has particular expertise in capitation, accountable care contracting, and physician-hospital alignment in the complex California context. It has been intellectually stimulating for me personally to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Jill on research projects at the University of California, the Integrated Healthcare Association, and now at Yegian Health Insights.
James C. Robinson, Ph.D., Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Economics, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley
Jill is fabulous to work with on many types of projects. Most recently, we engaged her for a strategy check-in regarding our grantmaking given the extensive impact of COVID-19 on the health care system and ensuing uncertainties. Jill helped us pinpoint salient questions, collect input from key stakeholders, synthesize that feedback for what it meant to us and our approach, and guided us through thoughtful discussions internally. As always, her attention to detail, excellent facilitation skills, and thoughtful leadership of the process was superb. Additionally and importantly, Jill’s deep knowledge of the health care system was very critical and exceedingly useful in this engagement.
Stephanie Teleki, Ph.D., Director, Learning and Impact, California Health Care Foundation
I’ve worked with Jill for almost 20 years and found her to be one of the most knowledgeable, strategic and collaborative partners in California health care. Her insight into how provider performance can be improved through clinical integration, measurement and incentives is second to none. More recently, I’ve worked with Jill on the implementation of new transparency models that will benefit the public and payers. Her work is advancing the movement toward value-based payment in California.
Bill Barcellona, Executive VP for Government Affairs, America's Physician Groups