Healthcare Data Analytics Certificate

Owen Dahl, MBA, LFACHE, CHBC, LSSMBB  
Consultant, Owen Dahl Consulting, MGMA  

Owen Dahl is a nationally recognized medical practice management consultant with more than 48 years’ experience in consulting and managing medical practices. His expertise includes revenue cycle management, strategic planning, organizational behavior and information systems implementation. Dahl is a recognized national speaker on topics such as Lean, revenue cycle, scenario planning, practice operations, change and disaster preparedness. He is the author of such titles as Think Business – Medical Practice Quality, Efficiency, and Profits and The Medical Practice Disaster Guide Book, and coauthored Lean Six Sigma for the Medical Practice. In addition, he writes and contributes articles that appear in MGMA Connection, Medical Economics, Physicians Practice and several other publications. Dahl received his Bachelor’s degree in hospital administration from Concordia College, Moorhead, Minn., and his MBA from the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. He has completed doctoral work at NOVA Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 

Lauren Jones  
Senior Data Strategist, MGMA  

Lauren Jones is MGMA's primary Healthcare Data Strategist. Lauren believes in the importance of advancing medical practice performance in the healthcare industry and considers one of the greatest ways to do this is through benchmarking data.  Previously a practice manager and having worked in healthcare over the last 10 years, Lauren has a unique background with multiple specialties and extensive experience in benchmarking. After applying MGMA benchmarking data to her previous practice, she exceeded their budgeted annual revenue goal by $1.12M in 10 months while also improving their patients' experience scores to almost 100% month-to-month. She has become knowledgeable in operationalizing and analyzing MGMA's DataDive tool and now travels to educate members to better understand how to apply MGMA's data to their own organization. Since joining MGMA and the Organizational Membership Department, Lauren has engaged over 200 organizations helping to better benchmark against MGMA's DataDive Tool.  

Andrew Hajde, CMPE 
Assistant Director, Association Content, MGMA  

With more than 20 years of healthcare experience, Andrew Hajde, CMPE, Assistant Director of Association Content at MGMA, has held numerous high-level operations management positions in the healthcare industry. His most recent role in healthcare prior to working at MGMA was supervising 14 medical practices, with 78 providers and more than 200 employees, for a Fortune 500 healthcare company. The practice specialties he supervised included internal medicine, OB/GYN, urology, endocrinology, radiation oncology, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, vein surgery, bariatric surgery, cardio-thoracic surgery and cardiology.    

During his career, he also worked in various operational- and medical billing-related management roles, opened/acquired 25 medical practices, and managed an occupational medicine and rehab (PT/OT) practice. He has many years of experience with strategic planning, benchmarking, revenue cycle, operational improvement, employee/manager development and strategic marketing.

Dawn Plested, FACHE, MBA, JD, ESQ 
Consultant, MGMA 

Dawn has an extensive background in healthcare management and consulting. She has experience in operations leadership, value-based purchasing arrangements and innovative payment models, strategic planning, risk and compliance, marketing and communications, employee and physician engagement and management, and policy and procedure development. She has worked with private practices, hospital-based systems, rural health clinics and FQHCs.    

Dawn has an MBA with an emphasis in healthcare and international leadership and a juris doctorate with a health law emphasis. She is licensed to practice law in Minnesota. She is trained in Alternative Dispute Resolution as a mediator and arbitrator. She has spent more than 15 years in a variety of healthcare leadership roles. Her education combined with her broad experience in operations, finance, policy, leadership, marketing, communications and public relations has given her a unique skill set healthcare. This skill set, combined with her experience and education, makes her uniquely qualified to provide expertise in a consulting role.