Mr. Kaplan joined SM in January 1998 as a Vice President for Consulting Services in which capacity he has worked with dozens of clients providing various advisory services. He was promoted to Senior Vice President for the Northeast Region effective January 2003. Mr. Kaplan routinely leads teams in compliance program development, evaluation, implementation, and training. He is one of the foremost experts on Medicare/Medicaid regulation and compliance. He is called upon to work with executive leadership in various organizations to analyze and engage in strategic planning for compliance with Medicare, Medicaid, and private sector managed care, as well as provider reimbursement requirements. He was a senior research analyst for the SM team for developing regulatory education content for the American Medical Association (AMA). Mr. Kaplan has also developed a Medicare claims review protocol and assisted several clients in assessing the adequacy of their Medicare claims review processes. Additionally, he has developed a methodology for establishing fair market value compensation for physicians and allied health professionals using government approved survey data. He is expert in issues related to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Stark laws, Anti-Kickback Statutes, and the Balanced Budget Act. Mr. Kaplan came to SM with more than 25 years experience in the Federal government, primarily with the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) now known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). His most recent assignment was as the Administrator of the Northeastern Consortium, overseeing and managing Medicare/Medicaid operations of the Boston, New York, and Philadelphia Regional Offices that had jurisdiction over these programs in 13 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Prior to that he was Regional Administrator for the Boston regional office where he managed Medicare contractor budgets, state Medicaid Grants, state health department budgets and peer review organization programs for the 6 New England states. He directed a varied health professional staff of physicians, nurses, nutritionists, and laboratory technologists, as well as accountants, systems specialists and policy analysts. He was part of the senior management team that developed the first HCFA/CMS strategic plan and directed a number of creative projects that had national implications for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. These included a 13 state study on the widespread misuse of the drug vancomycin; development of a national surveillance system for Medicare which based information on the quality of care from the agency's enormous data files; and a national project to identify best practices in health care purchasing in private industry.