Kim Werkmeister
MS, RN, CPHQ, CPPS
Chief Executive Officer,
Heartland Intellicare
Professional Experience: Kim Werkmeister is a nationally recognized healthcare leader and expert in clinical quality, patient safety, and performance improvement. With more than 30 years of experience as a Registered Nurse and healthcare executive, Ms. Werkmeister brings a rare combination of frontline clinical insight and strategic systems-level leadership. She currently serves as CEO of Heartland Intellicare, where she is spearheading the development of an AI-enabled platform designed to support quality leaders in rural and critical access hospitals. She also serves as Senior Vice President of Improvement and Implementation at Convergence Health, where she leads large-scale, data-driven improvement collaboratives for thousands of hospitals across the U.S. focused on advancing patient outcomes and workforce resilience across rural, urban, and frontier healthcare settings. Ms. Werkmeister’s prior leadership roles include Director of Quality and Patient Safety for a regional hospital system, where she provided oversight of clinical, ancillary, and operational performance initiatives. Her expertise spans clinical quality improvement, regulatory readiness, care coordination, interdisciplinary collaboration, and patient engagement.
Adam Kohlrus
BA, MS, CPHQ, CPPS
Chief Health Strategist,
Heartland Intellicare
Professional Experience: Adam Kohlrus has over 20 years of experience in the healthcare field, spanning rural clinics in Africa to Board rooms with health systems across the country. He has worked for over 15 years with hospitals on issues such as readmissions, hospital acquired conditions, patient safety, population health and health equity. In leading state and federally funded quality improvement grants for the Illinois Health and Hospital Association (IHA) Adam has experienced the acute needs of our rural healthcare providers. His role at IHA was focused on the small and rural constituency with a focus on quality improvement across the 51 Critical Access Hospitals in Illinois. In his current role he is leading both regional and national learning collaboratives with Quality Directors, Chief Innovation Officers and Population Health leaders.
Adam also served in the Peace Corps as a Community Health volunteer in both Swaziland, Africa and Guyana, South America before working at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, DC. His expertise spans clinical quality improvement, community development, digital human-centered design platforms, health/maternal/racial equity, care coordination and collaboration.
Marc McLaughlin
Chief Digital Officer,
Heartland Intellicare
Marc is an experienced strategy consultant, business designer and entrepreneur, who is responsible for founding Do Tank back in 2014.
He supports organizations by the use of his bold strategic thinking, creative visual design and practical implementation skills that are ever focused on delivering concrete results.
Marc has an impressive ability to confront the norm and help frame and reduce complexity allowing organizations to discuss, re-design and determine the critical few next steps required to drive strategic change.
With 13+ years of experience with corporates through to start-ups, and within a wide range of industry sectors, he enjoys realizing the successful impact of implementing our new tools, skills and mindsets within organizations.
Jennifer Wagner
CPHQ, CPPS Rural Health Quality & Innovation Leader,
Heartland Intellicare
Jennifer Wagner is a rural health champion with deep Montana roots and over 16 years of experience advancing healthcare quality and access in underserved communities. She leads multi-state efforts to strengthen rural hospital programs, develop educational resources, and foster collaboration across communities and care teams.
Jennifer’s career began at the Montana Hospital Association, where she supported Critical Access Hospitals through the Flex Program and other quality initiatives. She launched Montana’s first centralized hub for hospital quality programs and led award-winning collaboratives focused on swing bed care and operational improvement. Her work has earned national recognition, including two Quality Improvement and Innovation Awards from the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy.
She is the co-lead for the development of the National Alliance for Rural Healthcare Improvement (NARHI), a collaborative initiative focused on advancing rural health through shared learning, strategic partnerships, and innovative programming. Jennifer also contributes to rural health education and quality improvement initiatives across the country, including curriculum design, advisory panels, and training sessions on topics such as CAH Quality Infrastructure and CPHQ exam preparation.
Known for her curiosity, creativity, and ability to build lasting relationships, Jennifer thrives on turning ideas into action. She’s presented nationally on care transitions and rural quality infrastructure, and contributed to the development of the Core Elements for CAH Quality Infrastructure. She also created hands-on tools like the Rural Emergency Department Toolkit and the QI Roots framework to help hospitals tackle real-world challenges.
Jennifer holds a BA in Public Health with a minor in Psychology from Carroll College and is currently pursuing her Master of Public Health at UC Berkeley.
Lindsay Milchteim
MPH
Chief Strategy Officer,
Heartland Intellicare
Lindsay Milchteim is a healthcare leader with more than 15 years of experience in patient safety, quality improvement, and healthcare transformation. She currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Heartland Intellicare, where she drives the development of AI-powered tools that streamline healthcare tasks and allows teams to focus on patient care.
Previously, Lindsay directed federal healthcare programs at the Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) and Convergence Health, managing multimillion-dollar CMS contracts and leading statewide hospital collaboratives. Earlier in her career, she advanced Medicaid reform through New York State’s DSRIP program and shaped national health policy at AARP.
Lindsay holds an MPH in Public Health Policy and a B.A. in Political Science from The George Washington University. She is a nationally recognized quality speaker, certified NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home Content Expert and has served on New York State’s Steering Committee for Advanced Primary Care, continuing to contribute to national healthcare quality and transformation initiatives.
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