OUR LEADERSHIP

Ilka V. Chavez is the founder and Chief Consultant of Corporate GOLD, LLC. She has varied experience in leadership, operations, and planning in the health industry ranging from hospitals, local, city and federal government settings. Over the last twenty-two years within the federal government, Ilka has held various leadership roles. Her operational expertise and dedication to improvement underscores her desire to instill a culture of quality and high performance. She is known for her ability to execute complex projects across large organizations and large government and private entities.

•  Ilka is an expert at “connecting the dots” to find a common thread to improve organizational ability to solve problems, address day-to-day challenges, fill gaps, obtain clarity, and ensure goals are reached. Illustrative of this, Ilka co-led the development of the Department’s implementation plan for Pandemic Influenza, as well as led the convening, coordination and implementation of critical tasks related to the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA.) In addition to requiring the work of many groups and personnel to address 199 substantive tasks, this effort required planning to ensure HHS continuity of operations during an influenza pandemic and the development of a robust agency-wide succession plan.

• Ilka has also managed and led the development and approval of more than 25 federal regulations including the Health Insurance Accountability and Portability Act – Privacy Regulation. From develop to congressional approval.

• As the Quality Improvement Manager for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), Ilka lead a culture change focused on improving business processes for emergency preparedness and response. She designed and implemented a quality improvement-training program and trained over 100 team members on the Lean Six Sigma Methodology (White and Yellow Belt Trained.) Using the lean six-sigma process, she led a team that successfully reduce the cycle time for responding to secretarial correspondence from 18 to 3 days within 3 months.

• Led the development and completion of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Electronic Transaction and Code Sets regulation. The impact of the HIPAA regulations was extremely significant. By promoting the greater use of electronic transactions and the elimination of inefficient paper forms, the administrative simplification regulations where expected to provide a net savings to the health care industry of $29.9 billion over 10 years.

Ms. Chavez has a Masters of Public Administration from Baruch College and Bachelors of Science in Health Care Administration from the State University of New York –Utica. She is Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certified and Black Belt-trained.