Wendy Talbot, MPH

Wendy Talbot Wendy Talbot is the Vice President of Measure and Data Operations at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), where she oversees a broad portfolio of products including HEDIS content, digital implementation support, Measure Certification™, HEDIS Audit™ and validation programs, data collection, Quality Compass, and Health Plan Ratings.

In her current role, Wendy is leading NCQA’s efforts to modernize data quality validation, including the development of population-level plausibility frameworks for clinical data and the transition to digital quality measurement. She plays a central role in shaping the future of healthcare performance measurement — from advancing digital quality measures (dQMs) and electronic clinical data systems (ECDS) to reducing provider burden through standards harmonization and automation.

Wendy has over 25 years of industry experience working with federal, state and local government, quality improvement, managed care and behavioral health organizations, and physician groups. Prior to joining NCQA, she served as the Director of Performance Measure Validation and Audits for an External Quality Review Organization (EQRO) and one of NCQA’s HEDIS Licensed Organizations. In that capacity, she was an NCQA Certified HEDIS Compliance Auditor and performed over 150 HEDIS, AMP, and Performance Measure Validation audits. Earlier in her career, she worked as an epidemiologist at the Arizona Department of Health Services.

Tom Curtis

Tom Curtis is Director of State Affairs at NCQA, where he oversees a multi-disciplinary team to advance NCQA programs, measures and services with state executive and legislative leaders. He works closely with state stakeholders to forge strategic policy partnerships and represent state interests internally to inform NCQA product development, operations, policy and quality measurement efforts. Before joining NCQA, Tom led health equity, quality improvement, behavioral health and public health initiatives in Michigan as the Director of Quality for Medicaid managed care. One of his favorite parts of the job was designing, implementing and evaluating Michigan’s $70 million managed care quality incentive program and $1 billion quality-based auto-assignment algorithm. Tom also has experience in legislative affairs and community organizing, with a longstanding focus on health system reform and community development.

Garcene Duckett

Garcene Duckett is the Director of Data Collection at NCQA, where she oversees the HEDIS Data Collection process. In this role, she manages key data collection tools, including NCQA’s Healthcare Organization Questionnaire (HOQ) and the Interactive Data Submission System (IDSS).

Garcene supports organizations throughout the HEDIS data submission process by helping interpret submission requirements and ensuring reporting expectations are clearly understood. She leads the implementation of quality assurance procedures for HEDIS reporting files and develops requirements for NCQA data collection tools based on HEDIS technical specifications. She also collaborates with key stakeholders across state and federal programs, NCQA Accreditation and Health Plan Ratings to support accurate and consistent HEDIS reporting.

With more than 23 years of HEDIS experience, Garcene has strong analytical skills, deep subject matter expertise, and cross-functional knowledge gained through her work across NCQA. She earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Howard University in Washington, DC, and holds a Master of Science in Information Systems from the University of Phoenix.