Our research team is led by experts with an average of more than 20 years of experience in the industry.

Alok Shrestha is a Survey Director within the Healthcare Research Group. Since joining CSS in 2008 Shrestha has managed several large-scale surveys of elderly and vulnerable health plan members and patients and serves as the project manager for the Medicare Health Outcomes Surveys, for which CSS has contracted up to 60 health plans. Shrestha currently oversees a portfolio of services for the Maryland Medical Assistance Programs, including HEDIS CAHPS surveys, surveys of MCO-contracted doctors, and surveys of patients in a managed care program. Shrestha leads the implementation of interactive online reporting tools across CSS projects, lends expertise with data management and submission for HEDIS/CAHPS surveys, and contributed to the development of the key driver analysis model for both HEDIS CAHPS and Medicare CAHPS surveys.

Andrew Duff is Director of IT Coordination at CSS. His primary responsibilities include managing strategic IT initiatives and coordinating the organization's technical resources across multiple divisions. Duff joined CSS in 2008 and his responsibilities call for skills in business intelligence, vendor and client management, and complex data manipulation. He manages the building and hosting of consumer facing online decision support tools for public and private health exchanges across the US. He combines technical proficiency, subject matter expertise, and business insight to produce effective results for internal and external facing initiatives.

Chris Altieri has over a decade of experience in survey research of consumers in the health industry. He has extensive experience managing research projects of specialized populations including the ICH CAHPS survey of dialysis patients and the HCBS CAHPS survey. Altieri oversees all of the Health Research Group’s online survey work, writing policies and designing scalable systems for successfully delivering survey invitations and collecting responses.

Eban Lewis is a Survey Director in the Healthcare Research Group with over 10 years of experience. Lewis provides expertise with large-scale surveys and complex data management and sampling procedures. Lewis serves as the project manager for the Qualified Health Plan Enrollee Satisfaction Survey, for which CSS has contracted with over 50 qualified health plans, as well as a portfolio of surveys CSS conducts for a state Medicaid agency. Lewis oversees mail outreach across the organization and serves as the lead associate on survey mailings for many large volume projects, including Medicare Advantage CAHPS.

As the Director of Operations, Jackie is responsible for human resources, financial operations, as well as compliance and oversight. Jackie also leads the planning and execution of business development strategy, which she has been overseeing since she joined the organization in 2012. This includes creating new survey offerings, developing partnerships, leading proposals, and writing and executing contracts. Jackie supports the entire CSS organization in staying up to date on trends in healthcare survey research, and in particular those initiatives aimed at measuring, reporting, and improving consumers' experiences with healthcare. Jackie brings more than 15 years of operations and business development experience to the role, and an MBA from the George Washington University.

Since 2005, Jeff Burkeen has managed the design, sampling, fielding and reporting of several survey projects for CSS dealing with multiple data collection modes and multiple survey fielding languages. He has designed systems that allow for customer-specific flexibility within a larger construct and that enable comparability across clients. Jeff has built survey systems focusing on ease of use, allowing for automated audit checks on sample frames, and providing sampling flexibility in a web environment.

Julie Amromin has over 15 years of research experience in health care, direct mail, financial services, marketing, and clinical research. Since joining CSS more than 20 years ago, Amromin has managed multiple large scale survey projects using various modes of data collection, including mail, email, telephone, and fax; employing various incentive schemes; and implemented sophisticated analysis sophisticated analysis and reporting designs. She leads the development of CSS's proprietary analytical tools, such as Key Driver and strength/opportunity models. In addition, Amromin manages annual provider satisfaction surveys for Aetna, Cigna, and a number of other health plans. She has contributed her expertise in statistical data analysis and report design to a number of Clinician and Group CAHPS survey projects.

Kieran Hutchinson brings more than a decade of experience with surveys of healthcare consumers and providers. She serves as an account manager for several important partners and plays a key role on our HEDIS CAHPS survey implementation. Hutchinson also provides leadership on several behavioral health surveys and has led several ongoing survey projects that are fielded on a quarterly or monthly basis. Hutchinson has many years of advanced statistical analysis experience including statistical programming in R, SPSS, and SAS, and is well versed in survey design and survey sampling methodologies, applying these skills to our partners to help them make meaningful comparisons within their data sets and to their competitors.

Mike Parks has been managing large scale surveys for health plans and other organizations since 2006. He has specialized in assisting these organizations with NCQA, CMS, and various state requirements and helping leverage extensive information from their surveys. His survey administration experience includes all aspects of sampling, survey design, fielding (mail, telephone, fax, and internet), data management, and data analysis. Parks leads our effort(s) on developing custom software tools for reporting results to clients.

Paul Kallaur has been with CSS since 1998, having led the Healthcare Research Group prior to taking over as President in 2021. Drawing on his extensive research, analysis, and project management experience, he has led the development and implementation of effective, rigorous study designs and survey strategies that take into account question formulation, survey design, fielding protocol, data cleaning rules, data analysis methods, and report usability. He has led the analysis and reporting of study results to provide insight and guidance to those we serve. He has designed and implemented numerous tests to assess the impact of fielding modifications on scores and response rates for CAHPS and other surveys. The results of some of these tests can be seen in recently published articles in Public Opinion Quarterly and Field Methods. Under Kallaur's leadership, CSS has obtained eight official CAHPS certifications and approvals from agencies like the National Committee for Quality Assurance and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Surveys.

Rachel Phoebus is the managing director of CSS's Healthcare Research Group with more than fifteen years of experience in health care research. Phoebus oversees project administration for the Healthcare Research Group, which includes survey administration across electronic, mail, and phone data collection methodologies. She brings expertise in complex sampling protocols, outreach in a variety of non-English survey languages, data analysis to support pay-for-performance and public reporting, and the Medicare population. Phoebus currently oversees a large portfolio of surveys for a prominent national health insurer, including surveys of members and providers for more than a 100 health plans across four lines of business. In addition, Phoebus leads the Medicare Advantage & Prescription Drug Plan (MA&PDP) CAHPS survey implementation for CSS. Phoebus also contributes her methodological expertise on health care measurement efforts by CSS's Consumers' Checkbook and the Core Quality Measure Collaborative (CQMC).

Ramzi Dridi assumed the role of Director of Finance at CSS in 2024, where he is responsible for overseeing the organization's financial and accounting operations. Bringing over a decade of experience in financial management for small to medium-sized businesses and nonprofit organizations, as well as prior Big 4 audit tenure with KPMG, Dridi excels in driving operational improvements. His expertise encompasses leading small accounting teams, refining accounting processes, and enhancing financial transparency. He has designed and implemented systems that support revenue expansion, cost optimization, and adherence to federal, state, and local regulatory standards. Dridi's strategic approach and commitment to operational excellence position him as a key contributor to CSS's ongoing success.

Yaw Opoku is the Director of Software Engineering at CSS. He is responsible for the strategic direction of software development as well as the management of a team of software engineering professionals to ensure stable delivery and maintenance of in-house developed applications that are used for the automation of high-volume survey research. Since joining CSS in 2005, Opoku has both led and actively participated in all phases of the software development life cycle including requirement gathering and analysis, design, implementation, testing, deployment and maintenance. He leverages his proficiency in software engineering and data analytics to develop applications which enable CSS’s survey research team to efficiently scale survey implementation at high volumes, manage the survey implementation process, perform quality assurance tasks, analyze survey response data, and customize survey projects to our clients’ needs.