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Primary Care Medical Home
Primary Care Medical Home
1-877-Qliance
(1-877-754-2623)
(1-877-754-2623)
Contact Qliance
New Mercer Island
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"The People of Qliance."
Management Team
Garrison Bliss, MD
Chief Medical Officer
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W. Norman Wu
President & CEO
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Robert Nakahara
Chief Financial Officer
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Ona Karasa
Chief Operating Officer
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L. Chapin Henry IV
Vice President of Business
Development
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Erika Bliss, MD
Vice President of Medical Care
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Clarence Williams
Vice President of Membership
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Garrison Bliss, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Qliance Medical Management Inc.
President
Qliance Medical Group of Washington PC
Dr. Garrison Bliss is a board certified Seattle-based physician with 30 years of experience as a primary care doctor. He is widely regarded as a pioneer in changing the way quality health care services are provided and financed. Frustrated with the poor performance and low service inherent in traditional insurance-based medicine, Dr. Bliss helped reinvent Seattle Medical Associates in 1997 to offer high quality, patient centered primary care services for an affordable fixed monthly fee. Dr. Bliss has also been active nationally in the Society for Innovative Medical Practice design, serving a tenure as President and Chairman of the Board. His expertise has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Medical Economics and many other news and trade publications. He has been rated by his peers as one top physicians in Washington on numerous occasions. He was named as one of the 25 top entrepreneurs and innovators by the Seattle Business Monthly in 2006. Dr. Bliss received his BA in Biology from Harvard University and his MD from the University of Utah. He completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Washington. He has been passionate about medical ethical issues for many years and has served as chairman of the King County Medical Practice and Ethics Committee, King County Grievance Committee and the Judicial Counsel of the Washington State Medical Association.
W. Norman Wu
President & CEO
Qliance Medical Management Inc.
Norm Wu is an entrepreneur, operating executive and business strategist with over 30 years of experience. He has founded or co-founded three prior start-ups including Avantos Performance Systems, a venture-backed pioneer in software for management and organizational effectiveness where he was President and CEO for seven years. Prior to Avantos, he spent ten years with the management consulting firm Bain & Company where, as Vice President, he oversaw a wide variety of high technology and health care client consulting teams, internal West Coast professional development and human resources. Mr. Wu also acted as corporate Chief Strategy Officer and SVP/General Manager of two divisions of a $250 million semiconductor turnaround and LBO. Mr. Wu is known for his acumen in developing and implementing high growth strategies and is well-regarded for his management and organizational leadership abilities. Mr. Wu received his MBA from Harvard University and his MS (specializing in medical applications of electronics) and BS in electrical engineering with distinction from Stanford University.
Ona Karasa
Chief Operating Officer
Qliance Medical Management Inc.
Ona Karasa brings 25 years of leadership experience from the high-technology industry to Qliance. She served as President and Chief Technology Officer at Atlas, the online advertising technology division of aQuantive, acquired by Microsoft in 2007. During her time there, she grew revenue from $8MM to over $100MM over four years. Prior to aQuantive, she was Executive Vice President and General Manager of MSNBC.com and 2002WinterOlympics.com. Ms. Karasa has also held numerous executive and technology positions for companies such as Clarus Corporation, Adobe and Aldus. She holds an MA from Bastyr University and a BA from Smith College.
L. Chapin Henry IV
Vice President of Business Development
Qliance Medical Management Inc.
Chapin Henry has extensive experience in market research, market analysis, product planning and business development. Mr. Henry helped five start-up companies bring their new products to market. Previously, Mr.
Henry served as the Director of Business Development at Arcessa, a large-scale information retrieval solution, and was responsible for developing business partnerships with government agencies and IT contractors
in Washington DC. Mr. Henry managed and executed product planning for Blue Scooter, a peer-to-peer file
sharing technology company; Cubitz.com, an online commercial real estate website; and Alive.com, a
streaming media company. In 1991, Mr. Henry joined PhotoDisc, (now Getty Images) where he helped the
company grow from a five employee start-up to a market leading business that generated over $40 million in
annual sales within five years of operation. Mr. Henry graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a
BA in the history of industry and technology.
Erika Bliss, MD
Vice President of Medical Care & Quality
Qliance Medical Management Inc.
Erika Bliss, MD is a family physician trained at Swedish Family Medicine in Seattle. She received her undergraduate degree in History at San Francisco State University and an MA in Latin American Studies at Stanford University before
attending UC San Diego for medical school. Dr. Bliss has been involved in medical leadership and operational development since medical school, where she co-founded and led the Student-Run Free Clinic Project
of San Diego, which serves the homeless and indigent at multiple sites in the county, and where she developed an international medical educational exchange program between UC San Diego and Hospital Tela
Integrado in Honduras. After residency, Dr. Bliss served as the Clinical Site Director of the Carolyn Downs
Family Medical Center, a community clinic in Seattle, where she implemented organizational changes to
increase efficiency and improve patient care. She also served as their Director of Clinical Quality,
re-designing and implementing a data-driven, participatory quality improvement program. She has served in
numerous leadership positions, including serving on several commissions for both the Washington and
American Academies of Family Physicians and participating on various task forces for national projects
working on re-defining the specialty and re-aligning it with the needs of the American public. Dr. Bliss is also
a national Pisacano Scholar, an award given to five family medicine leaders per year, and serves on the
Pisacano Leadership Foundation Board of Directors. Prior to her medical career, Dr. Bliss organized and led
an international women’s human rights program for women leaders from 27 countries at the UN World Conference on Women, and produced an educational video in Spanish on domestic violence which is now in use
throughout Latin America.
Clarence Williams
Vice President of Sales & Membership
Qliance Medical Management Inc.
Clarence Williams brings over 20 years of management experience in the health care industry to Qliance. Mr. Williams served as Vice President of the National Accounts Division of Principal Financial Group, one of the nation’s largest benefit administrators. Clarence spent six years as a Regional Sales Director at Lumenos, an employee benefits start-up company and pioneer in consumer driven health care which is responsible for the development and introduction of Health Reimbursement Arrangements and Health Savings Accounts. Following the acquisition of Lumenos by WellPoint, Mr. Williams acted as the Western Regional Sales Director. Mr. Williams has also served as the Northwest Sales Manager for Aetna.
Robert Nakahara
Chief Financial Officer
Qliance Medical Management Inc.
Robert Nakahara brings extensive expertise in the health care and financial industries to Qliance. Serving as Partner at Tatum LLC, a national financial consulting firm, Mr. Nakahara was responsible for the technology and health care industry practices of the Seattle office. From 2003-2009 Mr. Nakahara acted as the Chief Financial Officer at MedManage Systems Inc. where he managed legal, investments, finance, treasury and more. During his time there, he successfully raised $20M in Preferred Shares with top-tier venture capital funds and led successful contract negotiations with industry leaders such as WebMD, Dendrite International and AllScripts. Mr. Nakahara has also held numerous executive and financial positions with companies such as Alliance Health Technologies, Advanced Research Systems and PREMERA/Blue Cross of Washington & Alaska. He holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Puget Sound and a BA in Accounting/Finance/International Business from the University of Washington.
