BRE PAS Leadership
Dr. Ron Cohen
Founder & CEO of BRE Program Administrative Services, LLC
Dr. Ron Cohen is an accomplished business leader with over thirty years of experience as an entrepreneur, practice owner, and educator in the healthcare space. Before founding the Company, Dr. Cohen led VS Diagnostics, a successful non-invasive hardware and software diagnostic Company in the healthcare space. Dr. Cohen started BRE as a personal passion project to help individuals get the mental and behavioral healthcare they need to live productive lives.
Due to his close political affiliations in Washington, D.C., Dr. Cohen had a meeting with CMS officials in 2018 and discovered they were expanding their behavioral health strategy to include primary and specialty care providers by introducing new CPT codes. At that time, Dr. Cohen revamped BRE's operational model for medical practices to utilize these codes in a Medicare-compliant manner without the use of their staff. He has leveraged his political affiliations to expand behavioral health support for both individuals and providers, including the Veterans Administration.
Dr. Cohen is based in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and has been a community pillar for over 30 years.
Michael F. Pandich, Jr.
Chief Operating Officer
Michael Pandich, Jr. has an exceptional record of creating high-performing organizations that consistently exceed revenue goals while maintaining profit margin and cash flow targets. Early in his career, Mr. Pandich was in leadership roles at IBM and GE Capital. After leaving GEC, he was instrumental in turning around two companies and then co-founded United Asset Coverage, a maintenance services company that was acquired by Spectrum Equity for $100 million.
For the past twelve years, Mr. Pandich has been working with private equity to accelerate the growth of their lagging portfolio companies. As a member of executive committees, he has worked closely with both board members and investors to combine organic growth strategies with external partnerships and acquisitions to achieve desired revenue and EBITDA targets. Mr.Pandich has been instrumental in raising over $850 million in investment capital to fund successful growth initiatives.
Under his leadership, he grew an online job board company by increasing sales by 110% and grew revenue by over 40% YOY, helping the company to secure $27 million in Series C funding from Menlo Park-based August Capital in 2011. He was instrumental in growing a small restaurant company into the fastest-growing fast-casual restaurant chain in the world, adding over 225 stores in 15 countries, and was instrumental in launching a highly successful IPO on the TSX that raised over $125M.
Elizabeth Petersen
Vice President of Compliance and Practice Management
Elizabeth oversees all operations within BRE's client practices. She has over 20 years of Healthcare Administration experience with large health systems and specialty provider-owned practices. For the last 15 years, Elizabeth was practice management consulting for multi-specialty practices and surgical groups. Beth's main areas of expertise include staffing efficiencies, provider contracting and vetting, billing and coding, fee schedule negotiations, operations management, and CMS compliance initiatives.
She implemented the first Critical Access Hospital Rural Health Care Organization in the country, a Medicare Shared Savings Program incorporating a CPT code program similar to BREs for chronic disease conditions in Medicare patients. This program successfully covers thousands of Medicare patients and provides valuable resources and data to the providers responsible for their care. Her direct involvement in this initiative included testifying on behalf of the rural providers and hospital systems in front of Senate committees and local legislation in several states, proving patient care benefits, CMS compliance, and cost savings. We brought Beth on board for her experience and compliance expertise to ensure the BRE program continues to meet and exceed all CMS regulatory guidelines.
Marlin Stutzman
Advisory Board to BRE Program Administrative Services, LLC
The Honorable Marlin Stutzman retired from Congress in 2017 having served since 2010. During his time on Capitol Hill, he was very involved in healthcare, particularly as it related to Veterans. Mr. Stutzman through his consulting firm will help advocate the benefits of the BRE Program in Washington and beyond.