Joan DaVanzo: Leading in Health Economics Consulting
Top 10 Most Inspiring Women of Influence in 2021
“Being successful” has a different meaning for people
at different stages of their lives. Joan DaVanzo, CEO of Dobson DaVanzo &
Associates, LLC is one such leader for whom “being successful” has changed as
she progressed and evolved in life. Completing her Ph.D., or running a
marathon, or being able to perform in a sport used to be success as mastery in achieving one’s goals
and being the best is what meant . Later in life, she now considers herself to
be successful if “I succeed in creating an environmentin which myemployees grow
and achieve excellence. When a new
client chooses our firm over competitors, we are all being successful as a
team.”
Treading the Path of Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship was not new for Joan. She had already
founded a “two dollar” brokerage firm on the floor of the New York
Stock Exchange (NYSE). She became one of the first women members by having a seat on the
Exchange. Over the years, seats ranged from $4,000 in the mid-1800s to $3.575
million at the end. She says, “I knew that the role of floor brokers
(which was what a “two-dollar” broker was) had a limited shelf life
because communication technology would eventually advance and orders to buy or
sell stock would be transmitted electronically to the post. There would not be
a need for so many brokers to physically walk out to the posts and execute the
orders.” Not long after, regional exchanges started happening, and the NYSE
was no longer the center of everything. The
NYSE eventually became a for-profit public firm.
After this, she walked a long path to get to where she is
today. She adds, “I had earned a MSW in clinical social work, and I got my
license (meaning I was a psychotherapist). I worked for the New York Office of
Mental Health as a day treatment social worker with seriously mentally ill
patients. I also maintained a private practice doing individual and group
therapy with adults. When I moved to California to get a Ph.D. in public health
at UCLA, I became licensed in California and set up a private practice out
there. I loved all my patients.”
Impediments on the road to becoming Successful
From becoming a floor broker in a male-dominant field to earning
a Ph.D. in health policy while treating patients as a psychotherapist, Joan had
to face many challenges along the way. She faced all of them with sheer hard
work and commitment and never gave up. She further adds, “When we started
Dobson | DaVanzo, I was an “old hand” as an entrepreneur. We started the firm
with three people at the kitchen table. Over the next fourteen years, we were
given opportunities to do really interesting work for the clients. And here we
are today, having our best year ever, despite COVID and all the challenges
attendant to that.”
Core Services and Vision of Dobson DaVanzo &
Associates
Located in Washington DC, Dobson | DaVanzo is a health
economics and policy consulting firm that works with clients to help solve
problems, using data analysis to understand the exact nature of the problem and
impart solutions. With a specialization in Medicare and Medicaid payment
policy, Dobson | DaVanzo analysts utilize medical claims data to model specific
government policies and determine the financial impact of the policy for each
client.
Below are Dobson | DaVanzo’s main services:
- Perform regulatory
analysis and work with clients to submit their public comments to Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rulemaking
- Support attorneys through
litigation support and damage estimation and by serving as expert
witnesses
- Conduct health services
research to study access to health services for different groups of
patients
- Produce data products for
clients to provide market intelligence and help them participate in
advanced payment models like Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and the
CMS Bundled Payment for Care Initiative Advanced (BPCI-A)
Maintaining Core Values and Integrity
Beginning with the same data as the government had access
to, the firm often constructs longitudinal cohort studies to showcase the value
proposition of the client’s product or service. She adds, “A client could
choose not to release a study that had adverse results, but if results were
going to be released, they would follow our stipulations. This requirement has
served us well over the years because the data do not lie. It has enabled us to
serve as honest brokers and work for different types of provider groups who all
compete with each other in the marketplace.”
She considers hiring for integrity to be extremely crucial. .
Dobson | DaVanzo is a continuinal “learning environment” and offers
professional development for its employees.
Managing CEO and home roles with Equal Ease
Being a CEO, she has to wear all the hats at different
times. She says, “As CEO, I probably get involved in most things that go
on in the firm. My partner (who is also my husband) and I have a hand in most
of the technical work. I oversee the government work, some commercial projects,
as well as accounting and invoicing. We both oversee HR.”
She is usually the “last eyes” for all reports and
proposals before they go out. Her typical workday starts with reviewing the
previous day’s emails and then web calls throughout the day with clients and
prospective clients. COVID has really increased her touch base calls with the
managers as now they have weekly staff meetings, monthly town halls, monthly
“cocktail hour,” and play Bingo in free-time. She feels she is “blessed” and has
angels watching over the firm as there are many “coincidences” where
things work out the way they are supposed to without any problem.
Her Sundays and Wednesday afternoons are spent at the barn
with the 3 horses that she dearly loves. She loves to garden and has a vibrant jungle
of flowers every year. Being a travel-friendly person, normally she takes
several trips each year and embraces being around flora and fauna. She enjoys
sailing as well. Having an accomplished staff means she doesn’t have to worry
about work while on a trip. Thus, while balancing her professional and personal
life is not easy, it does happen from time to time!
Personally, she wishes to support her people such that they
can do great things and always be at the “top of their game”. Professionally, she
wants to make Dobson | DaVanzo be seen as the “go to” analytic firm in the DC
area . Further, she says, “My other goal for us is to develop a suite of
data products and subscriptions that provide our clients with critical
information at critical times.”
Contribution as a Business Leader in this field
She shares, “I think our practice of integrating
different types of disparate data in our analyses (such as quantitative and
qualitative) helps to provide context, color, and depth to our studies. For
example, in evaluation studies, the subjective findings from a set of key
informant interviews with patients or providers can add a lot toward
understanding the meaning behind objective findings from statistical analyses
of claims data.” Augmenting data-driven engagements with information from
survey data helps to bring readers along on an interesting journey. Dobson |
DaVanzo often publishes public policy
studies in peer-reviewed journals.
For her, all the studies and analyses are the company’s
pride and joy, especially when others appreciate their complexity and nuance.
She concludes by saying, “I want us to always be involved in cutting edge
and meaningful analytic work that make a difference for people..”