Experience

Health Affairs

• United States
• Book and Periodical Publishing
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Senior Editor and Director, Health Affairs Council on Health Care Spending and Value

  • May 2018 - Present



Tollen Health Policy Consulting

• laura.tollen@comcast.net

• Principal

  • Feb 2015 - May 2018

  Independent Health Policy Consultant, Editor, and Writer with over twenty years of national and state health policy expertise. Providing health policy analysis and research; writing articles, reports, book chapters, and white papers suitable for peer-reviewed or other types of publication; editing of clients’ written products to make them publication-ready; grant-writing; blog writing. Skilled in managing multi-stakeholder processes designed to generate new knowledge and/or consensus (roundtable meetings, “blue-sky” sessions, collaborative writing projects); identifying appropriate participants, designing agendas, facilitating meetings, distilling and takeaways. Show less



Breakaway Policy Strategies

• Washington,DC and Larkspur, CA

• Senior Policy Director

  • Jul 2014 - Feb 2015

  Senior member of the staff of a small health policy firm providing research, analysis, and strategic solutions to a range of health care stakeholders, including biopharmaceutical and device companies, hospitals, health plans, physicians, foundations, and government agencies. Qualitative research and analysis, emphasizing impacts on the biopharmaceutical industry. Topics included public and private exchanges, physician quality measurement and clinical guidelines, and network adequacy, among others. Served as editor of a Breakaway’s Affordable Care Act Navigator – a primer and monthly report on key developments in ACA implementation, including: market reforms, exchanges, Medicaid and CHIP, taxes and fees, biosimilars, and the 340B Drug Discount Program. Show less



Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research

• United States
• Research Services
• 200 - 300 Employee

• Senior Health Policy Consultant

  • Jun 2000 - Jul 2014

  Senior member of the staff of the Institute for Health Policy, a department within Kaiser Permanente’s national office. The Institute’s mission is to shape policy and practice with evidence and experience from the nation’s largest private integrated health care delivery and financing organization. Quantitative and qualitative research and analysis related to two primary areas: physician group and delivery system organization; and, insurance market structure and functioning. Focusing on the potential of organized delivery systems to mitigate health care cost increases and improve quality and safety, with an emphasis on payment and delivery reforms included in, or influenced by, the Affordable Care Act. Other projects examined various impacts of exchanges, trends in benefit design, and implications of increased consumer cost-sharing. Served as co-editor of two books of collected work from over three dozen prominent delivery system experts. Served as developer and editor of “Kaiser Permanente Policy Stories,” a series of case studies highlighting the organization’s experience in designing a health care system that provides high-value, evidence-based care. The goal of the series is to inform the many public and private efforts underway to improve health care accountability (http://kpihp.org/category/publications/kp-policy-stories/). Show less



Institute for Health Policy Solutions

• Senior Consultant

  • Nov 1998 - Jun 2000



Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing

• Senior Health Policy Analyst

  • Jun 1994 - Jun 1998