The company is led by Stacy Lynn Shillan, an accomplished healthcare executive with decades of leadership experience across specialty pharmacy, home infusion, ambulatory infusion, therapeutic education, commercialization, payer strategy, business development, and executive healthcare consulting. 

Throughout her career, Stacy has collaborated with physicians, health systems, specialty pharmacies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, infusion providers, and managed care organizations, providing a unique perspective that bridges clinical excellence with reimbursement strategy and operational execution.

Stacy is also the internationally recognized author of STRICKEN, a memoir chronicling one family's extraordinary journey through profound medical adversity, unwavering faith, resilience, and hope. Her experience as both a healthcare executive and author has reinforced her unwavering commitment to patient advocacy, compassionate care, and ensuring that every patient has the opportunity to receive medically appropriate treatment through accurate, evidence-based clinical documentation.

STRICKEN

 Stricken | Barnes & Noble® 

When clinical excellence matters, every word matters. We help healthcare providers tell the patient's story with clarity, credibility, and the clinical evidence necessary to support access to life-changing therapies.

Ascend assists healthcare organizations by moving complex patients from prescription to therapy by strengthening the clinical, reimbursement and operational processes that sit between the two. 

The strongest part of the Ascend concept is that it connects clinical documentation with revenue and patient access.

Our mission is to advance patient access to medically appropriate therapies through clinically exceptional, evidence-based documentation, strategic healthcare consulting, and unwavering advocacy that empowers providers, strengthens payer confidence, and improves patient outcomes. 

Clinical Documentation & Medical Necessity

Patient chart review; Comprehensive Clinical Letters of Medical Necessity (CCLMNs); Complex/comprehensive clinical appeals; Denial support, and documentation designed to strengthen payer authorization.

Payer Access & Reimbursement

Prior-authorization strategy, payer requirements, denial prevention, appeals, patient access, workflow, and identification of documentation gaps that delay therapy.

Specialty Pharmacy & Infusion Strategy

Advisory services for specialty pharmacies, home infusion companies and AIC(s), helping improve referral processes, clinical programs, therapeutic strategy and operational performance.

Commercial Growth

Referral network development, market expansion, sales strategy, therapeutic education, physician engagement, payer strategy and commercialization.

Executive Advisory

Providing organizations with experienced healthcare leadership without necessarily requiring a full-time executive, particularly useful for emerging companies, PE-backed organizations and companies entering specialty pharmacy or infusion.

• Hourly Consulting
• Flat-Fee Complex Case Reviews
• Retainer Agreements for physician practices, infusion centers, specialty pharmacies, hospitals, and healthcare organizations
• Monthly Consulting Programs based on scope of services and case volume
• Customized Healthcare Programmatic Initiatives tailored to each organization's clinical, operational, reimbursement, and growth objectives

Whether supporting a single complex patient case or designing enterprise-wide clinical documentation and therapeutic access strategies, our solutions are customized to improve efficiency, strengthen payer submissions, enhance patient access, and support long-term organizational success.