American Healthcare Leader #19

A M i s sion

Bigger

Jeremy Strong serves as a link between the revamp of Rush University Medical Center’s supply chain operations and the revitalization of Chicago’s West Side P106

Healthcare that departs from the status quo.

Premise Health is the leading direct healthcare company pioneering new models to deliver powerfully effortless healthcare. With more than 50 years of experience, Premise Health delivers unmatched quality, access, and value to the nation’s leading organizations.

future

healthcare is unrivaled access to phenomenal care and seamless experiences that cost less. We partner closely with our clients to deliver that future today, creating value by helping their populations – our members and dependents – live healthier.

The Path The Issues

The Reason

Health reflective of the community it’s in

56. Moda Health’s Michael Kennedy switched career paths to better understand the factors that affect population health outside of a doctor’s office

18. OrthoFX Cofounder and CEO Ren Menon introduces a more personalized option for teeth alignment

36. Sharon Hausdorff’s openness to change landed her on the other side of the world and shapes her leadership style today at Teva

49. Capital Medical Center CFO Jennifer Weldon breaks the mold of traditional healthcare operations to place patient experience at the forefront

70. Ovell Barbee dedicates his work to making the culture of Spectrum

62. “There’s a big focus on pricing transparency, patient-friendly billing, and trying to make sense of the complexities of the billing world.” —Troy Spring, SCL Health

46. SVP Mary Agoglia Hoeltzel channels the brainpower and innovation of women at Cigna through her program, ASPIRE

28.

“I never thought I would end up in healthcare finance, but I like the fact that it’s challenging and complex . . . ”

—Jennifer Yowler,

PharMerica Corporation

79. “How you look and choose to experience life, people, and situations dictates your own happiness. I try not to look at anything as glass half-empty.”

—Jim Dunn, Atrium Health

Gillian Fry (Yowler), Courtesy of Atrium Health (Dunn)

The Business

The Impact

136. General Counsel Michael Hercz ensures every business decision is made on ethical grounds at Sentynl Therapeutics

166. Tivity’s Steve Janicak discusses how the company tackles the social determinants of health through its programs

174. Lisa Replogle shares how being an “atypical accountant” heightens HonorHealth’s culture

150. Bausch Health’s Mark Boone offers thirty pieces of advice for each year of his professional career

Courtesy of TIAA (Lewis)

153.

“Your experience is only as good as the last twenty-four months, honestly, because that’s how quickly things change. And that’s how adaptable you need to be.”

—Deborah Vancleave,

Mosaic Life Care

180.

“We focus on helping people get a steady stream of income in retirement—which is critical to avoid the risk of outliving your savings.”

—Ben H. Lewis, TIAA Individual & Institutional Services LLC

Masthead

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Can you remember a time without Tylenol?

The evolution of modern medicine is quick, inevitable, and seemingly effortless. But once change takes hold, it feels as though it’s been a part of our lives all along.

Chemotherapy started being used to treat most cancers in 1956. Birth control pills became widely available in the 1960s. Biosynthetic human insulin became commercially available in 1982 to help people manage diabetes. Functional MRIs were invented in 1991 to measure the metabolic function of the brain. The list goes on . . .

Strange to think that most of the medicines we have today were made less than a lifetime ago, and yet, it’s like they’ve always been the answer. In this issue, we’ve spotlighted individuals who are moving healthcare forward from behind the scenes and from all different viewpoints, making what we never knew we needed into staples of healing.

Understand what it takes to bring a new product or medicine to the market by way of Ren Menon (p.18), who developed a new solution for teeth alignment, and Carl Turner (p.52), who shares his role in helping make lifesaving drugs available to consumers.

Learn what’s behind the inspiration for innovation with Maryam Adbul-Kareem (p.83), whose passion for science and medicine was sparked from a childhood bout of strep throat—and the amoxicillin that cured her.

Discover the future of healing thanks to Trevor Heritage (p.120), who is helping craft better, personalized cancer treatment options, and Tamarah Saif (p.124), who helps deliver the all-natural, calming effects of CBD.

And, of course, witness the difference an institution like our cover star Rush University Medical Center (p.106) is making by combatting systemic disparities and inventively providing care to every member of its community.

These leaders prove that invention is not limited to one approach. It’s about staying updated in all respects: socioeconomically, institutionally, technologically. With the advancement of medicine keeping up with the pace of the modern era, there’s no doubting that the staples of tomorrow are beyond what we could expect today.

As you read these pages, I encourage you to marvel at the people who serve as catalysts for discovery.

Gillian Fry KC Esper Managing Editor

The Path

Every step executives take on their career journeys is pivotal to achieving their current successes. Along the way, individuals accumulate technical skills, foster relationships, and develop the leadership acumen that have turned them into pioneers of the industry.

10. Gary Foster

14. David Burton

18. Ren Menon

22. Pamela Schmidt

25. Michael Wiley

28. Jennifer Yowler

33. William Root

36. Sharon Hausdorff

Building

Unbreakable Connections

Highmark Health’s Gary Foster on the reimagining of his procurement function and what has helped make his department best in class

By Billy Yost

Gary Foster VP of Procurement Highmark Health

Courtesy of Coupa Software Inc.

In discussing the massive overhaul of procurement at Highmark Health, Foster invokes Stephen Covey, Daniel Pink, Brené Brown, Simon Sinek, and even Deepak Chopra, as he feels he owes a debt to the leadership and culture concepts cultivated by these authors. His effective distillation of their work into an operational model doesn’t just look good on paper; it has become part of a broader organizational transformation at Highmark Health.

Embedded Procurement

Since launching a new procurement model in 2017, Foster has helped reshape integral processes, procedures, and culture at his organization.

“Historically at Highmark Health and many other companies in the healthcare industry, procurement was primarily a transactional function,” Foster says. “The internal processes had become very bureaucratic and very slow at a time when healthcare leadership was looking to seize new opportunities in the changing dynamics brought about by the Affordable Care Act and the accelerating adoption of value-based care to drive improved customer outcomes. That was the backdrop of this reinvention.”

Foster’s vision was to change the core operating model, borrowing some of the best practices from the manufacturing industry but adding a significant twist that centered on deep immersion in both the strategic sourcing discipline and, more importantly, better alignment with internal clients.

“Everyone on our staff, from our leaders to our individual contributors,

When Gary Foster was named the “Procurement Leader of the Year” at two separate award ceremonies last year—the inaugural Americas Procurement Awards and the World Procurement Awards—it wasn’t merely in recognition of his thirtytwo years in the profession. The vice president of procurement at Highmark Health has no time for victory laps because, over and over again, he has proven to be a thought leader dedicated to reinventing and redefining what his function means not just at Highmark Health but in the industry at large.

is expected to develop close bonds with their internal clients,” Foster explains. “This means getting invited to regular client staff meetings and holding oneon-ones with the most senior client executives. We even have folks colocated with those clients on a periodic basis.”

In short, Foster wants procurement to increase its strategic participation with Highmark Health’s internal clients.

“What we are really after is a deep understanding of our clients’ business, their strategies, goals, and challenges,” the VP explains. “The more our team establishes those intimate insights, the more they become trusted advisors. This engagement process has created a positive feedback loop, as trust has and continues to be built and procurement has become an important participant in strategic conversations much earlier in the game.”

Best in Class

The results of the procurement team’s focus on client immersion have been clear. Highmark Health Chief Marketing Officer Cindy Donohoe commended the work of Foster’s team: “Our procurement department has developed into an instrumental partner for the marketing department. Most importantly, they act as true partners in our business. They constantly look for ways to add value throughout the process.”

“When we got that testimonial from Cindy, I printed it out, framed it, and put it on the wall in the middle of the department,” Foster says.

But it’s not the only sign of progress for Highmark Health’s procurement function. Since the transformation

was initiated in 2017, strategic sourcing savings have grown by 600 percent. Cycle times have been cut in half.

“At the same time, our team has taken on more responsibility, identified more process improvements, introduced innovation, invested in continuous professional and career development, and received recognition both nationally and globally,” Foster says.

Gartner, the well-known global research and advisory firm, conducted a confidential client survey that showed Highmark’s procurement department is outperforming all benchmarks not just in healthcare, but in procurement across all industries in their research. They are literally best in class, but Foster says it’s just the beginning.

Mission and Connection

Foster says part of the success of the new model is establishing the right mission with the right connection and buy-in from his team.

“I think focusing on a slogan or a series of words that everyone has memorized just misses the point—it’s the just cause of what we are about that matters,” the VP explains. “As leaders, we need to break down the worthy cause that the

organization is pursuing and help make connections to that cause for people on the team. At Highmark Health, we want to be a catalyst to change healthcare in America. Incorporating that cause into interviews and hiring processes ensures that it resonates with the people you’re bringing on board to join your family. That’s really who these people become.”

And when it comes to the national and international awards for leadership last year, Foster is proud, but is quick to credit his team and their success.

“I am very honored and humbled that my staff chose to submit me for these highly prestigious awards,” Foster says. “I think they would tell you that my beliefs about leadership, the creation of the right team culture, along with our vision of customer intimacy, are really the hallmarks of these awards.” AHL

Congratulations to Gary Foster and the Highmark procurement team. As a proud partner of Highmark, L.J. Aviation is responsible for providing a disciplined and detailed private aviation solution. L.J. Aviation appreciates our role in supporting execution of the strategic direction for a world-class healthcare organization.

“Everyone on our staff, from our leaders to our individual contributors, is expected to develop close bonds with their internal clients.”

By Billy Yost

Healthcare Personalized

Indiana University Health personalizes its patient experience with help from an unlikely position: revenue management

David Burton has gotten used to the same invitation: “How would you like this to be your problem?”

The vice president of revenue management at Indiana University Health (IU Health) has built a career with the organization partly because when helping find someone to tackle difficult challenges or increased responsibility at the organization, the person they were looking for, more often than not, wound up being Burton himself.

The VP’s aptitude for data integration and bridging the gap between revenue

cycle operations and information technology has helped support IU Health’s transformational change, which has created more personalized patient interactions by finding new and innovative ways to harness technology and use healthcare data to enhance the patient experience.

Burton’s grounding for what he says is an otherwise “shoot for the moon” style of goal setting came early in his career at his alma mater, the Ohio State University, while he was working his way through undergraduate and graduate degrees.

David Burton VP of Revenue Management Indiana University Health

“I started in an entry-level clerical job,” Burton recalls. “We were still on paper charts, and my first task was a giant room full of inpatient financial charts that hadn’t been organized in at least a year or two,” the VP says with a laugh. “My job was basically alphabetizing multiple years of charts for a major health system’s inpatient records. It was a brutal job.”

The combination of being willing to take on any challenge, matched with a strong tech and management focus, would ultimately sell IU Health (then Clarian Health Partners) on Burton.

Bridging the Gap

Since coming to Indianapolis in April 2001, Burton has been influential in the evolution of both the revenue cycle operations and revenue cycle technology at IU Health. “When I came here, my experiences uniquely positioned me to really understand how to use data and get the most out of our systems, but I could also speak the language of the business we were managing,” Burton says. “I think and hope folks have felt that I’m someone who understands their world and their problems, regardless of where they’re

Kylee Stajkowski Photography

coming from, and that I’ll help them to find creative solutions to whatever that problem that might be.”

One of the more complicated problems Burton has helped tackle was finding a way to marry two separate patient accounting systems into a single patient billing statement.

“We were challenged by our system president at the time to find a way to create a single IU Health statement that looked like it was coming from one place, even though it wasn’t,” Burton explains. “In 2011, we built the very first consolidated patient statement in our market, providing a much different experience from what other healthcare providers were doing. It was transformational at the time, and even by today’s standards is still ahead of the curve.”

Burton also says that building instead of buying has been a consistent theme during his tenure. IU Health’s Automated Control Desk (ACD) has grown from merely a much needed reporting tool into a robotic process automation

powerhouse, years before RPA was a hot topic in the industry.

“We’ve built out a whole suite of billing and reporting tools with self-serve analytics as well as custom built a lot of our presentation layer. Over the years, it’s become the backbone for a lot of the things we have built out to help fill gaps to meet our business needs.”

After overhauling and improving revenue cycle outcomes for their hospitals in the early 2000s, IU Health turned its attention to improving billing operations and collaboration with its physician practices.

“We built an electronic practice request system that is essentially a closed-circuit communication and encounter management workflow system,” Burton explains. “If we need anything from the practice or to log requests, we can get an answer and get it in front of our team much, much faster.”

Improving these operations also came with a help from IU Health’s proud partner, GeBBS Healthcare Solutions.

GeBBS and IU Health have similar visions to drive overall effectiveness of the revenue cycle function through innovation, automation, and artificial intelligence. The two align their innovative and strategic objectives to continuously improve processes and systems so as to deliver cost-effective and better outcomes for patients and providers.

Make It Personal

More recently, Burton’s team continues to focus on the patient experience. “One of the areas where we have been a leader nationally is in patient estimates,” Burton says. “We have done highly personalized patient estimates since 2015, and we remain committed and focused on this personalized approach to medicine and service.”

IU Health’s highly integrated revenue cycle operation is a real advantage for estimates and has made it possible for the organization to provide more than fifty thousand comprehensive patient estimates in the last year alone.

Burton says his team is now focused on improving mobile and self-service capabilities for patients who find it easier to interact with the system on their own time. “We’d love for patients to be able to swipe their phone when they arrive and have already completed 90 to 100 percent of the check-in and arrival process that accompanies a visit before they walk in,” Burton says. “We want to be leading class in the space, and we’re working very hard on it.”

While Burton acknowledges that there will always be some patients who will prefer the personal interaction they can have with front-office staff, it’s all about meeting each individual patient “where they are” with regard to their service experience and expectations. AHL

“We have done highly personalized patient estimates since 2015, and we remain committed and focused on this personalized approach to medicine and service.”

By Kathryn Kruse

Aligning for a Better Smile

Ren Menon, OrthoFX cofounder and CEO, brings new tech and time-honored compassion to the world of teeth alignment

Joseph Seif

The human mouth has thirty-two teeth—a fact that has not changed much for several thousand years. But in 2016, Ren Menon, cofounder and CEO of OrthoFX, found a way to tap into the rapid tech evolution to offer new methods for beautifying even the oldest truths of teeth. His systems for dental alignment focus on improving smiles with less pain, easier access, and more support.

“I’m a logical thinker,” Menon says. “I like to break down issues to create actionability and then deliver on an action plan. You need the idea and the execution.”

Menon’s journey through the industry started at Invisalign. Based on his engineering background, they hired him on as director of R&D and IT at a growth-focused phase in its IPO. “There were many good intentions but no coherent approach,” he says. Doing what he most loves, Menon took a look at the chaos, identified patterns, and reinforced

Ren Menon Cofounder and CEO OrthoFX

A LOVE FOR TWO KINDS OF CANINES

Along with supportive, pain-free teeth alignment, Ren Menon has another passion: his little dogs.

Menon did not grow up with pets. Several years ago, he found himself bemusedly in love with a chihuahua, his first of several. Recognizing the difficulty in housing older dogs, Menon has adopted several senior canines. It is not just the challenges of older dogs that motivates Menon. His wife, a physician at the VA, observes a problem at her practice: veterans sometimes do not seek care, especially mental healthcare, because no one can watch their dogs.

With his knack for designing systems, Menon envisions a care center for dogs—a place where return service members can feel comfortable leaving their beloved companions while at appointments or in the hospital. Menon respects and wants to facilitate the “incredible experience of having a creature that offers such unselfish love.”

those patterns to create structure. A consistent pattern of product release and adherence to customer need emerged as crucial to success.

Working with metadata analysis, observation, and observation of observations, Menon helped illuminate a core tenet for viability: “Doctors just wanted the product to work,” he says. While it sounds basic to prioritize efficacy in a predictable time frame, Menon knows how easy it is to get caught up in other aspects of development and allow them to take precedence if no clear plan exists.

In 2008, after several years with the company, Menon finished an MBA and a certificate in marketing and strategy management. He transitioned to lead the Invisalign professional marketing department until 2012, when he shifted to global head of product and innovation.

Years of working in several areas of the alignment industry illuminated opportunities to provide better experiences for consumers. Building from lessons learned about meeting promises, Menon made a friendly break with Invisalign and founded OrthoFX. He positioned his new company to ride with the waves of tech development.

“Experience is as important as function,” he says. While Menon and his team develop new materials and software to improve the aligners, a major focus at OrthoFX is redesigning patient experience. “It is a process that requires support mechanisms,” he says.

OrthoFX offers a standardized approach to the treatment experience. This means they work with hand-picked doctors who are not only clinically qualified but also have excellent bedside demeanor. “We have a fourteen-point checklist to onboard dentists,” Menon says. Patients can connect with doctors online, cutting down on the expense and challenge of face-to-face appointments.

OrthoFX’s value comes from streamlined doctor-patient communication as well as transparency in pricing. The CEO says that his company’s product currently runs at half the price of Invisalign due to the technology it uses and the fact that he believes in reasonable margin-taking, and has set his gross margin targets far lower than Invisalign’s 75 percent.

Also, while doctors are integral to the OrthoFX experience, the company controls pricing to the patient, not the doctor, ensuring a comparable and competitive product for consumers.

Down the road, Menon sees his retainer liners as a platform not only for teeth straightening but also for wellness monitoring. Because the retainers are in constant contact with saliva, they can collect periodin-time data and provide biomarkers for health and wellness. For example, Menon says, they could monitor saliva for pH and help correct halitosis.

Along with big visions for future implementations, Menon uses his humility and systematic thinking to tackle a basic focus of new businesses: building awareness and trust. He knows that the market is huge and has space for multiple providers. Thus, he looks to help people understand why teeth straightening might be a priority in general.

And his efforts are paying off. In its first four months on the market, OrthoFX had a patient base of around 1,000 people and a doctor panel of 170 spread over most major cities in the US. And this is just the beginning.

Nearly 700 doctors sit on the waiting list and OrthoFX intends to service 750 locations in 2020. “There are 200,000 dentists in the US. We want to sell to 10 percent—the best 10 percent,” Menon says.

They are not limiting themselves to the US. With eighteen full-time staff in the US and a global base of a hundred, including overseas software development, OrthoFX is exploring the European market. Meanwhile, customer service support and manufacturing are scaling up in the US.

Menon can attest to the quality of OrthoFX’s product, considering himself not just the OrthoFX CEO, but also an OrthoFX research subject. Although “blessed with pretty good teeth,” Menon says, he does have “a bit of crowding on his lower jaw.”

After OrthoFX’s proprietary no-pain aligner material went to human trial, he put his mouth where his money is and began wearing a retainer. So far, he reports, the results are good. AHL

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“I’m a logical thinker. I like to break down issues to create actionability and then deliver on an action plan.”

By Sara Deeter

Making Capital Count

When most young girls are growing up, they have lofty dreams of becoming ballerinas or astronauts or rock stars. But Pamela Schmidt’s dreams took a much different direction. “When I was young, someone who I really admired told me I should become a certified public accountant. I didn’t even know what that was,” Schmidt says with a laugh. “But when I think about where I am today, I always have to anchor back to that moment.”

Today, Schmidt is not only a certified public accountant (CPA) but also the chief investment officer and chief treasury officer for the Henry Ford Health System, a Michigan-based nonprofit healthcare

Pamela Schmidt on the development and impact of Henry Ford Health System’s new Working Capital Counsel group

organization established in 1915 by Ford Motor Company legend Henry Ford.

Schmidt joined the Henry Ford team in February of 2019, but she has already instituted a cross-functional collaborative unit called the Working Capital Counsel group that is transforming how the organization manages both its finances and its patient care.

Learning the Balance

After receiving a full scholarship to study business at the University of Missouri–Saint Louis, Schmidt was recruited to work as a senior accountant at regional accounting firm Conner Ash PC.

“I always encourage people to take the CPA track if they’re able,” Schmidt says. “You learn so much, and especially as a new grad, it just helps you get your thoughts organized so that you can approach things in a very efficient fashion.”

In the ensuing years, while working at major organizations such as Boeing and Ascension, Schmidt got exposure to SEC reporting, 10-Qs and 10-Ks, and to billion-dollar mergers. She had opportunities to build her own team and to turn the “bits and pieces” of a treasury function into something fully fledged, sophisticated, and intentional.

But it was during the 2008 financial crisis that Schmidt’s eyes were opened to the potential of financial management programs like the Working Capital Counsel group.

Bon Secours Health System, where Schmidt worked for more than fifteen years as treasurer, developed many “really innovative strategies to handle the crisis,” Schmidt says. “We knew that the balance sheet could be stronger than it was—after the financial crisis hit, we had just seventy-five days of cash on the balance sheet.

“But once we got the right people talking, we were all working in the same direction instead of opposing one another,” Schmidt continues. “Working Capital Counsel groups are all about balance sheet management and guidance, about being strategic about how you manage costs and deploy your assets. And 10 years after the crisis, we had more than 180 days of cash on the balance sheet.”

Pamela Schmidt Chief Investment Officer and Chief Treasury Officer Henry Ford Health System

As Schmidt explains, “Henry Ford is a community-based organization—everybody you walk up to knows the Henry Courtesy of Henry Ford Health System

Community and Communication

Ford name, what it means to the industry at large, and all the good it’s doing.”

When she came on board at Henry Ford in February 2019, Schmidt saw an opportunity to help the organization produce even greater results for the community through the creation of a new

“It’s still in the fledgling stages,” she says. “But I knew that we needed the group as a way to make sure that we fulfill our investment aims and that our portfolios are producing what they

At its core, Schmidt explains, the Working Capital Counsel group centers on a very simple concept: communication. “It gives a broad group of leaders across multiple functions—revenue cycle, supply chain management, insurance, real estate, risk management, and pipeline management—an opportunity to talk about what we all need to do to make sure that we succeed,” Schmidt says.

Schmidt meets with other leaders in the Working Capital Counsel group every month to talk about what is going on in each of their departments and to figure out cross-functional solutions to their problems. The group might discuss how they want payment terms negotiated on contracts, for example, or what the cash flow requirements will be for major construction projects.

All sorts of different processes, projects, and systems are examined, Schmidt says. But more importantly, the group examines how those projects and systems affect the cash flow and the organization as a whole.

“We’re developing a forum for people to understand the impact of what other people are doing,” Schmidt notes.

“It’s changed people’s mind-set about money—now, when a vendor calls and says they’ve got a great deal for us, we know that nothing is free and we help each other work out the math to prove whether or not it’s a good deal for us in the end.”

Numbers That Matter

As a result of this cross-functional collaboration, the Working Capital Counsel group directly affects the strength of the organization’s balance sheet. But as Schmidt emphasizes, the strength of the balance sheet has far-reaching implications.

“I’m a strong believer that everyone should have access to healthcare, that healthcare isn’t a commodity,” Schmidt says. “And by helping to strengthen the finances of the organization, we can help offer healthcare to those that really need it and to deliver the absolute best patient care.

“I think that’s what you always have to keep in mind when you’re in this industry, particularly in the not-for-profit world,” she adds. “We need to focus on numbers, but at the end of the day, it’s all about the patient and what we can do for them.” AHL

“Once we got the right people talking, we were all working in the same direction instead of opposing one another.”

By Yvette Vernon

Making the Mark

Guardant Health sets the standard for cancer treatment, using just a blood sample to produce a wealth of data and more precise options for healing

Nowadays, many companies realize the merits of weaving a lawyer into the infrastructure of the business early on. In addition to offering perspective with compliance as a guiding principle, in-house lawyers can stop a problem before it begins as they help ensure new ventures are completed thoroughly and carefully. While these companies benefit from having a legal voice on their internal teams, Guardant Health stands a step ahead by including a lawyer on its own founding team.

Michael Wiley, chief legal officer and founding member of Guardant Health, says that being one of the first three people at the company allowed him a unique chance to build and influence Guardant’s culture and instill good decision-making habits from day one.

“I had the rare opportunity to have my fingertips on the company since the beginning,” Wiley says. Not only did his influence allow the company to set a sound foundation to grow upon, but he also used his past professional experiences to set the framework for best practices when approaching management and financial matters—and that original opportunity has paid dividends for Guardant for over eight years.

Prior to founding Guardant, Wiley attended Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business. Starting as a tax accountant at KPMG, he put his financial prowess to the test as he eventually moved on to be vice president of finance at Microchip Biotechnologies Inc. and CFO of Voyage Medical. Still interested in finance but wanting to dig deeper into the legal side of a business, Wiley eventually returned to his alma mater to receive his JD at J. Reuben Clark Law School.

Early in his law career, Wiley worked as a corporate attorney at Venture Law Group and served as in-house associate counsel for software and services company Novell, where he focused on matters dealing with intellectual

property and employment. With a wealth of knowledge in not only finance and law but also in the healthcare industry, the opportunity to help develop Guardant was one he couldn’t resist.

Now, as chief legal officer, Wiley uses these skills to propel Guardant’s mission of “conquering cancer.” As a “leading precision oncology company,” Guardant uses a range of data from blood tests to analytics to help provide personalized, informed treatment options before a patient’s diagnosis is too far along.

“We believe the key to conquering cancer is unprecedented access to its molecular information throughout all stages of the disease,” Guardant’s website says. “We are developing a

solution through tests that require only a blood sample.”

With a catalyst as simple as a blood sample, the company’s goal is to use this DNA to advance clinical trials and data sets and take the guesswork out of cancer research. And with more than five thousand oncologists in more than thirty-eight countries on board with Guardant’s mission, the company is one step closer to finding better cancer treatment solutions.

The secret? Finding methods that cater to individual needs and conditions—a philosophy evidenced by Guardant360, a comprehensive genomic testing process that profiles a patient’s tumor and suggests the best route of care. From Wiley’s

“I had the rare opportunity to have my fingertips on the company since the beginning.”

standpoint, these treatment methods, though incredible, offer him his own checklist to complete.

With each new treatment developed, Wiley must ensure that all aspects of the process meet compliance and regulatory standards, have long-lasting intellectual property protection, and are constantly upkept and reviewed with each new advancement.

As Guardant works to advance its early detection and precision treatment methods, Wiley and his small team strive to make their mark on medical technology in ways we never thought possible.

“We’ve discovered something great and we’re trying to share it with the world,” says Michael Peltier, Guardant’s software production engineer.

And with every new piece shared to the world, with every new treatment option available, Wiley and his fellow founding members’ fingertips have certainly set their standards for healing. AHL

Serving life sciences companies for more than twenty-five years, Latham & Watkins combines a highly developed grasp of regulatory regimes and market issues around the world with the global resources needed to provide a one-stop shop for clients in this rapidly evolving, highly regulated industry.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP: Michael epitomizes what you want in a general counsel. Excellent judgment, calm, and considerate. His experience in the life sciences field shines as he helps lead Guardant Health to great things.”

—Edward Reines, Partner

The Avenue of Opportunity

After a merger with BrightSpring, Jennifer Yowler, PharMerica’s SVP and chief financial officer, is using her financial expertise to improve processes

Words by Keith Loria

Photos by Gillian Fry

Having spent more than two decades leaving her mark as a trusted and indemand healthcare accountant, Jennifer Yowler, PharMerica’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, admits she’s surprised where her career path has led her.

“I never thought I would end up in healthcare finance,” she says. “But I like the fact that it’s challenging and complex, there are always different things going on, and the products and services that our company provides make a big difference and improve lives for customers and patients.”

After graduating from Ohio University in 1999 with a degree in accounting, Yowler went to work for PwC in its Cincinnati office and, at the time, Omnicare was its biggest client. She spent the majority of her five years at the company working on the account.

Looking for more work/life balance, Yowler’s career path took her to Omnicare, where she spent a decade-plus helping to solidify the healthcare company’s finances across leadership positions. A few more prominent jobs followed, and then in June 2019, she was offered the position of chief financial officer at PharMerica.

“I learned of the opportunity, and I have a lot of respect for the company and leadership there, including people such as Bob Dries, who was really involved in my development at Omnicare and teaching me the ropes of billing.”

Yowler was impressed with PharMerica’s story, now as a part of BrightSpring, and the plans to continue to innovate and change the combined company in the years ahead with unique service and care models. Additionally, she was interested in the company’s focus and increased investment in account management, the billing organization, and systems in order to drive the best customer experiences possible.

And coming off the BrightSpring combination in March, which created a $5 billion company, both entities were moving forward in many areas of collaboration in processes and integrated care. She didn’t hesitate to say “yes” to the offer.

As one of the top institutional and community-based pharmacy operators in the country, PharMerica provides comprehensive pharmacy services through the continuum of patient care, including medication management, compliance and education programs, cost containment, and the purchasing, packaging, and dispensing of drugs, which are accompanied by industry leading service levels. The company provides care for over 350,000 people a day across skilled nursing, assisted and independent living, home, behavioral, specialty, and infusion settings.

“It was exciting to get back to a larger company with the resources to put a lot of initiatives in place and do things the best way,” Yowler says. “They had the foundation, structure, and culture to continue to advance and make changes to build on what they have. Plus, they have and are bringing together a management team with great talent and experience in the industry. Everyone is working towards the same goal—to serve our customers the best we can and expand the reach of our services to positively impact as many people as we can.

At PharMerica, Yowler handles finance, budgeting, and forecasting, but the other big part of her job is managing the revenue cycle departments and collaborating with operations.

“Revenue cycle is an underappreciated area of most companies, and it’s

challenging to make it work really well as it’s very complex,” she says. “It’s an important area of focus at any company, and now it’s about how we make the department work better and pursuing any opportunities to improve customer service.”

Yowler considers herself a “hands-on” person and likes to understand the processes in place. So, coming into the organization, she knew she couldn’t fully grasp the entirety of the organization

until she knew the day-to-day. That’s why during her first couple of months on the job, she focused on getting out to the different locations, meeting with supervisors and managers, and being walked through the processes step-by-step. There are a number of operations centers and hubs in different locations, and one of Yowler’s first tasks was finding the best ways to make them work together to provide the best billing experience to PharMerica customers.

Jennifer Yowler SVP and CFO PharMerica

“That’s where I spend a lot of time right now, optimizing the job roles,” she says. “Continuous improvement is the hallmark of good companies. As a leader in the long-term pharmacy industry, we focus on quality patient care and a big part of that is our team facilitating the timely processing of orders.”

In the past, Yowler noticed that success came by building relationships with a facility and a biller dedicated to work hand-in-hand with them, so they understand all of the information and have an intimate knowledge of the facility to ensure accurate billing.

Her “Peak-to-Peak” initiative was her first big organizational effort to restructure the department, giving each facility their own billing and census representative. It’s currently rolling out.

While that initiative took the majority of her first six months on the job, Yowler also made some organizational changes and has been assessing systems to enable efficiency between the company’s different service lines.

Additionally, while PharMerica had been more focused on skilled nursing facilities historically, it’s also now focused on growth and providing custom services in the senior living, intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), and at-home end markets, where the individuals they serve live in assisted or supported living, intermediate care facilities, waiver homes or group homes, or in their own homes, respectively.

The company is also continuing to expand through its home infusion and specialty pharmacy businesses, which have leading service levels. So, resource and process investments and changes have been needed to support PharMerica’s offerings of today. As the demand for the company’s services grows, Yowler is further tasked with making sure her billing team is ready.

“Once again, with change being continuous in healthcare, you need to rethink how to provide billing services and who

your customer is in order to help them control costs,” she says. “The customer has evolved from the facility to the patient. This requires changing workflow to ensure there is communication upfront with the patient, so I’m looking at their needs and how I can get the billing team set to handle those needs.”

Then there are the IDD care facilities. BrightSpring had pharmacies across the US focused on serving individuals with cognitive, intellectual, and developmental disabilities, as well as other behavioral challenges. As such, the company was providing a different service offering and operational process, tailored to the market and clients, than what PharMerica was used to. Once the billing groups merged, Yowler went to work to bring the best of both processes to help the segment grow.

The merger with BrightSpring was also additive to PharMerica’s overall culture and mission. It helped both companies learn more about each other’s areas of expertise and how the pharmacy side can be an attribute for home health and vice versa, closing the loop to offer the coordination of care in and across settings.

“BrightSpring has a really good executive team and everyone has the desire to grow the company by providing leading quality services and working as smart as we can,” Yowler says. “The energy is great, and everyone is open to change and collaboration, which has been helpful.” AHL

Change Healthcare is a leading independent healthcare technology company that provides data and analytics-driven solutions to improve clinical, financial, and patient engagement outcomes in the US healthcare system. We are a key catalyst of a valuebased healthcare system, accelerating the journey toward improved lives and healthier communities.

“Everyone is working towards the same goal—to serve our customers the best we can and expand the reach of our services to positively impact as many people as we can.”

By Billy Yost

How to Advance the In-House Toolbox

Genesis HealthCare’s William Root on what makes an invaluable in-house lawyer

A CASE FOR MAN’S BEST FRIEND

William Root has built an effective in-house career by engaging his clients and continuing to widen his skill set. That skill set, at least since law school, has been in service of human clients. But while in law school, Root authored “Man’s Best Friend: Property or Family Member–An Examination of the Legal Classification of Companion Animals and Its Impact on Damages Recoverable for Their Wrongful Death or Injury” for the Villanova Law Review, an article he didn’t think would get published, let alone have the effect that it did.

“That article has been cited in subsequent publications and even legal cases,” Root says. “Further, over the years, I have been contacted by the media, attorneys, and legal scholars regarding the substance of the article. The article has truly had a meaningful impact regarding how companion animals are valued pursuant to the law.”

William Root didn’t intentionally assemble a wide skill set that has made him an invaluable in-house attorney. It just played out that way. The associate general counsel for Genesis HealthCare grew up in big firms but moved into progressively more complex in-house legal roles that have required the lawyer to grow his legal toolbox in unexpected ways.

Root started his in-house career in litigation, but as new opportunities presented themselves, he began branching out into regulatory, compliance, and internal investigations. “I think, personally, that you’re a more effective leader when you have a diverse skill set,” Root explains. “You’re able to provide better and broader advice, and you can approach an issue from any number of different perspectives.” At Genesis, Root has also taken on government investigations, applying his accumulated experiences into an even more agile legal advisor.

By displaying a willingness to grow into new legal areas, Root has identified what he considers are essential qualities for an effective in-house partner to maintain: the tools of the toolbox, as it were.

Emotional Intelligence

“When you boil it down, you just have to know your audience,” Root says. “The person you’re speaking with, the level they’re at, and the questions or reactions they may have all come in to play, so you have to work to understand the differing viewpoints of the people you’re working with.” Root amassed a broad range of global experience while working at AstraZeneca and says that in many of those cases, understanding culture also plays a pivotal role in working to appreciate both motivation and perspective.

“The way people respond to being questioned if you’re doing an investigation can vary significantly based on the country you may be working in,” Root says. “Whatever you’re investigating may be seen as more permissible in a certain country than it would be seen in the US.”

Strong Communication

“After you’ve worked to understand who you’re talking to, you have to be able to actually put those thoughts into practice,” Root explains. “That analysis that goes through your head is important, but so is being able to clearly and respectfully have a dialogue there, whether verbally or in writing.”

While emotional intelligence and communication could be seen as two peas of the same pod, Root says differentiating and improving both capabilities will only be beneficial in the long run for an effective in-house lawyer.

Preparedness and Decisiveness

“A lot of teams in-house deal with a variety of issues that can pop up immediately,” Root says. “You don’t always have time to actually prepare for whatever may happen, and you have to react on the fly.”

The key, then, is to continually make sure that processes, practices, and education are in place that can help provide a framework for navigating difficult issues. “A lot of times you are anticipating what may be on the horizon, and you can prepare for those emergencies in a coordinated and logical fashion,” Root says.

The AGC says that is especially true for in-house counsel, who are more often fighting fires than those in the firm world. “An essential part of dealing with those situations is predicting and preparing as much as possible for what may come and being able to react decisively because you’ve prepared for that moment.”

Breaking the Stereotype

“Lawyers aren’t always known as the most tech-savvy of people,” Root says, laughing. “But it has always been important for me to find ways to use technology to improve legal practice.” He was quick to implement predictive coding for litigation, technology that gave way to artificial intelligence capabilities. Root has also pushed for expanded and enhanced e-billing, a less glamorous application of technology, perhaps, but one that pays off big both in savings and efficiency.

All of these tools are great on their own, but Root says wielding these in concert is where real leadership happens. “The goal is to engage and find ways to positively impact your clients,” he says. “When you get that, you have built trust and, more importantly, a relationship that will continue to grow and develop.” AHL

“The goal is to engage and find ways to positively impact your clients. When you get that, you have built trust and, more importantly, a relationship that will continue to grow and develop.”

By Billy Yost

IP’s New Frame of Mind

Sharon Hausdorff changed careers, industries, and continents. Now, her IP expertise is put to the test worldwide at Teva Pharmaceuticals.

“Over the years, I have trained a lot of scientists who moved into the IP field and there’s certainly some variability in the ease of that transition,” says Dr. Sharon Hausdorff, who is able to recognize that oftendifficult transition better than most, as she made her own transition to IP after a career in academic research. But, for Hausdorff, that transition wasn’t challenging enough. In fact, she said that in her case, the switch was—dare she say—fairly easy.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF GOOD IDEAS

One of Sharon Hausdorff’s favorite activities is running, and it’s not just because of the health benefits. “I often get my best ideas while running,” the patent agent says. “There’s just something about it that gets you in a rhythm and clears your head out and then it just hits you.”

Hausdorff says the same was true for traveling in airplanes—at least until Wi-Fi became widespread on flights. “There was something about knowing no one was going to call and that you just had time to reflect.”

So in 2000, Hausdorff added another layer to her career switch: moving halfway around the world to assume a role in Petah Tikva at Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals. Now vice president and chief patent counsel, Hausdorff has grown to assume numerous roles and duties, including learning to manage a globally operational patent team and take on new IP challenges in Teva’s ever-widening portfolio of products.

Navigating the transition from academic research to IP is an experience that Hausdorff didn’t think about much at the time, but she says having the opportunity to watch many scientists subsequently make their own transitions into IP has given her a little more pause for how difficult the change can be.

“One of the big differences you see is a vertical versus a horizontal approach: a research project is a very deep dive into a single topic, but patent work requires you to learn a little bit about a wide variety of areas,” Hausdorff explains. “In the pharmaceutical field, you need some chemistry, some formulation science, and some biological and medicinal chemistry in order to understand how the drugs work—it’s a very different way of looking at things.”

Fortunately, Hausdorff’s adaptability allowed these new frames of mind to come naturally, and as she excelled in her roles, her responsibilities increased. The patent agent says the variability in language between patent areas can pose quite a learning curve, even for a seasoned patent attorney.

“When there’s something that you really want to do and it has drawn you in, you have to set those fears aside and give it a chance. You don’t regret trying things even if they don’t work out. You regret not trying them.”

“A few years ago, I gained responsibility for our medical devices team,” Hausdorff recalls. “The researchers on that team are engineers. I am not. All of a sudden, I have to understand the vocabulary, decipher drawings, and make sense of a field that is completely different from anything biological or chemical. You really have to be unafraid to take that step into the unknown.”

The willingness to take that step is the same one that helped transplant the lifelong US resident to Israel. Assuming global responsibilities for Teva’s IP team has also been a challenge Hausdorff has grown into.

“I’ve taken responsibility for teams that sit all over the globe,” Hausdorff says. That includes three teams in the US, as well as several in Israel, Switzerland, the UK, and more. “That’s been one of my most interesting challenges: how do you manage a team with geographical, cultural, and time zone differences? The challenge is not only for me to manage them but how to bring them together as a team.”

When it comes to uniting the team, Hausdorff has found basic considerations highly effective. To close the gap, she has sent a weekly email to her team over the last nearly-seven years, at times highlighting new team members and making sure her forty-something person team knows each other even if they cannot be in close

Sharon Hausdorff VP and Chief Patent Counsel Teva Pharmaceuticals

proximity. Hausdorff also makes an effort to video chat, not just jump on a call, with her direct reports that she meets with regularly to maintain strong relationships across the globe.

Regardless of her team’s location, Hausdorff says the company’s increased interest in biosimilar products has all of those in IP coming together to think outside the box. “It’s a pretty new area in IP,” Hausdorff says. “In the US, the regulatory framework for biosimilar approvals was connected to the Affordable Care Act in 2010.” The legal challenges that accompany the biosimilar approvals process are also new, and as Teva works toward bringing new molecules to market, it’s IP’s job to navigate a legal path through this seeming wild west of IP.

Having moved careers, focus areas, and continental borders, Hausdorff is the ideal candidate for young patent agents and lawyers just starting their journeys to gain insight about the field and what it takes to make it.

“I think that it’s pretty natural for people to be nervous about leaving something behind that they know,” Hausdorff says. “But I believe that when there’s something that you really want to do and it has drawn you in, you have to set those fears aside and give it a chance. You don’t regret trying things even if they don’t work out. You regret not trying them.” AHL

Cooper & Dunham LLP is a premier intellectual property law firm that has been providing sound legal advice to its clients since 1887. We work closely with clients of all sizes, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, to provide sound counsel in all aspects of intellectual property law, including patents, trademarks, copyrights, unfair competition, trade secrets, false advertising, computer software/internet protection, and IP transactions. Given our size, deep experience, and technical and legal acumen, we are well positioned to provide efficient and high-quality legal services.

The Issues

National, and even global, forces have an unmistakable impact on an executive’s work. Whether it’s a legislative change or an industry-disrupting technological breakthrough, executives must constantly adapt their business strategies to keep their company thriving.

42. Denise King

46. Mary Agoglia Hoeltzel

49. Jennifer Weldon

52. Carl Turner

56. Michael Kennedy

59. Robert Warn

62. Troy Spring

By Zayvelle Williamson

Transformation’s Best Fit

VP Denise King helps Medtronic transform the healthcare industry by developing cutting-edge benefits programs that give all employees the support they need to succeed

A leading medical device company known for its breakthrough technologies and solutions, Medtronic is dedicated to transforming the care of patients in the United States and across the globe. But that kind of transformation requires intense commitment from company employees, and Denise King knows that level of commitment can only be achieved when employees feel supported and empowered. Throughout her many years at Medtronic, King has continuously promoted an atmosphere of support and empowerment by spearheading innovative programs and initiatives designed to improve the employee experience.

A graduate of Augsburg University, King served as the director of product management at Marquette Bank before joining the benefits team at Medtronic in 2004. She worked with that team for more than five years before transitioning to a position as program director of global rewards in Mounds View, Minnesota. King returned to Medtronic’s Minneapolis base in 2011 as the benefits director for the US and Puerto Rico, advancing to senior benefits director of the Americas in 2015 and securing her present role as VP of the Americas benefits COE and total rewards operations in 2016.

Over the past few years, King has instituted a number of impactful programs, including an interactive benefits communication platform called Alex. Alex was created in partnership with interactive software company Jellyvision during King’s tenure as senior benefits director, and as King explained in a 2016 Employee Benefit News interview, the platform is critical to improving employees’ knowledge of and experience with key benefits, such as retirement benefits and healthcare.

“Technology done right will continue to offer employees relevant, personalized communication that can also be used to engage with family members and benefit decision makers in a household,” says King, who

150+ countries

$100 million donated by the Medtronic Foundation

10,000+ engineers and scientists

MEDTRONIC AT A GLANCE

received the DiglBenefits Technology Innovator Award in 2016 in recognition of her work on the Alex platform. According to King, technologies such as Alex are vitally important to Medtronic, not only because they allow the company to better reach and support its global employee base but also because online and virtual options help ensure “easier and more affordable access to healthcare.”

And Medtronic is certainly determined to help all their employees get the care they need. Acknowledging health and safety is the foundation to employee success, the company is making it their mission to support and invest in employee wellness.

In addition to the Alex platform, King has helped drive that mission through the development of a cutting-edge family care leave (FCL) policy. Effective as of May 2018, the FCL policy allows six weeks of paid time off for any and all family care needs of full- and part-time Medtronic employees working in the United States. Employees can take time off to care for a new child, to look after a sick family member, to support family members impacted because of a loved one in active military service, and more.

In combination with Medtronic’s other parental leave benefits, the FCL policy enables mothers with newborns to take up to fourteen weeks of paid time off. But neither King nor the company is satisfied with stopping there—in the future, Medtronic plans to expand the FCL program outside of the United States, helping the employees who work in one of the company’s 150 different locations to care for and bond with their children.

“Meaningful innovation is stitched within the fabric of everything Medtronic does,” says Tony Miller, CEO of Bind Benefits Inc., a company that specializes in helping businesses like Medtronic create flexible, on-demand business health insurance plans. “Bind was thrilled to be selected by Medtronic as their new plan offering. They’re a visionary, enthusiastic partner who care about their employees.”

“Employees who know they’re supported are going to be more committed to the organization, and we will see that return reflected in employee engagement,” King emphasized in a Medtronic publication about the FCL policy. “This says so much about the executive leadership team—they really care about our people.” AHL

“Employees who know they’re supported are going to be more committed to the organization, and we will see that return reflected in employee engagement.”

By Joseph Charney

ASPIRE for Change

Cigna’s Senior VP and Global Chief Accounting Officer

Mary Agoglia Hoeltzel spearheads a new initiative to empower women in finance

Cigna is one of the premier health services companies in the United Sates, and Mary Agoglia Hoeltzel, Cigna’s senior vice president of tax and the global chief accounting officer, spearheads the Fortune 20 company’s finance technology infrastructure, and financial reporting. Cigna generates more than $150 billion in annual revenues and manages assets valued at close to $155 billion—a number that has more than doubled throughout Hoeltzel’s tenure.

In 2019, Hoeltzel led the finance integration of Cigna’s acquisition of Express

Scripts, a pharmacy benefit management organization, for $67 billion. Hoeltzel was tasked with both the hard and soft aspects of the integration, which included leading the integration of two separate corporate cultures along with the integration of new reporting and ledger systems.

“The people side is most challenging,” Hoeltzel says. “Bringing together two different companies, with two different cultures, we had to learn to collaborate with each other.” Hoeltzel and her team has worked hard to integrate the ledger system and to re-segment the business,

Mary Agoglia Hoeltzel

SVP and Global Chief Accounting Officer Cigna

Brian Shaud Photography

but as they continue to move into 2020, there’s a lot of work yet to be done.

“We have a significant list of initiatives in terms of making our operations more effective and efficient,” Hoeltzel says. Expanded automation, improved communications, and empowering the team are some of the key initiatives that will be addressed in the coming decade.”

Before arriving at Cigna, Hoeltzel worked as a vice president and CFO at GE. She earned her CPA in 1995, a time when “the number of women in finance were about half a percent,” Hoeltzel says. Despite significant progress, women still only make up about 12 percent of finance jobs in the United States.

As such, in her current position, Hoeltzel is also dedicated to shaping Cigna’s culture, especially with regard to diversity initiatives.

“We aim to change today’s statistics,” Hoeltzel says. “Only about one in five C-suite leaders is a woman, and one in twenty-five is a woman of color.”

Throughout her career in finance, Hoeltzel has noted that a lack of female role models has been a substantial challenge for many women trying to climb the ladder.

According to Hoeltzel, however, with more women populating the top of the pyramid, the ripple effects are

significant—but a concerted effort by decision makers at the top is still critical. Cigna is keenly aware of the fact that organizations are most effective when they embrace and encourage diversity, Hoeltzel says, but there is always room for improvement. Under Hoeltzel’s leadership, Cigna has done more to embody and recognize the value of diversity.

In November, Hoeltzel launched ASPIRE, a “women in finance leadership council” designed to bring women at Cigna together for networking, coaching, and mentorship. ASPIRE, an acronym, stands for “accelerate your network,” “strategic mind-set,” “project confidence,” “influence others,” “realize your value,” and “elevate your communication.”

According to Hoeltzel, the response from women throughout the company has been overwhelmingly positive. The group offers a structured space for mentorship so that the women can hone their leadership skills and develop key leadership competencies, learn how to deal with difficult bosses, and navigate tough problems.

“We just wanted to give women a chance to network with one another, share their stories, and help them develop into leaders who want to stay and grow here at Cigna,” Hoeltzel says. “When there aren’t that many of us, it can be

kind of isolating.” ASPIRE aims to create a forum for meaningful connections to reduce that isolation and, in the process, make tangible cultural improvements throughout the company.

“We believe that diversity in leadership breeds innovation,” says Hoeltzel.

According to data that Cigna employed in its founding of ASPIRE, an organization with 30 percent female leadership can increase their net margin by 6 percentage points.

This highlights a key tenet of Hoeltzel’s philosophy. Improving work culture is not just about doing what is right— it’s also about productivity. Hoeltzel acknowledges that, at the end of the day, Cigna is still a meritocracy. However, there are simple ways to consciously encourage diversity—such as slating diverse candidates for interviews—that naturally lead to a diverse meritocracy.

Given the scope of Hoeltzel’s role, a leadership style characterized by empowerment is critical. “I don’t micromanage because I have great people working for me,” says Hoeltzel. “I provide clear directions on what needs to be done and, if they need help, I’m available and I will get them the support they need.”

Through financial, structural, and cultural initiatives, Hoeltzel has thoroughly altered Cigna’s course. AHL

“We aim to change today’s statistics. Only about one in five C-suite leaders is a woman, and one in twenty-five is a woman of color.”

By Billy Yost

Leading with the Right Question

Capital Medical Center CFO

Jennifer

Jennifer Weldon had to learn to see beyond the numbers. Her first role as a staff accountant for a small acute care hospital in Louisiana never translated outside of the ones and zeros of keeping a health system financially healthy and made it difficult to see how her own efforts were helping drive better health outcomes. It wasn’t until she was promoted to controller of another hospital that she was able to better understand what her real mission meant.

“I started doing rounds on patients,” Weldon remembers. “I really started to understand the impacts that all facets of healthcare have on patient experience.”

Encountering patients had a lasting impact on the now chief financial officer for Capital Medical Center and

South Sound Business magazine’s 2018

“40 Under 40” honoree, not just by emphasizing the executive’s focus on patient experience, but by fundamentally reconfiguring the way she’s thought about how healthcare can better serve its patient populations.

That focus would come to light in that same controller role where Weldon began doing patient rounds. “We had this whole campaign about how we can improve our patient engagement scores,” Weldon remembers. “But on the back end we spent a lot of time determining that something would either cost too much or we’d find a way to rationalize away what our patients were telling us.” The CFO says healthcare systems in general too often just look at data and formulate

Weldon says focusing on patient experience is the one true way to changing healthcare

opinions that fit into preexisting expectations, and it just didn’t make sense.

So, Weldon took volunteer roles on every engagement team that was available. “You have to connect the dots between what a patient is really saying,” Weldon says. “They want to go somewhere where the cost is low, the quality of care is high, and that there’s an easy entrance into the system while being certain that when they go home, the care doesn’t end.”

That patient-focused mind-set wasn’t truly able to be enacted until Weldon came to Washington state in 2017 where Weldon says the payment models have started to catch up with the ideology.

“Historically, payment models tell you to focus on more volume and hospitals were paid regardless of quality outcomes. Today, with healthcare reform,

hospitals are told to focus quality and reduce number of visits, but most payors still only pay if the patient comes into the hospital,” Weldon explains. “There is a disconnect in that messaging. What you have to be, as a leader in healthcare today, is more risk tolerant than you maybe had been in the past, meaning focusing resources on the quality aspect even though the short term outcome may be a reduction in volumes and thus reimbursement.”

The CFO says focusing on investing cost on the front end to help ensure a continuum of care will eventuate backend success in terms of bundled payment opportunities, centers of excellence, and shared savings through Accountable Care Organization (ACO) models.

“But you have to suspend that risk aversion,” Weldon emphasizes. “I still

Jennifer Weldon CFO Capital Medical Cente r

think that it comes down to providing the highest quality care and at the lowest patient cost, which is what the patients have been telling us all along.”

For the departments that roll up to Weldon, she says she works hard to help the nonclinical functions recognize that they are an integral part of providing a positive patient experience. From the registrars who are the first line of defense in preventing any patient identification errors to the accountants who are able to provide a clear financial picture so the organization can focus resources and manpower where they’re most needed, the CFO says reframing the nature of the role is imperative in being able to keep the patients as the focus for healthcare.

Weldon says Capital Medical’s recent clinically integrated network will change the landscape of the delivery care model

Courtesy of Capital Medical Center

from start to finish. “We now see more patients from our community and surrounding areas but we’re continuing to do so in a low-cost, high-quality setting,” Weldon says. “For our patients who live in Olympia and have value-based insurance plans, they don’t want to drive an hour-an-a-half to receive care. Now they can seek care at home and if they need higher tertiary services, we will be able to follow them throughout their continuum of care even into other systems.”

The success of integrating into narrow networks has also meant a continued shift in traditional thinking. “When you work inside of a narrow network, your goal is to keep patients out of the emergency room via preventative health screenings, which also reduces readmissions and yet our volume is growing,”

Weldon says. “If you invest on the front end in quality, the benefit comes back through shared savings, and it requires a whole different perspective on growth.”

The point of it all, Weldon says, is to continue to frame the conversation around how to best serve patients, not simply keep “heads in beds.”

“If we would all lead from a place of thinking about what the patient is experiencing and what they need—if we lead trying to answer that question—I think it would rapidly change the healthcare environment.” AHL

The Northwest’s Clinically Integrated Network (CIN)

Committed to collaboration, Embright brings together the region’s healthcare stakeholders — members, employers, providers, insurers, and plan brokers and administrators — seeking to improve quality, affordability and the experience of patients and providers. Join us as we explore and deliver on healthcare that works for everyone.

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By Russ Klettke

Ready for the Mayne Event

When the FDA approves a medication, it is the focus of much celebration at pharmaceutical companies. But Vice President of Supply Chain

Carl Turner knows the road doesn’t end there.

In deep-dive discussions on the costs and efficacy of healthcare in America—the politics, the economics of an aging population, ensuring access, and so on—there’s one topic that gets overlooked and yet is surprisingly impactful.

That topic is supply chain management. And in the case of Mayne Pharma Group Limited, a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on commercializing branded and generic drugs located in Raleigh, North Carolina, the supply chain encompasses everything from how the medications are made to how they are delivered to patients.

The company’s vice president of supply chain, Carl Turner, has no trouble connecting product inputs, software, and warehouse technologies—and the people who run these things—with human health. His mission

Rob Taylor

is to identify cost-containment efficiencies wherever possible. He also has responsibilities that are, in many respects, very time-critical.

For example, Turner’s team goes to work on supporting new drugs eighteen to twenty-four months prior to those medications achieving approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “Our supply chain team is brought in during clinical trials, which is when the procurement process begins,” he says. “That’s when we think about how our facilities or third-party manufacturers can bring these drugs to market.”

In other words, miracle drug breakthroughs are incredible and ideal, but until the logistics of manufacturing and distribution are worked out, no patient sees the benefits.

Mayne Pharma, which describes itself as a technology-driven company, develops its own drugs in addition to being a manufacturer of generic and branded pharmaceuticals. But it’s also a contract developer. Its division Metrics Contract Services is a full-service global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). Metrics provides formulation development, analytical testing, and manufacturing services.

Mayne Pharma took notice of Metrics’ steady growth and acquired the company in 2012, establishing its US presence and expanding Metrics’ footprint from its small laboratory in Greenville, North Carolina, to a global level. Now, Metrics serves more than one hundred pharmaceutical companies from Mayne Pharma’s recently expanded Greenville facility.

Carl Turner VP of Supply Chain

Mayne Pharma

The new 126,000-square-foot facility was built for complex dosage medications, including Schedule II-V controlled substances, those containing inherently unstable compounds, and products with poor bioavailability. The site is highly regarded by its third-party customers for its potent drug capability, which is a rapidly growing area due to the growth in oncology medications. The site also meets strict regulatory and compliance requirements and is regularly audited by global regulatory agencies such as the FDA, EMA (European Medicines Agency), and PMDA (a Japanese organization similar to the FDA).

The supply chain has its own technologies that Turner’s team has been instrumental in implementing since he joined the company in 2016. One is Vanguard Predictive Planning for Pharma, which helps guide companies like Mayne Pharma to source inputs, manufacture, and distribute needed drugs based on seasonal forecasts (think colds and flu), buying patterns, and growth trends. “It looks at data and analytics and removes human bias,” Turner says. “Humans have access to customer relationship knowledge that the computers do not,” he adds, giving credit to the roughly one thousand people who work at the company.

Technology abounds in supply chain, including a type of eyeglasses worn by warehouse workers that scan and read QR codes on inventory pallets. The Google Glasses read where shipments are as the wearer looks at the codes. That information feeds into management

database programs, keeping the workers’ hands free for other tasks while the product’s whereabouts are managed in real time. Known as the Warehouse Management System, it decreases shipment errors, which improves operational efficiencies and reduces the cost of waste.

Medications have expiration dates, of course, so efficiencies of distribution are critical to the company’s customers. But to those customers—which include hospital-based pharmacies, retail drug stores, specialty distributors (such as those that deliver medications to the home)—those expiration dates also place pressure on the supply network to get the quantities right. Complicating this is how orders are managed twenty-four months prior to those expiration dates, yet new medications might come onto the market in that time frame. The Vanguard software accounts for this, too.

Regulatory matters factor into Mayne Pharma’s supply chain work, including and especially the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), which requires a type of pharmaceutical provenance. The law began to take effect in 2014 and will continue to be phased in until 2023.

“The DSCSA enables us to know where a drug was manufactured and the lineage of its manufacturing, including if it was manufactured overseas,” says Turner. He explains that the Act—which establishes national licensure standards for wholesale distributors and third-party logistics providers—protects consumers and Rob Taylor

pharmaceutical companies alike from counterfeit, stolen, or contaminated medications and their harmful effects.

It bears noting that, largely through acquisitions, Mayne Pharma has risen from the seventy-fifth largest generic drug supplier in the US to the top thirty since 2016. This growth period coincides with advances in specialty drugs that are more complicated than simple pills, such as delayed release tablets and capsules, foams for topical application, and self-administered injectable medications. Also, home delivery of some kinds of medications (used for chronic diseases, for example) is in a growth industry.

While that final leg of the trip—how patients receive their medications—is the responsibility of the wholesalers who are Mayne Pharma’s customers, such changes at the consumer end inevitably affect the supply chain management upstream. Turner’s team manages these changes with technology and adaptive rethinking, as they have in recent years—all in the interest of quality, timing, and cost efficiency. AHL

Integrated Business Planning

We congratulate our friend and client CARL TURNER for his leadership and contributions to Mayne Pharma & the Healthcare Industry.

Vanguard Software’s Integrated Business Planning platform supports clients with their strategic planning needs. Whether it’s automating supply chain planning or improving sales forecasts, Vanguard Software will help you improve customer outcomes and operational efficiencies.

vanguardsw.com

“Our supply chain team is brought in during clinical trials, which is when the procurement process begins. That’s when we think about how our facilities or third-party manufacturers can bring these drugs to market.”

By Billy Yost

Piecing Together the Bigger Picture

Michael Kennedy, Moda Health’s medical director of healthcare services, pivoted from orthopedic surgery in order to focus on improving health determinants of patients

Ten years into practice seems like a time that physicians can finally take stock of their progress: the years of school and residency finally behind them, inroads made, patients treated, and a solid foundation finally laid. Michael Kennedy was a decade into a successful orthopedic surgery practice and, by all accounts, had nothing but a successful career to look forward to. But it wasn’t where the surgeon felt he belonged.

“I started getting interested in administrative medicine, care delivery redesign, and payment reform,” Kennedy says. “I decided to go back to school.” The surgeon speaks easily about the transition—more easily than most would, considering such a dramatic career turn. Kennedy started attending night school, eventually ended up with two different business program degrees, and moved from an interest in hospital administration to the healthcare payer space. “It was certainly an area I had minimal exposure to,” Kennedy says. “But it was a way to learn another portion of the healthcare spectrum that I wasn’t in prior.”

Confronting the Social Determinants of Health

In going back to school, Kennedy was exposed to the emerging concept of population health. “It interested me greatly and it got me thinking about the things that are going on outside of the doctor’s office that affect how people maintain their health,” Kennedy says. “And believe it or not, the payers are heavily invested in this idea—until recently, more so than many clinicians outside of primary care.”

Kennedy now serves as medical director of healthcare services at Portland-based Moda Health, a role that acts as a proving ground for the surgeon-turned-executive that. With the right results and Moda’s continued expansion, it has the likelihood of developing into something more. In fact, current Moda President William Johnson served in the exact role that Kennedy is in now.

That rise isn’t of importance to Kennedy at the moment, though. He’s focused on the social determinants of health that he says collectively contribute more to the overall well-being of a patient than the interventions of a practitioner. “We’re thinking about what can be done at the community level,” Kennedy says. “What kinds of nontraditional approaches can we do to keep people healthier and keep them out of the hospital.” That ultimately drives down prices of healthcare payers.

Kennedy’s own population “aha” moment came towards the end of his practicing days. “The question of why one person would have such different outcomes from another when you’re doing the same exact procedure the exact same way was something I was starting to think about more and more,” Kennedy remembers. “A long time ago, people would use the crude phrase ‘poor protoplasm,’ but what they were really talking about was the overall general health of the individual.” In actuality, the larger social determinants of a person can be

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the primary driver for how they may fare following a medical procedure, and identifying those is the first step towards better outcomes and a better quality of life.

More Than an Education

While Kennedy now holds both physician executive and healthcare delivery science MBAs, the surgeon-executive says that going back to school paid far more dividends than what he was learning in the classroom. “When I first decided to go back to school, I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do with it,” Kennedy says. “But during the process, you meet people from various specialties who are at all different points of their career. You get new ideas that you’d never thought of from the people sitting next to you. Be open to that.”

The Future of Healthcare

As Kennedy becomes more comfortable in his role, he says he looks forward to taking on more responsibilities at Moda. “We’re trying to expand to more states and, obviously, grow our membership,” Kennedy says. “My target would be to grow with this organization and eventually gain oversight of people that may be coming into what I do currently.”

www.interlinkhealth.com

It was a classmate who was responsible for suggesting Kennedy attend SEAK’s annual Non-Clinical Careers for Physician conference in Chicago that helps clinicians who have thought about careers outside of practicing medicine identify potential career pivots that span from insurance providers to expert witness testimony. “It was a broad exposure to nonpracticing opportunities for clinicians, and that really opened my eyes,” Kennedy says. “That goes back to listening to your classmates.” To this day, Kennedy credits his classmates as the primary influence for encouraging the next stage of his career.

In coming to Moda, Kennedy has been able to bring a perspective that he says needed to be highlighted more. “None of my predecessors came from a musculoskeletal background, which is a large cost driver in healthcare,” Kennedy says. “I think as we grow, we want to get more well-rounded and I’m somewhat unique in my background. I think it’s been helpful to the organization.”

As Moda continues its expansion into new territories, the company can be sure that their medical care director is laying the groundwork for continued growth and is ready to take on whatever new responsibilities may come his way. AHL

At INTERLINK, we build programs from visions. Our visions are forward thinking, focusing on how populations of patient outcomes can be improved by combining medical excellence and evidence-based care. We are proud that our cancer and transplant programs are included in the growth and expansion visions of our partner Moda Health.

“You get new ideas that you’d never thought of from the people sitting next to you. Be open to that.”

By Russ Klettke

Financial Caregivers

The role of a controller isn’t typically associated with the healing professions. But Robert Warn at OptumRx considers driving costs lower within the healthcare system to be his and his organization’s mission.

Robert Warn is a numbers guy. To be specific, he’s vice president of finance and controller for OptumRx, a diversified pharmacy care services company that provides service to more than 56 million people in the United States, and processes more than 1.3 billion prescriptions annually.

With its customers—benefit sponsors like health plans, employers, governments, unions, and trusts, as well as individual consumers—OptumRx plays the critical roles of simplifying the pharmacy experience and providing consumers easier access to more affordable medications.

But looking at the composition of individuals at OptumRx and their related teams, as he describes them, in his 175-person department, he’s really more focused on the delivery of pharmacy services than words like “finance” and “controller” suggest.

Those teams tell a story about pharmacy marketplace—which constitute the fourth most costly component of healthcare, according to industry observers, and the most frequent consumer touch point in healthcare. Warn has a department that addresses the cost side of pharmacy spend: billing, collection of discounts from drug manufacturers, and sharing of those discounts with clients to lower their pharmacy spend. He also oversees the group that manages the payment of processed scripts from retail pharmacy networks.

But Warn’s team also works with newer services such as home delivery pharmacies, specialty pharmacies for very high-cost illnesses (cancer and chronic diseases like diabetes), and behavioral health pharmacies that are in hundreds of community healthcare facilities across the country. All of these warrant a group of finance people at OptumRx under Warn’s direction that think about the impact they have on the pharmacy marketplace and consumers one at a time. The nature of these newer services means delivering pharmaceutical drugs in new ways and gleaning new, specialized financial insights.

But what Warn keeps at the top of his mind throughout is that spreadsheets, calculators, and algorithms shouldn’t be a barrier to what they ultimately make happen. “Typically, the pharmacy benefit is one of the most used benefits inside an individual’s health insurance plan, and that means those touch points are critical snapshots for interacting with people to understand

their current health situation and what we can do to improve it,” he says.

“There is, of course, a lot of national discussion on the cost of drugs and how American consumers pay a disproportionately high amount compared to other countries,” Warn acknowledges. “But because we work at the point of delivery and because of our scale, we are in a position to lower costs for our clients. Other parts of the system don’t have that same incentive.”

Though not the only pharmacy care services company in America, the company holds significant market share. It is also part of a larger company, UnitedHealth Group, a healthcare products and insurances services company that had $175 billion in revenue in the most recent fiscal year. With the aging of the population and increased access to healthcare—thanks in part to the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—prescriptions to American patients in 2020 will have increased 11.8 percent since 2016.

But being able to afford medications and healthcare in general, even with employer-provided insurance, is

Robert Warn VP of Finance and Controller OptumRx Erica Morrow/Slow Road Photography

an issue. “It’s a fair critique,” says Warn. “We focus on pricing every day. Manufacturers set the price, but we do what we can to lower it, particularly when we negotiate deeper discounts.” It’s a strong imperative given that large employers expect the total cost of healthcare benefits to rise 5 percent in 2020 alone. So how else might cost containment be accomplished?

Warn says the goals of managing costs and driving for better patient outcomes naturally coincide. He says that starts by designing and managing services so that individual consumers are taken care of, one at a time. That can be seen in various means and methods of delivery: “Give consumers drug delivery and communications the way they want it,” he says. This means that such things as home delivery and text messaging (or phone calls, or emails) that encourage more patient compliance with doctor’s orders.

OptumRx also employs technologies and data analytics that lower prices—and it furthers intelligent decision-making by healthcare providers. “It’s all about data,” says Warn, noting how patient privacy regulations have historically been a speed bump within the industry, but they’ve managed to work through some of the issues in productive ways.

But, of course, data would be meaningless without the team of people that Warn works with every day. Warn believes company culture is what enables all these numbers—data analytics paired with keen eyes on fiscal responsibility—to bring a human approach to human health.

“OptumRx has an awesome culture,” he says. “Everyone is aimed at the same mission. We feel like we can fundamentally fix the broken healthcare system and favorably impact society.” AHL

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“Manufacturers set the price, but we do what we can to lower it, particularly when we negotiate deeper discounts.”

The right resumé doesn’t always mean the right fit.

We match your unique needs to uniquely qualified talent. Amazing talent. The kind of person who can step in any situation, listen closely and get solving quickly.

By Anthony Ruth

On an Efficiency Mission

How Troy Spring, vice president of revenue cycle at SCL Health, is maximizing efficiency and patient experience

Troy Spring never planned for a career in revenue cycle. “No one really does that,” he points out, laughing. However, his experience and career path ultimately brought him to his current role as vice president of revenue cycle at SCL Health. After working in managed care early in his career, Spring joined his father’s consulting company, which included a subsidiary third-party administrator for healthcare providers who were taking risk from third parties. The company managed capitation risk payments from insurers and HMOs, adjudicated claims, paid providers, and prepared all associated financial analysis and reporting—what Spring describes as “a mirror image of the revenue cycle.” The business narrowly survived the dot-com bubble, but it was

Troy Spring VP of Revenue Cycle SCL Health

unable to overcome the investor anxiety that followed 9/11. Given these challenges, Spring and his father both chose to pursue other career opportunities.

Then, on a friend’s recommendation, Spring applied to and took a job at Duke University Health System. “My first job was in data analytics on the revenue cycle, which gave me real insight into the complete cycle, from patient access all the way through to self-pay billing and collections,” Spring says. He soon moved into a director position and did what he calls “a tour of duty in revenue cycle.” He also earned a master’s in healthcare administration from the University of North Carolina.

After receiving his master’s, Spring was ready for the next step, and accepted a role as the vice president of revenue cycle

with SCL Health, an organization originally founded by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, which started serving the community 1864. Today, SCL Health is a $2.6 billion, eight-hospital health system located in the Broomfield, Colorado.

Spring’s role at SCL Health is to ensure that the organization is collecting outstanding payments as quickly and efficiently as possible. On the surface, the role of the function is operational; however, the services it provides and the impact of its work goes well beyond operations and directly impacts SCL Health patients.

“The bigger picture for us centers around the patient experience—trying to help the patient navigate through the complexities of billing,” he says. “There’s a big focus on pricing transparency, patientfriendly billing, and trying to make sense

of the complexities of the billing world. As an industry, we are still navigating revenue cycle challenges, but consistently improving and becoming a leader in these areas is a top priority for us.”

SCL Health is a member of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, which annually recognizes high-performing revenue cycle operations through its Measure, Apply, Perform award (MAP). The efforts the award is named after, or the MAP Initiative, is a comprehensive strategy designed to help organizations measure and strengthen their performance by applying evidence-based improvement strategies to their revenue cycle. SCL Health has set a goal of earning the award by 2025, which requires meeting industry standard revenue cycle benchmarks, implementing patient-centered recommendations and best practices, and achieving outstanding patient satisfaction scores.

“We are deliberately tracking metrics across our department and comparing our performance to industry data,” Spring shares. “The numbers show that we are a well-performing department; however, the process has highlighted areas of opportunity and it is our goal to continue to improve.”

One area where SCL Health has already made substantial progress is in reducing its candidate for bill (CFB) days, or the time it takes to bill an account. “Getting a bill out the door seems pretty straightforward, but it’s actually a complicated process,” Spring says. Revenue cycle managers have to make sure that medical documentation supports the billing, that it is coded properly, that all charges are captured, and that regulations are being followed. Then, bills go through multiple rounds of billing edits. Under Spring’s leadership, SCL Health has reduced CFB days from nearly nine to approximately three.

Spring credits the change to two things. “We had really good, strong analytics

Paul H. Trantow

The ability to tackle what’s next

and reporting, and we have a multidisciplinary team that meets biweekly to review inventories and to make sure that we’re hitting established targets,” he says. “We have discussion on how we can improve or reduce our unbilled accounts to the levels we need to be able to get cash more quickly.” The team includes staff from Health Information Management, coding, billing, patient access, care sites, care management, revenue integrity, and other units.

As a nonprofit with a mission to improve the health of people and communities, especially people who are poor and vulnerable, SCL Health provides myriad programs to help patients access and pay for care. A team of financial counselors, among Spring’s seven hundred-fifty staff members, help patients enroll in Medicaid. SCL Health’s financial assistance policy helps uninsured and underinsured patients access and pay for the care they need. The system also provides charity care and employs certified staff members to help patients navigate the Affordable Care Act. While processes and numbers are often a large part of revenue cycle work, Spring is a strong believer that the work is all about people and relationships. “I love the people part of my work,” he says. “Helping to foster a vision for our team and following through on that vision in our day-to-day work will ultimately help us better serve the individuals relying on SCL Health for top-quality care and the best experience.” AHL

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HBCS improves revenue cycle performance with a comprehensive technology platform and expertise. With a thirty-five-year history of leveraging technology and creative problem solving, HBCS partners with hospitals like SCL Health to create a positive patient financial experience and increase revenue.

The Reason

Some executives feel the importance of their work because they have experienced its impact firsthand. Shaped by their mission to help others or by their personal experiences with healthcare, many executives are drawn to the industry from a sense of empathy and a desire to make a difference for others.

66. Brian Parker

70. Ovell Barbee

74. Curtis Bell

79. Jim Dunn

83. Maryam Abdul-Kareem

86. Mike Watters

90. Brian Unell

94. David Silverman

By Jacob Winchester

The Learner’s Life Cycle

Dr. Brian Parker is helping build Allegheny Health Network’s knowledge base by providing doctors, patients, and administrators with continuous learning and growth opportunities that drive optimal results

Picture a hospital. White coats, pastel scrubs, doctors with stethoscopes, and sophisticated, life-saving apparatuses all probably come to mind. But one critical aspect that might not is the extensive information and educational network each hospital relies on to ensure its seamless daily operations and to keep employees at the forefront of medical knowledge.

That’s where Allegheny Health Network’s (AHN) Dr. Brian Parker steps in. Recently transitioning from his role as chief medical officer and chief quality officer to chief learning officer and chief quality officer, Parker and his team are now working to define—and refine—the culture of learning for AHN, a nonprofit academic medical system consisting of 9 hospitals and around 21,000 employees headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“As part of our overall 2025 strategy at Highmark Health—which formed AHN in 2013—there’s an enterprise initiative centered on what we can do, from an organizational perspective, to support learning and development in every business unit, from Highmark Health to AHN and across all of our providers,” Parker says.

“Of course, as a health system, we have very big learning needs and a complex learning environment,” he continues. “After all, it’s an inherent part of providing healthcare to be an adult learner, both because you have to constantly stay abreast of your field and because regulatory and licensing bodies require continuing education so they know the practitioners are meeting the requirements to the highest degree.”

As the physician representative for AHN with decades of experience in a variety of areas, including clinical research, anesthesiology, liver transplantation, hospital administration, and quality and safety, Parker was naturally pegged for the role to design and implement the major education initiative across the Allegheny Health Network.

Dr. Brian Parker Chief Quality Officer and Chief Learning Officer Allegheny Health Network

Courtesy of Highmark

“I’ve always been interested in the administrative side of things,” Parker says. “My first foray into the administrative world, after three to five years of focusing on my clinical work, was into quality and safety. It’s a big topic in my field of anesthesiology, and anesthesiologists are certainly often touted as being at the forefront of quality and safety awareness due to the risks of going under anesthesia during surgery.” What opened his eyes and fascinated him during this time was the way compliance with regulatory requirements converged to evolve the nature of healthcare.

From there, he eventually grew into the role of medical director for clinical risk management at Cleveland Clinic. This role involved dealing with patient issues and serving on the captive insurance board, a side of the organization dealing with attorneys and medical malpractice. Taking on those roles in quality and safety, he says, helped him build experience and ultimately prepared him to emerge later as chief medical and quality officer when he joined AHN in early 2017. “Quality and safety have always been a core focus for me throughout my career,” Parker says.

Due to the scope of his career experience, Parker’s big picture thinking has allowed him to weave together conceptual approaches and skill sets from several different arenas in order to buoy his administrative initiatives. “As an organization, we want to make sure we’re not approaching patient experience, quality and safety, employee engagement, and clinician wellness as independent silos—and we’ve started to connect the dots regarding these things,” he says.

“We want the frontline employees that do the work in the hospitals to be able to focus on their work,” he continues, “and we’ve created a centralized network structure that creates real accountability and also recognizes the folks who sit at the different network levels as subject matter experts. It has allowed us to make sure we’re doing things similarly across the board, using best practices.”

Now that he’s also chief learning officer, Parker finds himself in a broad-view, leadership-oriented role, and he’s applying his eye for quality and safety toward the new learning-centered initiatives. Currently, he and his team are working with Highmark Health toward

“Sometimes you can have great ideas that are innovative, disruptive, or both, in terms of driving things forward and making improvements. Making sure the organization as a whole is ready for that change is really an art form.”

building a centralized resource system that will ultimately operate the learning and development program. The system will bolster infrastructure around hospital information access for employees and refine and update continuing education methods to make learning interesting and engaging for staff.

Having a top-notch culture of learning is vital for any business, Parker believes. And it’s not only beneficial from an operational perspective; it also helps attract and develop the best talent for the organization.

“We want to make sure our workforce will see opportunity for progression. And we want to be able to meet their learning and training needs while at the same time providing the tools and information to develop our supervisors into future managers and directors of the healthcare space,” he says. “The reality is that talented employees pick up stakes and move on when they don’t see potential trajectories for themselves. I want to make sure that AHN is known externally and internally as a healthcare provider destination with education and development opportunities.”

Of course, there are many challenges when seeking to accomplish something that truly brings an organization to the next level of its evolution. For Parker, the main obstacle is timing. His career path, he says, has taught him the value of assessing both when to proceed and when to pull back.

“Sometimes you can have great ideas that are innovative, disruptive, or both, in terms of driving things forward and making improvements. Making sure the organization as a whole is ready for that change is really an art form,” he says.

“Even if someone has the best idea in the world, an organization might not be ready for it. Being able to recognize that and realize the time might not be right is part of the maturation process of a leader,” Parker explains. “You’ve got to be able to have that perspective where you can step back, get off the metaphorical dance floor, and get onto the balcony to see the bigger picture.” AHL

on you

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Ovell Barbee SVP and Human Resources & Diversity Officer Spectrum Health

A Product of the Community

A Grand Rapids native, Ovell Barbee dedicates himself to giving back to the community as both an individual and as SVP and human resources and diversity officer at Spectrum Health

By Sara Deeter

If you asked Ovell Barbee how he would describe himself, you would probably hear something along the lines of, “I’m a foodie and a runner.” But if you asked that same question of anyone who knows Barbee, you would get a completely different answer.

To employees at Spectrum Health and residents of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Barbee is a leader and change maker. A role model and mentor. A visionary human resources leader, a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, and an integral part of the community he calls home.

“I was actually born in one of the hospitals that make up the Spectrum Health system,” says the SVP and human resources and diversity officer. “I grew up in a family that encourages hard work and education and began working when I was twelve years old. Dealing with the circumstances associated with working at such a young age, that really made me want to serve as an advocate for other individuals who may not have a seat at the table.”

That passion led Barbee to the University of Michigan, where he obtained a bachelor’s in communications as well as a master’s in social work, and also to Michigan

State University, where he earned a master’s in labor relations and HR.

After completing his education, Barbee left his Michigan roots behind for about fifteen years, securing progressive leadership roles at General Motors/On Star, the Canadian National Railway, Career Education Corporation, Dow Kokam, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska.

The Spectrum Experience

But in 2016, Barbee decided to return to Grand Rapids and accept the SVP position at Spectrum Health, a nonprofit integrated healthcare organization and the largest employer in the state of Michigan.

Working in his hometown, Barbee says, he feels a “duty and an obligation” to assure others that Spectrum is an excellent place to seek help and care as well as to work as an employee. As an HR leader, Barbee works daily to improve the employee experience—for all Spectrum employees.

“We have to be open and receptive to having conversations to really effect change,” Barbee says of his efforts to promote equity and inclusion at Spectrum. “Dialogue Spectrum Health Beat

is crucial to progress: I find that when people tell me stories of adverse incidents or issues that have happened to them, I ask, ‘Did you say anything?’ And a lot of times, the answer is ‘No.’ We have to stop the silence and use our voices as a catalyst for change.”

Since joining Spectrum, Barbee has been working hard to change those answers. To measure the impact of those efforts and the progress the organization has made as a whole, Spectrum is conducting an organizational assessment focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. “We want to establish a baseline and identify the priority areas where we need to either really focus our efforts or use a different strategy altogether,” Barbee remarks.

Making Equity a Priority

But Spectrum already knows what one of its priority areas is, Barbee says: the future of the organization. “We’re focusing on attracting and retaining diverse leaders, which will be very important for us as we become more innovative and more reflective of the community that we’re in,” Barbee notes.

All of Spectrum’s senior leaders are actively involved in the conversation on diversity, equity, and inclusion, Barbee says. But Spectrum’s commitment to those values goes far beyond those conversations. “We have recognized through the 1-2-3 Equity Pledge that that message has to be carried by more than any one individual,” emphasizes the SVP.

The 1-2-3 Equity Pledge is a national call-to-action driven by the American Hospital Association. Signing it represents Spectrum’s commitment to cultural competency, community engagement, workforce diversity, and equity of care.

“The objective is to ensure comparable outcomes for our patient population while creating and strengthening community partnerships, improving health outcomes, and reducing health inequities within the community,” Barbee explains. “We’re taking a system-wide approach to enable the organization to fulfill the requirements of the pledge.”

A Community Investment

But the Equity Pledge isn’t the only pledge Barbee has made to help improve the Grand Rapids community. Since moving back to Michigan, Barbee has repaid all of the scholarship monies he received from nonprofit

organizations, a goal he established for himself. He most recently paid back the final one to the Grand Rapids Community College Foundation on behalf of the Ta-Wa-Si group. He has also committed to covering the cost of books and supplies for one local student’s fouryear education every year.

“I call the students my Barbee Book Club,” the SVP says with a laugh. “People invested in me and my career, and I tell each of them to remember my investment in them and to be willing to do that for someone else in future.”

In recognition of his dedication to giving back, Barbee has been named as a 2020 Walter Coe Public Service honoree and a member of the Top 50 Human Resources Professionals List. “I am a product of my community,” Barbee says simply. “I do what’s needed.” AHL

Based in Chicago, The Exeter Group offers healthcare organizations comprehensive ways to examine and increase equity across the community/suppliers, workforce, patient population, and finally, the individual patient. Our solutions span talent acquisition, leadership development, and organizational development. Assessing cultural competency perceptions through the COA360 is one tool our clients leverage.

“We have recognized through the 1-2-3 Equity Pledge that [the diversity, equity, and inclusion] message has to be carried by more than any one individual.”

By KC Esper

Hockey’s Optimizer

Director of Sports Performance Curtis Bell helps guide the players of the Pittsburgh Penguins to become masters of their sport

When Curtis Bell was a second grader living in Los Angeles, his teachers let him and his classmates play on the blacktop for recess. Excited to be outside playing football—and also by the fact that he was, indeed, an invincible second grader —Bell ran full-speed ahead to catch a pass and, much to his chagrin, also ran headfirst into a metal tetherball pole.

“I remember being completely knocked out,” Bell says, laughing at the incident. Despite the accident, Bell’s lifelong love for sports later informed the rest of his career—heavily outweighing

the electrical work he did during his time in the Navy. Little did he know, this concussion—in addition to a few other concussions acquired over the years— would also resurface in his adulthood in unexpected ways.

“As an adult, I was dealing with some gastrointestinal and permeability issues and when I went back to school to get my master’s in applied clinical nutrition, I discovered that there is some relationship between these functional issues and with head trauma,” Bell explains. “These real-life experiences made me want to

keep studying functional medicine to learn more about how power systems are intuitively interacting with each other on a daily basis. Now I question how we can affect those systems to create better outcomes and perform better on the sports medicine side of things.”

When Bell registered for the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition certification course, which teaches trainers how to use lab work for peak performance, founder Reed Davis knew right away that Bell was no ordinary muscle head. “Curtis asked more questions than the rest of Joe

Sargent/Pittsburgh Penguins

the class put together,” says Davis. “It’s no surprise he has reached the pinnacle of his profession and is being recognized for it. He takes everything he does to a whole new level—his knowledge and understanding of physical fitness is only surpassed by his intellectual curiosity and academic prowess.”

Since 1997, Bell has used the knowledge gained from his personal background, as well as through his studies in functional medicine and passion for holistic wellness, to work with several professional hockey teams, developing neuromuscular therapies and nutrition plans to help the athletes perform at their greatest capability. After working as head athletic trainer with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the New Jersey Devils, and the Florida Panthers, he now serves as director of sports performance for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Throughout his years in the industry, Bell has come to understand the unique nuances of hockey with regard to movement, informing his performance-building techniques with each member of the team.

“Hockey is completely different from any other sport,” Bell says. “It’s not on grass or turf—the players are in skates, on ice, so they’re moving in a completely different way compared to land-based sports, and the skating stride is a completely different biomechanical model. That’s what intrigued me about the whole sport—it’s hard to be good at playing hockey, so knowing how difficult it is to play challenges me to create performance models that make the athletes even better.”

Bell explains that while there has been substantial research centered on optimizing movement efficiency in sprinting and running, for instance, skating has not had the same attention, meaning that professionals in Bell’s position are still seeking and experimenting to

Curtis Bell Director of Sports Performance Pittsburgh Penguins

Joe Sargent/Pittsburgh Penguins

find the perfect methods of enhancing or perfecting processes with limited resources available.

As such, Bell and his team develop approaches and philosophies based on practices that work for the entire team, then adjust them to fit the needs of each player.

“There are so many factors that make a difference in how we individualize our idea of biomechanical optimization,” Bell explains. “We try to generalize it to a degree and have some sort of foundational system that focuses on strengthening everybody, but then it becomes an individualized program for guys that have different strengths, weaknesses, or flexibility levels. In essence, there is no exact science.”

Bell’s team further develops its performance techniques by analyzing different trends in injuries or successes that each player has had to determine if or how processes should be tweaked.

“If we notice several different abductor-related soft tissue injuries that we haven’t had before,” Bell exemplifies,

“then we try to uncover what we have done differently or what we could do differently in our strength training and exercises to change that.”

Bell and his team of soft tissue specialists, strength and conditioning coaches, and medical trainers start a typical day by discussing each player’s physical status, rehab methods, and “red flags,” or injuries. Once the game plan for the day is sorted, team members go to work in their respective fields.

Of course, game days break the normal routine and include morning workouts, midday downtime, activation drills, flexibility training, and a pre-game meal.

While Bell’s job focuses largely on how players are performing, he recognizes that perfection doesn’t come strictly from exercise. His own experiences taught him just how important an appropriate diet is to enhance a person’s well-being or capability. Luckily, the Penguins’ personal chef is a master at dishing out grass-fed, wild-caught, organic, anti-inflammatory meals to keep the players feeling good and playing better.

“We try to focus on what we felt were the most important aspects of optimizing performance based on nutrition,” Bell says. “We felt that eliminating as many inflammatory aspects of our food as we could was the best way to go. So, everything we feed the players is gluten free, dairy free, and soy free.”

No matter what city the Penguins play in each week, Bell’s team has scouted the perfect restaurants across the country to cater meals that can maintain the standard of this healthy diet. Indeed, even the meals provided on planes follow anti-inflammatory, high-quality guidelines. Though it may seem difficult, Bell says the advantages of keeping a modified diet from a performance perspective outweigh any craving.

“These guys are adults,” Bell says with a laugh. “If they want to have a beer, or glass of wine, or a couple cookies, we also provide those options for them.”

While the players stick to their diet 99 percent of the time, Bell says he does allow them to pick a “cheat meal” once a month. “We’ll have certain foods from a

“That’s what intrigued me about the whole sport—it’s hard to be good at playing hockey, so knowing how difficult it is to play challenges me to create performance models that make the athletes even better.”

A HEALTHCARE EDUCATION LIKE NO OTHER

particular city that players really like,” he explains. “So, in Philadelphia maybe we’ll have cheesesteak sandwiches, or in Boston we’ll have lobster rolls. We didn’t want to eliminate everything—we just wanted to make their choices better.”

The key to keeping a tight but optimally performing ship, Bell says, is to educate the team every step of the way. “It’s a very interactive role—we try to explain to them what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and why we feel it’s important for them,” he says. “We want to know how they feel or what they’ve noticed day-by-day with regard to their health. It gives them peace of mind knowing that we’re not concerned about wins or losses. It’s really more about the individual and what that person is dealing with.”

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Whether Bell is helping players eat well, move optimally, or focus mentally, he emphasizes the importance of allowing the players autonomy with their choices while providing them the resources they need to make informed decisions. Naturally, the more the players are willing to learn, the more Bell and his team learn about the players.

“It’s really important to keep discovering and keep trying to be that innovator,” Bell notes. “Every day is a different journey that leads to a new discovery—and if you miss out on doing that, you miss out on a lot of what could help enhance your sport. Always be on the edge of wanting to know more.” AHL

New York Chiropractic College offers an education like no other to create professionals who have no equal. Every day our outstanding alumni use their evidence-informed, patient-centered training—in fields such as chiropractic, nutrition, and human anatomy and physiology instruction—to positively impact health, wellness, and lives.

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By Evan Falls

For Our Own Good

Chief People and Culture Officer Dr. Jim Dunn shapes Atrium

Approaching interpersonal relationships like Dr. Jim Dunn, chief people and culture officer at Atrium Health, requires a rare but important ingredient: love.

To describe Dunn’s commitment to his work as “loving” is not a stretch. Like love, “healthcare” is an active noun, especially now: insurance policies change, emergencies abound, employees and leaders turn over. “We are living at a greater pace of change,” Dunn says. “It is a phenomenal time to be in healthcare for people who like to be involved in large-scale change.”

In an era of moment-to-moment revolutions in technology, where online brands offer instant gratification to match the changing tastes and consistent dissatisfaction of consumers, Dunn spearheaded a major initiative from within Atrium Health. He recognizes that the keys to restructuring and redefining Atrium’s HR department and culture are to be transparent with—and carefully listen to—the people in front of him.

Health’s culture on the conviction that empathy and transparency are fundamental to adapting and moving forward

“Every place is different just as people are different, and you may know what to do elsewhere, but it may not work here,” Dunn says, explaining why bringing teammates along for the process of shaping a culture, and taking note of their input, is key to success.

This philosophy stems from Dunn’s childhood. “I was a bad liar,” he jokes. He was the designated chaperone for whenever a teacher needed to leave the room, and his family avoided sharing secrets with him because they knew he would forget what he wasn’t supposed to say.

But what was once a shortcoming has developed into a revolutionary strength: Dunn has been in healthcare for more than twenty years; even so, he has no problem keeping ahead of the curve. “Disruption is here to stay,” he says. “It’s so exciting.” And honesty in communication is what helps him stay on top.

Dunn believes that, in life, we strive for meaning, purpose, value, and something to look forward to. “I believe one’s own attitude and outlook in life and about others is what dictates your own happiness. How you look and choose to experience life, people, and situations dictates your own happiness. I try not to look at anything as glass half-empty. There are nuggets and

pearls of wisdom to learn from anyone in any encounter,” he says.

To many, the constant change and remarkable responsibility of overhauling the HR of an organization with more than 70,000 teammates and new leaders would put them under near-unbearable pressure. But for Dunn, this major initiative is a chance to learn, grow, and give his teammates a culture of support they never thought they could have.

Dunn spends most of his time integrating teammates with the right mind-set for growth. “It’s not just about goals anymore (manifestations of what an organization values); today, it’s about finding meaning, cascading value, through stories and examples.”

While Atrium and everywhere else can no longer guarantee complete certainty in professional growth, what can be provided is a sense of clarity in purpose and vision. This is why, when he started in March 2018, Dunn met individually with more than twenty executive leaders.

He asked them to tell him about their day, what excites them, what challenges they face. He said they took a while to warm up. They were used to a traditional Courtesy of Atrium Health

Dr. Jim Dunn Chief People & Culture Officer Atrium Health

Partnering with Atrium Health to Enable Transformation

N IZATIO N AL TRA N SFOR M ATIO N

Major changes in organizations, such as restructuring, accelerated growth, and postacquisition integration, inevitably cause signi cant disruption across the enterprise. e most common reason that major transformations fail is not poor design; it’s lack of su cient attention to the transition to the new organization. Even when the new strategy, structure, systems, and sta ng are clear, signi cant “rewiring” is needed at the leader, team, and unit levels to breathe new life into the organization. If the transition is not managed properly, the leaders and teams remain mired in confusion and uncertainty for much longer than is necessary. is often contributes to failure to meet the goals of the transformation, such as missed synergy targets in the integration of an acquisition.

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model of HR: waiting to take a call, dealing with each problem as it comes. But Dunn knows that leaders have to “do more with less, move faster,” and find resources wherever they can. So, he asked them what type of HR department would best serve the leaders at Atrium.

What Dunn found was that the executives felt HR had no capacity to help with organization strategy and work design, for physician recruitment, or for training nurses and physicians to become better, more effective leaders. He decided he needed talent from other industries, some with no HR or healthcare background, but with myriad skills that could be creatively applied to the new leadership structure.

Dunn called in PwC to compare Atrium’s HR with best-in-class organizations like Google and Goldman Sachs—to benchmark against competitors out of his reach. He knew what problems healthcare had in HR, so he asked, “What are people with more resources doing?”

In just one and a half years, Atrium has restructured. “We let leaders lead and we provide the options,” Dunn says. “Traditional HR call style has been replaced by 24/7 services to direct clients to the best fit for their needs.”

Since then, Dunn has sent out regular email updates on Atrium’s restructuring journey, leading with intention and transparently addressing shortcomings. In a meeting, CEO Gene Woods said, “This is the type of transparency I want all of you to have.” Dunn reiterates

that the weight of that statement was not in its complimentary nature, but in the truth of the effectiveness of open communication for progress.

Another way Dunn has streamlined progress through transparency has been in encouraging his former colleagues to meet with his new team to speak candidly about working with him. He said that after these meetings, his new team was so efficient, it felt as if he’d already been working with them for ten years. He gave them the liberty to speak openly, to engage in a constructive dialogue, and now his team still reaps the benefits of that mutual trust.

At this point in his career, Dunn could retire tomorrow and be personally fulfilled. He continues now to serve as a confidant and a supporter, to safeguard individuals and guide them, by way of metacognition and communication, into a more competitive future with increasingly powerful organizations. He wants to keep pace and outpace the legacy of Atrium’s previous leadership.

In-and-out clinics, moment-to-moment interactions—they can all so easily lose track of the human element of those from which they profit. But Dunn loves his work. He knows that disruption is here to stay, that everything changes faster than we can keep up; nonetheless, he strives to accept Atrium’s moment, right here and right now, by being honest, by listening, and by putting each person first. AHL

“Every place is different just as people are different, and you may know what to do elsewhere, but it may not work here.”

By Sara Verdi

Maryam Abdul-Kareem’s Case for Inclusion

Maryam Abdul-Kareem Assistant General Counsel AstraZeneca

Maryam Abdul-Kareem always knew she wanted her job to be centered around helping others. It was at eight years old, when she was stricken with a bout of strep throat, that she considered pursuing the world of science and medicine.

“I just remember looking at this pink bottle in the refrigerator door and thinking it was magic,” Maryam says of the medicine that helped cure her. Growing up in a home where her family primarily practiced homeopathic cures, this pink bottle, a prescription of amoxicillin, was the first encounter she recalls with pharmacy-grade medicine.

“With that experience, I became fascinated with the idea of medicine as a science,” she explains. “I started to think about being a doctor when I grew up—I wanted to have something to do with medicine.”

A year or so later, Maryam moved with her family from the United States to a small village in Senegal, West Africa, to

aid in the development of a medical clinic and school system. While there, she witnessed the difficulties that the people of the village underwent to get access to healthcare. She also spent a considerable amount of time with an American female physician who helped found the clinic. “Those experiences and that relationship strengthened my interest in medicine, healthcare, and access to healthcare. I was dead-set on growing up and becoming a doctor,” Maryam explains.

During her undergraduate studies, she set out to do exactly that. “Initially, I majored in biology, but I realized pretty quickly that I was more fascinated with the medicine itself than the practice of medicine,” she says. So, she changed her major, graduated, and worked in a lab doing early-stage drug development work. This lab work got the wheels turning in her head: if these were the early stages, what happens with pharmaceuticals further along in the process?

AstraZeneca’s assistant general counsel discusses how a childhood encounter with strep throat led to a career promoting both accessible medications and diversity and inclusion in the pharmaceutical field

Madasyn Andrews

Before pharmaceutical drugs can even reach the consumer, they must pass through a heavily regulated, legal process. Maryam wanted to know more about this process, so, while still working at the lab, she pursued a master’s degree in biotechnology.

“In that program, I ended up focusing on regulatory affairs, and that’s where I began to meet a lot of lawyers that practiced in the healthcare and pharmaceutical space,” she explains. “Meeting these lawyers made me think about a career that would allow me to serve science and the pharmaceutical industry but not necessarily as a scientist.”

She continued with product development work for a few years in the industry before deciding to pursue a law degree from Georgetown. After obtaining her JD and working as an M&A lawyer in private practice for some time, Maryam landed a position at AstraZeneca.

As of 2019, she now leads a team of lawyers at AstraZeneca. Maryam acknowledges she traveled an unconventional route to arrive at her current position as assistant general counsel, but she believes that her commitment to lifelong learning and attitude that focuses on drawing from experience best translates in the way that she leads her team.

“The most important thing that I have learned so far about guiding a team is that you have to figure out how to motivate individual people based on who they are and what they need and how to empower them,” she says.

And to Maryam, empowering others means balancing empathy with mentorship. “Part of it is being direct with compassion and part of it is helping people know where they stand in a situation,” she explains. “You have to help people understand the environment they’re in so they can best succeed.”

Maryam believes that inclusion, and the effort to strengthen a diverse and

inclusive culture through empowerment, begins with leadership. “Inclusion is both a behavior and an environment,” she says. As an African American, Muslim woman practicing law, she acknowledges that there have been a lot of spaces where she has existed as a triple minority. She believes, however, that it is possible—and up to leaders—to create environments where people can “bring their whole selves to work.”

“There are visible and nonvisible forms of diversity, and inclusion to me means creating an environment where people don’t feel like they need

to assimilate to a majority in order to be successful.”

Maryam seeks to break the mold of the traditional majority within both STEM fields and the law field—and she’s even branching outside AstraZeneca to make that happen.

“There are challenges in the legal profession in terms of diversity,” Maryam explains, “so AstraZeneca has signed on to a couple initiatives through which corporate legal departments make a commitment to working with law firms to try to support their diversity and inclusion efforts.”

“There are visible and nonvisible forms of diversity, and inclusion to me means creating an environment where people don’t feel like they need to assimilate to a majority in order to be successful.”

In addition to that, AstraZeneca has just launched a global inclusion and diversity council, and Maryam has joined on as a member. “We are in the early stages, but we are looking at what we can consistently drive across the company while recognizing that needs will vary based on geography and local factors.”

With this new council, AstraZeneca is placing a large focus on affinity groups within the company. “Not only is it an opportunity for people who share similar backgrounds to support one another, but it is also a place from which we as a company can draw from those perspectives. For example, if we are working on treatments for a disease that affects a particular population disproportionately, it would only be wise and prudent to make sure that within our own organization, we are talking with and including people from that community to make sure that we are as impactful as possible.”

Luckily, throughout her life Maryam has never been a stranger to taking opportunities to break the mold and make an impact. And in her position, Maryam’s unconventional route lands at the intersection of AstraZeneca’s path of delivering life-changing medicines, allowing her childhood curiosity to thrive alongside the mission of her adulthood. AHL

© 2019 Covington & Burling LLP. All rights reserved.

Mike Watters Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel Essentia Health

Elise Schmitter

An Agent for Change

Mike Watters channels his passion for learning and leading to help carry Essentia Health into its next stages

By Sara Verdi

Practicing law wasn’t always on Mike Watters's radar. He focused on two things during his undergraduate tenure: his history degree and his collegiate baseball career.

“I was a history major at the University of Michigan because I enjoyed it. I always assumed at some point I would get a graduate degree, but I wasn’t sure in what,” Watters says. After his junior year, Watters was picked up to play professional baseball.

“At some point during my professional baseball career, my fiancée at the time—now my wife—asked me ‘Well, what are you going to do if you don’t make it to the big leagues?’” Watters remembers, laughing. “I am sure that got the wheels turning and moved me toward law school!”

Years after becoming a lawyer, Watters says he found his career aptitude test results from a visit to the career center at Michigan. Becoming a lawyer was the number one recommendation. “It appears to have been a pretty good match,” Watters jokes.

BEING A FATHER FIRST

“My job is a lawyer, but being a husband and father is how I identify who I am,” says Mike Watters. “Being a father has taught me a lot. It has taught me about patience, and it’s also showed me how imperfect I am. But my favorite thing about being a father is seeing that my kids have learned what I would hope for them to learn and that they’re applying it. The greatest joy is watching your kids fly from the nest and not fall to the ground.”

In between finishing his professional baseball career and beginning law school at Indiana University School of Law, Watters worked as a paralegal for Baker and Daniels. He was offered the job post-graduation after he had clerked with Baker and Daniels through law school and worked with them for six years before beginning an almost twenty-year tenure at CHI Health.

In August of 2019, excited for the opportunity to try something new, Watters began his position as chief legal officer and general counsel at Essentia Health. “What drew me here was that the work is intellectually stimulating. No two days are alike. I love being a lawyer, but even more, I love being around the doctors, the finance folks, the HR folks—I feel like I really get to learn the whole business. Certainly that, and the opportunity to return to Minnesota,” Watters explains.

Moving back to Minnesota not only meant an opportunity to take on a new position with Essentia, it also meant being much closer in proximity to six of his seven children, as well as three of his grandchildren. “It’s nice that we’re physically and geographically close to them and get to see them a lot more than we did when we were in Nebraska,” Watters says proudly.

Over the course of nearly twenty years at a company, there is plenty to learn about the industry and how to manage a team, and Watters plans to use his experience at CHI to bring a fresh set of eyes to

“The most dangerous words in the English language are ‘we’ve always done it that way.’ I think that’s why Essentia brought me on: to look at things differently and find new solutions.”

Essentia. “I had the benefit of learning the healthcare system and its issues alongside some really intelligent people,” Watters says. “CHI gave me perspective on how to do things well and what to do better too. I think the lessons learned from growing during my experience there will certainly help me in my new role.”

At Essentia, Watters manages a core legal team of six lawyers and one paralegal, but roughly twenty people report up to him. “It’s interesting after being at one company for so long,” Watters explains. “Coming into a new organization, you have to learn how they do things here, or even, who does what. I’m trying to both learn and get to know the folks that report up to me. It’s been a change for everyone, but the team has been brilliant with this period of change.”

Simultaneously leading and learning can be an overwhelming task, but Watters sees it as an opportunity for growth. “I aspire to lead by example, to be inclusive in decisions across the organization, to seek out guidance and advice when I can. It’s a balance between getting input and taking action,” Watters says.

Essentia is currently at the front end of an $800 million project dedicated to rebuilding its main hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. It is a three-and-a-half year project that currently consumes most of Watters’s time. “It’s the largest healthcare construction project in the United States at the moment,” Watters says. “It’s going to bring on a huge amount of change, and it’s going to impact both the company and the surrounding area of Duluth. It’s a very large body of work, and I’m still learning and getting up to speed with it.”

Though he’s still getting used to the nuances of his role and the company as a whole, Watters believes that adapting to change like this is vital to leadership. “The most dangerous words in the English language are ‘we’ve always done it that way,’” he says. “I think that’s why Essentia brought me on: to look at things differently and find new solutions.”

He also believes, however, that to get to great rewards, one must work through the greatest challenges that revolve around change. “Today the challenge is leading the team to make necessary changes,” he explains. “A year or two from now, it could be a different challenge, but today is mostly centered around the change we are experiencing as an organization as well as my team getting used to me.”

As Watters helps his team navigate the challenges that come their way, his goal is to keep an eye toward empathy to understand how everyone is affected by these changes—all in the spirit of carrying the ship forward together. He says, “I want to be sensitive towards the folks that are most impacted by the changes going on at Essentia while at the same time helping to move us collectively toward where we need to be.” AHL

DEEP RESPECT PROUD SUPPORT

We are delighted to support Mike Watters and the entire organization at Essentia Health.

Our team at Fredrikson is proud to align ourselves with leaders like Mike and Essentia Health.

Congratulations on this very well deserved recognition.

Fredrikson & Byron is a three-hundred-attorney law firm in Minneapolis, with seven offices in the US and globally. We are the firm “where law and business meet.” Our attorneys bring business acumen and entrepreneurial thinking to work with healthcare and life sciences clients. Learn more about us at fredlaw.com.

By Sara Deeter

Leadership Is Transformational

At Piedmont Healthcare, Brian Unell has taken calculated risks and used business-minded leadership strategies to transform both the finances and the culture of the organization—and that risk has more than paid off

To truly transform something, to go against the grain and do something that has never been done before, you have to take risks. And that is exactly what Brian Unell has done: as vice president of revenue cycle transformation and integration at nonprofit healthcare system Piedmont Healthcare, Unell has used bold leadership strategies to transform the organizational culture and drive unparalleled results.

A statistics major at the University of Florida, Unell spent years cultivating an in-depth knowledge of revenue cycle and project management as a consultant at Ernst & Young and later as director of strategic initiatives and patient financial services at Tenet Healthcare. But it was in 2008, when he joined Piedmont as a senior project manager and executive

director of project management, that Unell truly realized the potential inherent in his line of work.

“Piedmont had just four hospitals at the time, and they were looking to create a deep bench of talent and strength,” Unell recalls. “I joined a team that was essentially an incubator for ideas, and it was such a unique group of people.

“While there were some really smart people, it was truly a situation where the team was much better than just the sum of the individuals,” Unell continues. “There were a bunch of strong type A personalities but our egos never got in the way. We were all just trying to find the right solutions for the system.”

Through that incubator, Unell led the evaluation, selection, and contracting of clinical and financial solutions to

prepare the health system for system standardization by implementing new enterprise resource planning and electronic medical record solutions— Meaningful Use and ICD-10—resulting in “wholesale system changes.”

In a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Unell was asked to lead that transformation. “I said that I could handle the revenue cycle side of things but that I would need a number two to help me with the clinical side,” Unell says.

Unell already had a partner in mind, he says, but as soon as he brought him to a planning meeting, everything changed.

“At the start of the meeting, he was quiet as we were all talking about the rollout of our strategy, about the resources and timing and things like that. But as the meeting progressed, he started asking questions that none of us had ever even thought about,” Unell recalls. “It took me over two months to convince him and the organization that he was the right person for the job because I knew that he more qualified and was the one who needed to run the project, not me.”

Brian Unell VP of Revenue Cycle Transformation & Integration Piedmont Healthcare

And according to Unell, it was exactly that kind of awareness—an awareness of others’ talents, an awareness of what makes an effective leader—that later helped him transform both the revenue cycle function and the culture at Piedmont Healthcare.

Of course, Unell’s leadership approach also strengthens Piedmont’s relationships with its partners. “Brian is an innovative leader who understands the ability of technology to transform the revenue cycle,” says David Franklin, SVP of health systems and hospital operations at Waystar. “He is not satisfied with the status quo as he pushes himself and his teams to find new ways to reduce waste and improve performance.”

When Unell became the CFO of special projects in late 2011, he told the organization’s leadership that they needed to make a vital decision: did they want to have a strategic, value-added revenue cycle function or a cost-focused, transactional function?

“At that time, probably 90 to 95 percent of healthcare organizations were transactional revenue cycles,” Unell says. “But I started explaining that in a strategic, value-adding revenue cycle, healthcare organizations are able to generate significantly more revenue as long as they are willing to make key changes and investments.”

Piedmont looked to an outside consulting firm to help them make those changes. Over the course of a year, Unell worked with that firm to create a centralized working environment, consolidate functions, and identify areas where costs could be reduced and revenue enhanced.

Throughout that endeavor, Unell says, he strove to implement everyday leadership strategies that are well known in the broader business world but often underused in revenue cycle management.

“Once you have more people on your team than you can know all of their names, it becomes 100 percent about

“If you’ve got good people in the right jobs, make sure they’re not worrying about things that don’t actually matter.”

FASTPATHS TOCASH!

the culture. From the start, we had 540 people, which means it’s critical to get the culture right from day one. And if you’ve got good people in the right jobs, make sure they’re not worrying about things that don’t actually matter,” Unell advises.

But some of those leadership strategies, Unell acknowledges, were harder to implement than others. “As we were going on this journey, I realized that we had people who were really strong technically, really strong operators, but not necessarily good leaders,” Unell says. “And that was definitely a challenging transformation—it takes a lot to get people to realize that having subject matter expertise is not the same as being able to empower a team.”

Despite such controversy, Unell says, it was his determination to adopt a strategic leadership mind-set that helped him achieve such incredible results.

“By the end, we ended up seeing around a 50 percent reduction in turnover and generating about $30 million in recurring revenue,” Unell says. “So we started to see not only stabilization across the organization but growth as well—we went from five hospitals to six and then eleven.”

But as Unell emphasizes, the ability to successfully integrate these new facilities is due more to the fundamental shift in Piedmont’s culture than to any changes in technical operations.

“We’ve really created a unique environment, even according to other people in the industry—they come visit to learn about what we do,” Unell says. “What we have is by no means perfect—the nature of revenue cycle means that there’s always opportunity. But we have been able to build something special here.” AHL

YOUR REV CYCLE

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By Keith Loria

A Family Legacy for Advocacy

Following in his grandfather’s footsteps, David Silverman, Prime Healthcare’s vice president of pharmacy services, calls for strong backing of clinical pharmacists

David Silverman’s choice to become a clinical pharmacist was inspired by a key mentor in his childhood—his grandfather.

“I used to go to the pharmacy department at his hospital every day after school, where he would take me on rounds in the intensive care unit or I would watch him work until it was time to go home,” Silverman remembers. “My grandpa was a guru when it came to pain management, and established a pain management program that was recognized by the Joint Commission in the Jersey City Medical Center that served as a role model for other hospitals to follow.”

Now, as Prime Healthcare’s vice president of pharmacy services, Silverman likewise follows in his grandfather’s

footsteps and is proud to continue the family legacy.

Silverman developed a passion for critical care, specifically, during school because of his interests in cardiology and infectious diseases. He graduated from Rutgers in 2012 and pursued a first-year postgraduate residency at Hackensack University with a critical care focus.

“During my residency training, I also had the opportunity to obtain my teaching certification through Rutgers’ postdoctoral teaching certificate program,” he says. “After graduating residency, I spent a year working as an overnight staff pharmacist and then transitioned to a critical care pharmacist role in St. Michael’s Medical Center (SMNJ), which

is an acute care community teaching hospital in Newark, New Jersey.”

During his time as a critical care pharmacist, Silverman achieved dual board certification in pharmacotherapy and critical care.

At the time, SMNJ was going through a period of uncertainty, as it was up for sale and on the verge of bankruptcy, but Prime Healthcare stepped in, and after acquisition, was able to turn it around.

Today, Prime Healthcare has expanded to forty-five hospitals in fourteen states in a relatively short period of time, which quickly created a need to standardize many aspects of the hospitals—especially with regards to medication management, contracting, compliance, policies, and

procedures. That created a fortuitous opportunity for Silverman, who says the timing helped propel his career.

“I primarily rounded with an interdisciplinary team in the ICU, but there were a lot of other opportunities available,” he says. That included becoming a member of the code response team, where he identified areas for improvement, including optimization of the code cart contents, medications on override, how the codes were managed, hardware issues, AED distribution, and implementation of targeted temperature management (TTM) for cardiac arrest patients.

In time, Silverman’s solid work led to his promotion to the chair of this interdisciplinary committee, which in turn led to him receiving the Lester Z. Lieberman Award for Humanism in Healthcare.

Prime’s hospital acquisitions also occurred as the corporate pharmacy team was in the process of expanding with the addition of a VP of pharmacy role, another regional pharmacy director role, and a corporate clinical pharmacy director role—the last of which Silverman took on following Prime’s acquisition of SMNJ.

“In this role, I helped to promote the standardization of clinical operations, establishing a corporate formulary, criteria of use for restricted agents, collaboratively starting a corporate pharmacy and therapeutics committee to oversee the clinical strategy and drive change,” he says. “Prime converted GPOs (HealthTrust) in March of 2018 and then converted wholesalers (Cardinal) in February of 2019.”

These conversions created a very valuable opportunity to hit the reset button with system standardization and contracting and have also played a critical role in streamlining clinical initiatives.

Other notable initiatives have been the formation of a national purchasing

committee, purchasing policy, and system standardization executive summary document and the formation of clinical subcommittees (antimicrobial, anticoagulation, opioid) to ensure that Prime can leverage its internal expertise and not reinvent the wheel.

The effects of standardization are evident in Prime’s drug spend trends. While the general trend in healthcare is a 4 to 8 percent increase in drug spend annually due to inflation, Prime’s total annual spend has remained flat from 2016 to 2019, but it’s added a total of five hospitals since 2016, and it’s seen a large shift in how those dollars are distributed (inpatient versus outpatient, infusion, retail, and contract pharmacy)

David Silverman VP of Pharmacy Services Prime Healthcare

“A prioritized standardization strategy is essential for success when operating with an organization of this size and diversity, but the other key to success is to ensure that there is an appreciation for variance—that a one-size-fits-all model doesn’t work in every case,” Silverman says. “A lack of appreciation for this can result in significant failures or poor outcomes.”

Recognizing these challenges and tailoring its standardization initiatives to them has helped Prime tremendously; and for Silverman personally, his experiences taught him firsthand that clinical pharmacy services can impact patients outside of medication-related areas.

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Over the years pharmacy advocacy has evolved the profession from a primary dispensing role to a more clinical role, and this is an area that Silverman is especially passionate about.

“Advocacy is essential for all professions, but I think that it is especially important for pharmacy because of the way various stakeholders view pharmacy’s role in overall operations,” he says.

For example, many medical professionals in the hospital setting think that pharmacy’s primary role is to ensure timely and safe medication management (order verification, preparation, and distribution); C-suites see pharmacy as a very high-cost center; for quality or performance improvement teams, pharmacy plays a key role in medication safety activities and quality reporting.

“Most stakeholders don’t have visibility to all aspects of pharmacy roles and responsibilities, nor do they see that we can bring a lot more to the table and drive clinical value for the patients,” Silverman says.

Luckily, by continuing on the path he’s on, Silverman knows he can impact the care of a large number of patients and drive value even more. AHL

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The Contemporary Curative

Instilling Hope in Veterans’

Wounded Warrior

Project CEO Michael Linnington details the organization’s efforts to provide toplevel service programs to the nation’s wounded veterans

Mental Health

By Sara Deeter

When you join the military, there are no guarantees. You’re not guaranteed an assignment, you’re not guaranteed to deploy, and you’re certainly not guaranteed to come home in one piece—or even to come home at all. “But I think it’s up to our country to guarantee, as much as possible, that if you do come home, you will be afforded every opportunity to be as successful as a civilian as you were in the military,” says Michael Linnington, CEO of Wounded Warrior Project (WWP). “And that’s exactly what we’re doing at Wounded Warrior Project.”

A West Point graduate, Linnington served in the US Army for thirty-five years before retiring in 2015. Over the course of his career, Linnington was assigned to multiple units in locations throughout the United States, and overseas in Germany, the Republic of Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He served in a variety of command and staff positions, taught at West Point, and was the commander of the Joint Force Headquarters National Capital Region in Washington, DC. He finished his military career in the Pentagon as the military deputy to the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

So when WWP reached out to him in 2016 about the CEO position, Linnington felt it was a natural way for him to continue to serve and lead. “I had already seen the great work Wounded Warrior Project was doing when I was in uniform,” he explains, “and I knew that if there was a way that I could contribute to an organization that meets the needs of wounded, ill, and injured service members who deployed with me, I needed to take advantage of that opportunity.

“And here I am,” Linnington says. “I’ve been here for three years now, and I’ve not only come to learn about and respect the great work the organization

does but, more importantly, I’ve observed firsthand the amazing resilience of our nation’s wounded, ill, and injured servicemen and women, and the support of their amazing families.”

A national nonprofit organization, WWP provides a wide range of free services to post-9/11 wounded veterans and their family members facing challenges related to physical health and wellness, financial wellness, and more.

But according to Linnington, WWP’s “biggest area of investment and biggest area of need” is mental health.

“For many warriors, there’s still a stigma surrounding mental health,” says the CEO. “If anybody were to break a leg today, they’d be at the hospital immediately. But some veterans who experience really traumatic incidents—brain injuries or PTSD—don’t seek the care they need to address those wounds.”

WWP is collaborating with the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs to normalize the

Michael Linnington CEO Wounded Warrior Project

Mike Linnington gathers with warriors at the nonprofit’s Courage Awards & Benefit Dinner in New York City in 2017.

Courtesy of Wounded Warrior Project

“It’s not about how many we’re serving. It’s about how well we are serving.”

idea of seeking mental health treatment, Linnington says. But stigmas aren’t the only thing complicating veterans’ ability to seek that treatment. Because of the overwhelming number of veterans experiencing mental health issues and the complexity of those issues, no single organization can provide all the services, treatments, and healthcare veterans need.

“Our programs fill in the gaps,” Linnington says. “Wounded Warrior Project recognizes that each warrior has individual needs—there is no one size fits all in mental health.”

Warrior Care Network, for example, is a unique mental health program established in partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital, Rush University Medical Center, Emory Healthcare, and UCLA Health.

As Linnington explains, Warrior Care Network delivers specialized services through intensive outpatient programs that provide up to a year’s worth of therapy in two to three weeks. The programs integrate evidence-based psychological treatments with individual and group therapy, wellness, nutrition, mindfulness, and family support.

“It’s an amazing program,” Linnington enthuses. “Ninety-six percent of the warriors report that they gained significantly from the program, and 95 percent refer other warriors to the program.”

WWP’s other mental health programs include a phone support line called WWP Talk and a program called Project Odyssey.

A twelve-week program, the Project Odyssey experience begins with a multiday, adventure-based mental health workshop, Linnington says. “It’s whitewater rafting, it’s high ropes, it’s hiking—it’s a lot of personal growth and stepping out of their comfort zone,” he says.

“Each warrior has individual needs—there is no one size fits all in mental health.”

“And at night, after the warriors complete the physical piece of the program, they get a very strong dose of psychoeducational activities and evidence-based exercises that help them cope with what they’re facing.”

Following the workshop, warriors work with WWP on establishing goals and making positive progress through a series of follow-up phone and video calls. As a result of the program, warriors enhance their resiliency and increase their psychological well-being.

But Project Odyssey is not alone in prioritizing evidence-based treatments, Linnington emphasizes. In fact, he says, all of WWP’s programs are “evidence based and outcome driven.”

“That’s very different from being output driven,” the CEO points out. “It’s not about how many we’re serving. It’s about how well we are serving.”

In the spirit of serving warriors well, Linnington says, WWP follows each veteran on their journey to “recovery and continued improvement,” even after ensuring that they receive the best treatment possible.

But in Linnington’s mind, WWP is capable of topping these incredible programs. “I really think the future is wide open for us,” he says. “I think it will be a future of innovation and collaboration as we partner with more organizations to help warriors heal in mind, body, and soul.”

Mike Linnington embraces wounded warrior Anthony Villarreal at the nonprofit’s Courage Awards & Benefit Dinner in New York City in 2019. Villarreal was presented with the event’s signature award.

Extending Rush’s Reach

VP Jeremy Strong discusses the big-picture impact a strong supply chain has on improving quality for Rush University Medical Center’s operations, patients, and neighborhood

Portraits by cass Davis Rush Production Group

Words By KC Esper

Jeremy Strong VP of Supply Chain Rush University Medical Center

Neighborhoods composing Chicago’s West Side are home to nearly 500,000 people of the city’s 2.7 million population. Since the late nineteenth century, this area has been shaped by triumph and tragedy, serving as nesting grounds for thousands of immigrants from Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Mexico, and Greece; cutting the ribbon for new Green and Blue CTA lines as well as a new University of Illinois campus; and becoming a hub for industrial markets and manufacturing plants like Sears, Roebuck and Company, Western Electric, and International Harvester.

By the late twentieth century, everything had changed.

In the 1960s, during a time of great political unrest and racial divide, many white Chicagoans sold their homes and moved to suburbs. Companies quickly followed suit, either closing their doors for good or moving closer downtown or to suburbs nearby. With less work available and no means of following jobs to suburban areas, poverty in West Side neighborhoods skyrocketed, followed by increased crime and gang violence, and eventually leading to one of the country’s greatest racial disparities.

Among the aforementioned consequences, health inequity proves to be one of the most jarring in the twenty-first century: compared with the Loop downtown, the life expectancy of someone living less than six miles away in West Garfield Park drops from eighty-five to sixty-nine.

Nestled between the Near West and East Garfield Park neighborhoods sits Rush University Medical Center, a 644-bed hospital system that, understandably, never seems to settle down, welcoming thousands of employees, students, patients, and staff members through its doors each day.

Walking through the halls of Rush is very much like watching a high-speed video of a bustling intersection: each doctor, visitor, and patient moving perfectly in time with one another as they cross through hallways, over bridges connecting wings, and in and out of

exam rooms. It’s a massive, lively organization that is uniquely positioned in the center of a historically underrepresented area of Chicago, giving it the onus to give back to its community by not only providing exceptional care but also supporting the area economically.

Jeremy Strong, Rush’s vice president of supply chain, has been with the organization for eighteen years, entering it as a student himself and working his way through different areas of hospital operations. In Strong’s position, driving the mission of Rush starts inside the hospital, redesigning ordering and product stocking processes to enhance patient care. To support Rush’s greater mission, however, Strong and his team have enacted a plan that affects a much wider scope than their department—a plan that solidifies Rush’s position as “an anchor in the West Side.”

HIGH PACED AND HANDS-ON

When Strong moves through each department of Rush’s butterfly-shaped corridors, it’s clear that everyone knows him. And better yet, he knows everyone, too. Every employee—regardless of their role—greets him as he walks by. A handshake from an emergency room technician, a wave from a member of the janitorial staff, a pat on the back from the director of supply chain, who works closely with Strong from several floors below to ensure the hospital runs smoothly. Each interaction is genuine—a product of Strong’s growth at the company during his tenure and of his inclusive, amiable leadership approach.

Strong joined Rush’s team in 2001 as part of its health systems management program—what he likens to an “MBA for healthcare.” His early work placed him in interventional areas of the hospital—mainly the OR and perioperative areas—managing data analytics and operations.

“It was pretty high pace,” Strong remembers. “It was really hands-on and behind the scenes, so I had

Learn

Life Expectancy (Years)

Frame of Reference

Rush’s relationship to the West Side illuminates the stark differences in quality of life from one side of Chicago to the next. These infographics show a broader view of the city’s demographics and the overlapping between each neighborhood’s average income and life expectancy.

 0-31,oo0

 32,000-50,000

 51,000-70,000

 71,000-99,000

 100,000+

a tremendous amount of physician engagement. Now I’m one of the few supply chain leaders that has the numbers of a lot of his surgical chiefs in my cell phone.”

In addition to helping with core operational tasks, like helping to design and set up new operating room spaces, Strong largely helped with Rush’s integration of the EPIC OpTime software system and with moving key departments to the organization’s newest buildings. While all of these hands-on experiences allowed him to closely learn the ins and outs of the hospital system, Strong says the most important tool they gave him were the close-knit relationships.

“Those relationships and understanding of how clinical workflows work definitely help with supply chain—that knowledge is something that a lot of supply chain leaders miss,” Strong says. “They’re not used to other functions, but they assume how operations work and what workflows are important to the staff. But if your advice doesn’t match the clinician’s workflow, the clinicians won’t be willing to comply with it.”

“Jeremy’s background is what sets him apart,” says Thad MacKrell, CEO of PAR Excellence Systems Inc. “He was steeped in clinical and business operations—both non-acute and special procedures—before assuming his current role of vice president of supply chain. This gives him an excellent perspective on what clinicians expect and deserve from a high-performing supply chain, namely accuracy, professionalism, and a service orientation. As a long-term partner, we routinely bring our innovations in inventory management automation to Jeremy and his team first to get their perspective and insights on how we can optimize our value in the broader market.”

The ability to relate to clinician workflows becomes ever more important within Strong’s effort to restructure Rush’s supply chain function to work more efficiently, cost-effectively, and with less waste, all while uniting three of Rush’s hospitals under a similar mission and strategy. Considering Rush’s size, this project is no

“If you look at just the price of a product, you’re not looking at the patient’s recovery or length of stay. We’re looking at the total cost of that encounter.”

small feat. But with buy-in from all members of the organization, accomplishing goals becomes a lot easier.

WE CAN ONLY GO FURTHER

Strong’s mission to help revamp Rush’s supply chain started with two seemingly simple questions: how are we leveraging supply chain and what could we do better?

“How do we look at this more systematically and create some structures to put those new strategies in place?” Strong says. “It’s not easy because people are used to their own thinking—we can’t just change something and hope they don’t notice. You have to build confidence that you’ve thought about issues and how to better manage them.”

The opportunity to bring everyone, from physicians to executive leaders, onto the same page has helped tremendously in streamlining supply chain processes. In total, the ability to establish trust among key players in the organization enables Strong’s team to work more efficiently toward its goals.

One of Strong’s main objectives was to reduce the amount of backstock inventory that the hospital was accruing as a result of over-ordering.

“From a distribution standpoint, from manufacturer to hospital, a lot of inventory was floating around— it was very messy,” Strong says. A lot of the mess, he goes on to explain, was due to ineffective ordering practices: ordering things they didn’t need or that they didn’t necessarily use out of fear that they might need it. Distributors would come with a truckload of items, solely to be added to the pile of backstock that was already present.

“For surgical procedures they will bring a truckload of stuff, but 90 percent of the time our physicians only use a few key items,” Strong explains. “We had to be better indicators of what’s needed across all our services and assess how we could cut the rest out. Then our distribution centers and manufacturers can offset some of

those costs. Ultimately, it’s cutting costs out of the whole system, so it helps us to help them.”

Strong and his team also consider how they can create better supply routes to have fewer extra stops and less extra inventory and use technology to create better forecasts of orders.

Robots, for instance, are used to carry items throughout the hospital, from medical supplies to linens to garbage. Their one-track minds allow items to be delivered accurately and on a set schedule, so physicians always have what they need. Moreover, each product in Rush’s inventory—sutures, lotion, bandages, and so on—are loaded on PAR Excellence scales, which automatically reorder items based on their weights to avoid human-error with ordering.

Restructuring ordering practices is only one piece of the puzzle. Strong also looks at the correlation between product price and patient care. He uses the example of implants for surgical procedures.

“If you look at just the price of a product, you’re not looking at the patient’s recovery or length of stay,” Strong says. “We’re looking at the total cost of that encounter. So if a product demonstrates that it actually reduces length of stay or blood loss or complications, and you can look at the big-picture cost, it makes sense to opt for an implant that might cost more but discharges a patient a day early.

“We’re aiming to be more predictive instead of reactive,” he continues. “How do we look at things differently and be more open? How do we talk to people differently? If we do, we can only go further.”

MOVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

The ability to consider the bigger picture with every project allows Strong’s supply chain team to extend beyond Rush’s walls. As part of a group called West Side United, Rush partners with six other hospital systems, in addition to several other companies, to increase

social, economic, and environmental vitality within Chicago’s West Side.

A growing body of medical evidence shows that the root causes of many chronic diseases are socioeconomic. Rush’s efforts to keep people healthy involves not only doctors and nurses but also executives like Strong, who focus Rush’s economic leverage—how it hires, purchases, and invests—locally to improve the economic health of the communities it serves.

Rush has hired several hundred employees from Chicago’s West Side, redirected millions in spending locally, and has committed $6 million from its general investment funds to loans for small businesses typically excluded from the financial services sector.

For Strong, being part of the “Anchor Mission” means thinking about the ways that Rush can make a difference for people who are already living in their community rather than getting new people to move in.

“An example of what we’ve done is that we created a new distribution agreement,” Strong notes. “We opened a distribution site about a mile away with a new distribution partner. They have contracted to hire 70 percent of their staff from neighborhoods in the West Side, which creates jobs and gives us a distribution center close to us. It’s good for us and the community.”

Among other efforts, Rush also restructured its food court contracts to include restaurants from the West Side. The cafeteria-style food hall features three resident restaurants and two rotating vendors: Angel’s and La Lagartija Mexican cuisine, The Ogden and Park Tavern bar and grill, Pompei Italian cuisine, and several restaurants from Greektown are among the options available.

Strong says the reaction from the community has been especially rewarding. “People there are passionate about what they do and understand how much of an impact something like this has.”

And while Rush’s effort has only begun to show its neighborhood, and those around it, their true potential, its commitment alone proves that it’s easier to step in the right direction when we all move together.

Addressing supply chain challenges through automation. Together.

REDUCE SKUS. CUT WASTE. TAKE CONTROL.

More than ever, healthcare supply chain and logistics managers are pressed to do more with less. More facilities – from network hospitals to physician offices. More SKUs. More pressure to control product and labor costs.

That’s why a growing number of health networks are choosing to do more with PAR Excellence. www.parexcellence.com

A Smarter Scale for Success

CEO Thad MacKrell describes how PAR Excellence Systems helps advance hospital supply chains by providing a better, more precise technology for inventory management and automated ordering

By KC Esper

PAR Excellence scales automatically reorder product by tracking the on-hand balance of inventory in real time.

With almost twenty years of experience in the healthcare supply chain space, Thad MacKrell has witnessed numerous advancements to healthcare software applications, service models, and technology. During this time, MacKrell gathered experience from companies across the United States and parts of Europe, most recently discovering an opportunity with PAR Excellence Systems—a role, he says, that he couldn’t pass up.

“The two things that I found most attractive about PAR was its ‘A-list’ client roster and its product offering, a combination of software and unique hardware,” MacKrell says. PAR’s inventory management hardware offering provides hospital systems with the means to allow caregivers to work more efficiently and, in turn, increases the quality of patient care.

While hospitals have embraced many types of automation in departments like food/nutrition, pharmacy,

laboratory, and laundry, by far the most common method of managing inventory in hospitals today is as manual as it was twenty years ago: dispatching a person with a barcode scanner to check supply levels. On any given morning, a supply clerk might cover between ten and twelve locations across a hospital, with each location containing 150 to 300 SKUs. The problem with this approach, however, is evident in the numbers: labor is expensive, and the data collected is unreliable.

“The tech is eyeballing hundreds of bins in just a few minutes and making spot decisions based on gut feeling, mood, or the day of the week,” he explains. “What if they forget to look behind the door or get distracted helping a nurse?”

Midday stock outs, or out-of-stock events, result in call downs from nursing, which are hugely disruptive to both patient care and supply chain staff and negatively impact patient safety.

PAR scales come in several sizes, making it easy for technicians to organize, store, and track all types of products.

“The net result is that hospitals are chronically overstocked and clinical staff lose confidence in the supply chain,” MacKrell says.

But the problem isn’t just that the daily inventory data gathering is laborious, haphazard, and nonstandard, according to MacKrell. The industry is also recognizing that macrotrends are irreversibly in favor of automation: labor costs, training, turnover, and service quality expectations are all increasing.

PAR specializes in creating and providing fully automated scales that weigh products stocked in hospital inventory locations (think gloves, gowns, gauze, and drapes, but also pharmaceuticals and even linens). As clinical staff consume supplies, the weight changes, and each scale tracks the on-hand balance, allowing PAR’s software to calculate reorder quantities automatically.

When the scales are first installed, technicians set an ideal level (the “par level”) and a reorder point. As the inventory gets lighter, the product gets reordered. When a caregiver takes even a single suture from a PAR scale, for instance, the system recognizes the difference. Take enough sutures, and a reorder threshold is reached, at which point PAR’s software automatically compiles a requisition for more of that suture SKU. Everything about PAR’s system is automated, meaning the days of walking around with a bar code scanner to “eyeball” supply locations are over.

“The difference is that our product doesn’t require the caregiver or the supply chain staff to do anything to prepare a requisition: clinical staff just take the product and go, and PAR’s weighted bins continuously measure the level of inventory in real time,” says MacKrell.

With PAR’s technology, supply chain staff can be redirected to inventory optimization and addressing product backorders, allocations, conversions, and the need for more detailed analytics. Moreover, the cost of capital is very low, especially compared to the costs attached to recruiting and training. Investing in a solution like PAR with an expected life of more than fifteen years appeals to CFOs and logistics professionals.

“This is not a labor-loss model,” MacKrell says. “You’re taking the labor you do have and giving them information to allow them to work smarter. PAR creates capacity in the workload so you’re able to redeploy your people and figure out how to do more with less.”

While the original concept of the scales has revolutionized supply chain management as a whole, PAR hasn’t stopped there. Newer models of PAR’s products are aimed at reducing waste, making orders more sustainable and reliable, and enhancing customer care. The company has considered these factors from all angles.

Firstly, MacKrell explains the importance of first in, first out (FIFO), an inventory rotation strategy that ensures products that are stocked first are used first.

Thad MacKrell CEO PAR Excellence Systems Inc.

With items like sutures and IV fluids, for example, FIFO lends itself to using supplies prior to their expiration date. As such, PAR has adapted the design of its bins to ensure FIFO management of inventory whenever possible.

“We’ve redesigned our suture bins, for example, so that technicians load them at the top and nurses take from the bottom,” MacKrell explains. “If we keep piling new items on top of the old, we end up throwing things away. We’re seeking to avoid that.”

This process not only ensures that less product is wasted but also enables better ordering processes. MacKrell says PAR supports this goal by “running inventory leaner,” stocking less of everything while systematically issuing more consistent orders.

“It’s like a 3-D math problem, working out what space you have and what you need to order so we can take costs out of the system while reducing the amount of storage space required,” MacKrell says.

PAR’s technology investment is also directed at clinical satisfaction, as demonstrated by their recent integration of their scales with Amazon’s Alexa. “We’ve made it possible for a nurse to simply ask the room a question instead of calling supply chain for help,” MacKrell explains. “They can ask questions like ‘Is our order en route?’ or ‘Where’s the nearest storeroom with more than five of item XYZ?’ and Alexa will respond with the appropriate answer.”

“PAR’s technology is a natural extension of healthcare’s trend towards automation,” MacKrell says. “We’re revolutionizing the market by doing what it requires. We’re making it automated. We’re improving satisfaction, improving patient care, and reducing inventory to save space and labor. When clinical staff have what they need, they’re more satisfied, and their confidence grows, patient care is improved, and limited supply chain resources can be directed toward higher-value activities.”

“You’re taking the labor you do have and giving them information to allow them to work smarter.”

Uniting to Fight

Inspirata seeks to provide better, more complete information throughout a patient’s cancer journey—and Dr. Trevor Heritage has the technology and the heart to do it

By Billy Yost

As the senior vice president of cancer informatics at Tampa-based Inspirata Inc., Dr. Trevor Heritage has a job history and background so complex that describing them could quickly devolve into a series of system-specific language and hypercomplex technological explanations that would make sense to very few outside of his field. But the SVP has a personal connection to his work that allows him to speak at a more general level, which connects him to the broader population.

“I think most families will, at some point, be impacted by cancer,” Heritage says. “If it’s not an immediate family member, everyone knows someone who has been touched by this.”

For Heritage, the impact came when a friend’s daughter was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. The diagnosis seemed incompatible with the progress of science up to that point. “The medical world was only able to offer as much comfort to the family and their daughter as they could,” Heritage explains. “They also made clear that the family would simply have to wait for a new therapy to come along.”

Unwilling to accept the limits of the diagnosis, Heritage’s friend explored new therapies and potential treatments emerging from the biotech industry as well as from clinical trials. Heritage providde insights and guidance around what medical information the family was entitled to and helped identify potential new therapies that might benefit the young girl.

“My view of complete care is that we want to put more information into the hands of patients,” Heritage says. “It enables them to be better informed about their diagnosis and prognosis and, if they are sufficiently motivated, they can start to explore treatment alternatives that might make more sense for them.”

That’s where Inspirata comes in. Heritage has recruited and trained a highly diverse team of software engineers, data engineers, data modelers, and informatics experts, as well as clinical medical specialists whose collaboration is required to work for more patient transparency and technology integration, maintaining compliance with HIPAA and other mandated regulations while also still able to achieve Inspirata’s mission: uniting disparate and complex data throughout

the entire cancer care journey to drive more informed decisions that improve outcomes and survivorship.

Heritage didn’t start his career in healthcare. He began it at Shell, acting as a bench chemist as well as working in agrochemicals and materials research, tasked with finding ways to better inform the research of catalysts, lubricants, and downstream production at scale of those chemicals. Heritage says it was one of the more foundational roles in his career: “In every position since then, I’ve always gone back to thinking about how it’s not simply the end result of a process; it’s about capturing everything that you learned or have the potential to learn along the way.”

Then, at Symyx Technologies, Heritage pioneered what he calls the electronic lab environment—think of it as a cockpit for chemists and scientists to have broader, real-time insights to all devices and tools involved in a production process, giving them far better ability to intervene and optimize a drug-manufacturing process.

The SVP wouldn’t become fully healthcare focused until 2012, when he joined St. Louis-based Appistry, working to better inform clinicians on how genomics had the capability to positively impact their decision-making. “At this particular time, the world of genomics was far removed from the day-to-day of clinicians who would have to select the right genes to test, get it ordered, reimbursed, and interpret the results. It was too much to expect,” Heritage explains. He was tasked with identifying meaningful tests for any particular disease and helping guide clinicians on how to interpret results and how to act on the findings in a clinical setting.

That experience brought Heritage to Inspirata. Heritage says one of his biggest challenges involves navigating business associate agreements, maintaining and protecting patient information and confidentiality

“In every position since then, I’ve always gone back to thinking about how it’s not simply the end result of a process; it’s about capturing everything that you learned or have the potential to learn along the way.”

Dr. Trevor Heritage SVP of Cancer Informatics Inspirata Inc.

that often create challenges for the company working to create more transparency and fluidity between clinicians, patients, and the cancer treatment journey.

Inspirata’s mission is multifaceted. Transparency can mean simply providing a patient with therapy options that, given a specific diagnosis, can let them opt for better quality of life. “Oncologists may be given a patient with a diagnosis that has three or four precision medicine or immune therapies that might be appropriate,” Heritage explains. “The patient may care more about how it affects their day-to-day lifestyle and their ability to spend quality time with their family. We’re trying to bring more information to clinicians’ fingertips that can show the patient different attributes of potential therapies and they can then have a conversation about their preference for treatment.” In short, extending life shouldn’t be the only consideration given to such a complex issue.

Another area Heritage is set on addressing is what he calls the “depressingly low” percentage of patients who are found to be a match for clinical trials. “It’s somewhere around 3 percent and even lower when you are looking at African American or Latino populations,” Heritage says. “Imagine a system where as soon as a diagnosis is made, you can match them to trials they might be eligible for and, more importantly, once you’ve done that matching, you can alert the oncologist to this potential before the patient receives another line of treatment.”

For a numbers guy, Heritage retains a very human connection to the role that Inspirata plays in combating cancer. As science and medicine continue to confront the all-too-familiar diagnoses, Heritage says Inspirata will continue to be on the front lines of connecting clinicians, patients, and all who are involved in working to eradicate the disease.

Pharm to Table HR

Tamarah Saif, vice president of human resources for the CBD provider Charlotte’s Web, supports the company as it goes public and grows exponentially

By Kathryn Kruse

Tamarah Saif VP of Human Resources Charlotte’s Web

Courtesy of Charlotte’s Web

The first analogy Tamarah Saif uses to describe her work with Charlotte’s Web (CW) is “building a house.” The company’s vice president of human resources says, “We are building a house that does not look like anyone else’s.” In fact, Charlotte’s Web’s ongoing goal is to offer the highest-quality products while acting as a pioneer in the emerging CBD space. Saif assures that the foundation of the house is sound with regard to the talent the company has attracted. But to achieve its goal long-term, Saif acknowledges that the company must also have employee support processes and programs in place.

The cutting-edge Boulder-based company broke metaphorical ground because of a true desire to help—a mission that resonates with Saif, who also is a certified holistic health coach. “I’ve always been interested in alternative approaches to health and wellness,” she says. Saif was drawn to CW after hearing the story of its founders, the Stanleys, seven brothers who worked tirelessly to ensure access to an alternative, quality, natural product. This story is one she makes sure all new hires understand, too. “We are mission driven, with a passion for how we support the daily lives of people,” she says.

The plants grown in the farms at Charlotte’s Web go toward making CBD-infused gummies, oils, and more.

Courtesy of Charlotte’s Web

With her comanaged HR and admin team, Saif expands that passion to care and support for employees. “We are not a small company anymore,” she says, noting emerging tasks she must address to continue building CW’s home.

Like many rapid-growth start-ups, CW did not have a fully staffed HR team, and so, when Saif arrived to create one, her first task was a kind of home assessment. “This is the second organization I’ve been to with rapid growth. I knew that it might not have processes and programs in place,” Saif says. While a robust benefits portfolio was in place, Saif saw other opportunities that

would help her fulfill a vision of becoming an industry leader from an HR perspective.

Saif has overseen implementation of parental leave, wellness rewards, medical plans that cover infertility treatments, pet insurance, and a plethora of other voluntary benefits. She seeks to answer the question, “How can we provide support to employees that they don’t even know they need or want?”

Alongside these changes, Saif has witnessed an expanded product line and exponential employee growth, with CW skyrocketing from approximately one hundred eighty to three hundred employees in

“How can we provide support to employees that they don’t even know they need or want?”

2019. This means that processes cannot be as manual as before. Saif onboarded months after CW went public, so her work also involved communicating to employees about the nuances of a newly public company. “Folks need to understand that we must be respectful of our shareholders and deliver to them,” she says, knowing such changes bring challenges. “We have gone from a start-up to a stand-up, but with the same mission.”

With extensive research into market data and a deep dive into every role in the organization, Saif developed a comprehensive compensation structure. While she sees the value in implementing pay structures, merit increases (introduced in 2020 for the first time), and clear job descriptions for everyone’s sake, she also looks at the bigger picture. “Compensation isn’t usually why people leave an organization, but they mention it significantly more when they are not happy,” she says. “Paying fairly cuts down on noise so we can look at what is really happening.”

To address potential underlying managerial concerns that can affect any organization, Saif piloted a baseline curriculum around communication, conflict management, and delegation for managers. The twohour interactive sessions, with individually scheduled practices in between, have gotten positive reviews, and other managers have asked, “When do we get to participate?” Luckily, by the end of 2020, Saif plans to roll out training for all managers.

While developing employer relations and compliance, partnerships with department heads, and specialized roles, Saif also keeps a focus on recruitment. She looks to add to CW’s team, which is built with specified skill sets drawn from the consumer packaged goods world to identify best practices for the relatively new industry of CBD products.

“We get inquiries every day about career opportunities,” says Saif, and she wants to make sure that CW’s employer brand perspective is on target. To that end,

“We have gone from a start-up to a standup, but with the same mission.”

Courtesy of Charlotte’s Web

Fight the Fear

Despite admitting to having small bouts of stage fright, Tamarah Saif does a lot of public speaking on HR topics. “You must get out of your comfort zone to grow,” she says. Once she’s up on the stage and warmed up, however, she feels unstoppable. “The great thing is camaraderie, audience engagement, people writing down notes, people getting useful information,” she says. “I feel so energized.”

CW had a massive social media push in 2019, increasing LinkedIn followers from 1,200 to more than 10,000 and raising Glassdoor ratings from 3.1 to 4.0. “Even with all our growth, the way our employees review our company has improved,” she says, knowing well that that is not true for all companies.

In real life, Saif has improved processes for recruiting and creating a positive candidate experience. “People are sometimes held back because of lingering stigma around the industry.” Saif sees this shifting, especially after the 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp—what CBD is extracted from—and declassified it. CBD now falls under the purview of FDA and USDA policy and regulation. “Access is the focus. Staying FDA compliant is very important to preserve and protect access,” she says, adhering to her original interest in the company as a provider of alternative approaches to health and wellness.

In building this unique house, Saif strongly credits the support of her strong, dedicated team. “Every leader needs a team that believes in what they are doing and will support each other during high growth,” she says. Saif likens her experience navigating the CBD industry to snowboarding. “When you are on a run, there is a lot of energy, and you know to expect obstacles and learn to avoid them,” she says. “This is like being on a black diamond run. It’s been a ride. But we are now equipped for whatever comes up.”

Revolutionary Fixes

John Tuman on the groundbreaking technology programs that he and his team are using to promote health and wellness for both patients and employees at New Hanover Regional Medical Center

By Sara Deeter

John Tuman Chief Technology Officer

John Tuman is a fixer. From a young age, he has been curious about how things work and how to repair them when they’re broken. “I really wanted to understand how electricity works as a kid, so I would put tweezers into the outlets in our home,” Tuman says with a laugh.

Today, as chief technology officer (CTO) at New Hanover Regional Medical Center (NHRMC), Tuman is applying his problem-solving talents to one of the most complex challenges of our time: the American healthcare system.

As Tuman has grown in his career, putting his hardearned knowledge of electricity to work by obtaining an electrical engineering degree from the University of

Notre Dame and securing progressive technical roles at organizations like WakeMed and the North Carolina Department of Commerce, he has begun taking a more strategic view of problems and their solutions.

“I went from understanding things on the level of a computer to the system level and eventually to the level of processes, organizations, and communities,” Tuman explains. “How do you fix a broken process? How do you engage people in their health and overcome the social determinants of health? Those are the really intriguing questions.”

At NHRMC, a county-owned system of hospitals, emergency services, outpatient centers, and physicians that serves communities in southeastern North

New Hanover Regional Medical Center

Carolina, Tuman has been seeking leading-edge, technology-based answers to some of those very questions. But as he points out, the healthcare community’s understanding of a “right” answer has shifted significantly in recent years.

“For many years, the focus of the CTO was defining the internal technologies needed to enable healthcare delivery. But over the past few years, the focus of the CTO role has expanded,” Tuman says. “Hospitals have tried to improve access and to reach the consumer with digital technologies, and CTOs have been called upon to develop consumer-facing applications.”

Tuman has high hopes for two particular consumerfacing applications that his team has been working on: a virtual assistant program based on the Amazon Echo platform and a one-of-a-kind cryptocurrency program that incentivizes NHRMC employees to fully embrace health and wellness.

“The Amazon Echo initiative was something that I came up with back in 2016,” Tuman says. “I did some coding, just as a proof of concept, and got a really positive response from our executive leadership team. And then at the 2017 re:Invent Conference, Amazon agreed to sponsor us.”

Since 2017, NHRMC has deployed more than two hundred Amazon Echo devices throughout its inpatient rooms. Patients can use their Echo for entertainment—to listen to audio books, sports shows, or news programs—as well as for on-demand information about their treatments, medications, the NHRMC facilities, and more.

“The music has by far been the biggest hit,” Tuman says. “In 2017, when we were first doing our pilot, we went room to room to introduce patients to the Echo devices and show them how to play classical music. And when that music started playing, you could just see the relaxation come over the face of somebody who had been in pain.

“We’ve also seen people using the Echo to have dance parties in their rooms,” the CTO continues with a chuckle. “In a hospital, you constantly have to think about how many things are outside of your control— you have to rely on other people for everything, even just for getting up and using the bathroom. But your choice of music is one thing that is completely under your control.”

“In a hospital, you constantly have to think about how many things are outside of your control . . . But your choice of music is one thing that is completely under your control.”

The initiative is still a work in progress, Tuman notes. But now that the concept has been validated, he and his team can work on expanding the initiative to other hospitals and other areas in the NHRMC system. “Our immediate goal is to continue to target patient satisfaction and engagement,” Tuman says.

Engagement is also at the core of Tuman’s new cryptocurrency program. Specifically, engaging NHRMC employees on their own health and wellness.

“NHRMC’s mission is ‘Leading our community to outstanding health,’” Tuman says. “Wellness and fitness are important factors in controlling healthcare costs and reducing preventable illness.”

But as Tuman and other healthcare professionals across the country know full well, transforming healthcare from a reactive “sick-care model” into a proactive, wellnessfocused model is an extremely ambitious endeavor.

“Hospitals and providers have limited influence and leverage to affect individuals’ personal choices and habits, and perhaps less influence in ameliorating deleterious social determinants of health,” the CTO says. And that is exactly where the new cryptocurrency program will come into play, Tuman believes, incentivizing individuals across the NHRMC system to prioritize their health.

The program is still in the testing phases, but as Tuman currently envisions it, the cryptocurrency program will award crypto coins to employees for a variety of actions, from meeting fitness goals and participating in healthy activities to getting their annual flu shots or scheduling recommended health screenings such as mammograms.

“Our vision is to partner with local businesses like sporting goods stores, fitness centers, and grocery stores to create a self-perpetuating cycle of healthy behaviors,” Tuman says. “We can really impact people’s lives with a program like this, and make sure that they never have to come to the hospital for a preventable condition.”

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The Business

Healthcare is a constantly evolving industry that demands executives to plan ahead. Often, this means business leaders need to address department- or company-wide issues to remain focused on driving innovation and devising strategies to maintain a high level of care.

136. Michael Hercz

140. Andy Garlington

146. Kristi Anne Gedid

150. Mark Boone

153. Deborah Vancleave

158. Karen Brieger

By Peter Fabris

Keeping Both Eyes on Ethics

Sentynl Therapeutics Inc.’s Michael Hercz uses his passion for the greater good to embed compliance standards into every business decision

Michael Hercz acknowledges that the life sciences industry assumes many varying public perceptions. On one hand, he notes that recent news reports about compliance and quality lapses and price spikes on some drugs have diminished public trust in the industry. But the senior vice president and general counsel for Sentynl Therapeutics Inc. also believes that professionals in charge of regulatory compliance and company oversight—such as himself—can help improve pharma’s image.

Hercz’s passion for his work stems from a deep desire to help people. “A lot

of folks like me have had family members with health issues,” he says. “I felt even in my undergraduate days that reducing human suffering was my calling.” In college, he was torn between pursuing a career in healthcare and law but was able to combine both interests after he earned his legal degree and applied that training within innovative pharmaceutical companies.

Early in his career, Hercz had to learn how to navigate the complex world of pharmaceuticals. At Amgen, a pioneering biotechnology company, Hercz was responsible for legal aspects of

regulatory compliance and clinical trials for specific therapeutics. That’s where he caught “the compliance bug”—an intense interest in shepherding legal matters for product development. “I enjoyed analyzing legal and regulatory requirements and making them practical for businesspeople,” he notes.

Later, as head of enterprise risk management for Amgen, he helped the company’s leadership form new perspectives on key risks and advised on how to reduce exposure. The most challenging aspect of that role was persuading seasoned executives to accept new risk

Michael Hercz SVP and General Counsel Sentynl Therapeutics Inc.

information. In those cases, Hercz says, he drew upon the company’s mission and ethics as a means of aligning views of how to address risk.

Joining the industry after practicing at Hooper Lundy and Akin Gump, Hercz lacked a medical or scientific background. The learning curve in the early years of his in-house career was steep. He had to pick up much of the technical, industry-specific knowledge that he needed on his own along the way. “Ninety percent of learning was on the job,” he says. “It was humbling at first.”

Donald Carlton

To fill knowledge gaps, he sat in on many meetings with technical experts and product development teams. “I have an inherent curiosity,” he says. “I don’t like leaving a meeting not understanding something.” He had to be willing to ask “dumb questions” and seek out information from specialists, many of whom were generous with their time, he adds.

Not to mention, many of hours of self-directed research also bolstered his understanding. Mentors, particularly one attorney who had served within the FDA’s Office of Chief Counsel, provided invaluable career guidance that he still carries today.

Hercz brought expertise in compliance, litigation, and risk management gleaned from his positions at Amgen, Victory Pharma, and consulting firm Deloitte to the fifty-person Sentynl Therapeutics, which has historically focused on pain treatment. His current role as SVP and GC provides numerous opportunities to

broaden his legal skills. In addition to being responsible for all legal matters, he has delved into less familiar topics like human resources, mergers and acquisitions, and others. “I’ve become a much more well-rounded lawyer since I joined Sentynl four years ago,” he says.

With just one other in-house lawyer on staff, Hercz relies on outside counsel to augment his team’s capabilities. Nonetheless, he has developed a base level of knowledge on all legal topics. “I have to understand enough to spot a problem, do triage, and develop a plan to solve it,” he says.

Tackling problems effectively and efficiently is important in his industry because when a pharmaceutical company faces major legal issues, the whole industry may be tarnished in the public eye. “Part of the solution is to avoid major compliance lapses,” Hercz says. This is where general counsel and compliance executives like Hercz are particularly

valuable. “It is important that legal is at the table when making key decisions.”

As a leader at Sentynl’s table, Hercz says that smaller companies often benefit from their ability to have “organic discussions,” rather than the more siloed conversations that occur at larger companies. “Instead of having individuals make decisions in isolation, we have a collaborative discussion about how to approach an issue and gather input from various perspectives in the company,” Hercz explains. “New ideas are put forward, and thoughts are more advanced and informed.”

From a legal perspective, collaborating across departments means it’s less about running decisions by legal, and more about making decisions with legal—an aspect that comes in handy when Hercz takes off his legal hat to lead his teams in HR, regulatory, and quality and helps them make business decisions with an eye toward compliance.

“You know you’re successful as a counselor when people in the business seek you out to talk or ask questions—and by doing all of that, you end up becoming more embedded in the business.”

This collaborative approach is one of the many reasons Hercz is so well respected by his colleagues. As former colleague Jessica Walls, assistant general counsel of compliance at Becton Dickinson, explains, “Michael is great at explaining complex legal concepts to other business stakeholders and helping them understand why a decision is the right one instead of just telling them what to do and expecting them to follow suit. His approach creates a high level of trust and respect among the business.”

But above all, Hercz says his guiding principle in leadership and communication is much like the company’s mission.

“We have a shared view of transparency,” Hercz says. “Compliance and ethics are of paramount importance in this company, and the tone at the top has always been to do things the right way.”

As Hercz and his team prepare for the future, Sentynl’s ethical standards are what fuel the company’s next chapter of product offerings. “We’re looking to grow the company into other therapeutic areas in a logical, complementary way,” he explains. “Although we don’t have our own internal pipeline, we continually pursue business development opportunities and can commercialize products that our affiliates bring to market.”

Hercz says that this next step for the company offers an opportunity for him to welcome new members to his team who share in his excitement for reaching uncharted territory—and more so, are willing to weave the energy of legal into the fabric of the company.

“It really makes a difference to hire people with a good sense of humor and an even-keeled perspective,” he says. “I also look for individuals who are willing to roll up their sleeves and want to engage with their colleagues across the organization. You know you’re successful as a counselor when people in the business seek you out to talk or ask questions—and by doing all of that, you end up becoming more embedded in the business.” AHL

Building the Nashville Team

When Envision Healthcare relocated its accounting department to Tennessee from Florida, its hiring effort had to be as forward-thinking as its company culture. Andy Garlington was up for the challenge.

By Russ Klettke

Andy Garlington VP and Controller Envision Healthcare

Liza Hippler

Envision Healthcare, a national hospitalbased physician group, is headquartered in Nashville. But because the company includes assets acquired in a 2016 merger with AMSURG, an ambulatory surgery center management company, some of its accounting operations were located in Plantation, Florida, as of the end of 2018.

Andy Garlington was hired to change that. Already based in Franklin, Tennessee (a Nashville suburb), with an impressive record as a division chief financial officer with another healthcare company, Garlington was brought on board with Envision to move the entire accounting department to Music City USA.

As Envision’s physician services controller and vice president, Garlington knew he had his work cut out for him. Nashville is an economically healthy city and considered one of the fastest-growing large metros in

Liza Hippler

the US. But how many Floridians would be willing to relocate 900 miles north to a place they don’t know?

As the process began to unfold in early 2019, that amount turned out to be about 3 percent—Garlington essentially had to create a department from scratch. Adding to this not so small feat, he had roughly six months to do so, including the ramp-up time required to strategically map out how they would do this. Fortunately, Garlington has prior experience building departments—but this was a heavy lift. With so

few people making the move, he needed to recruit a new group of team members who were aligned with Envision’s mission. Fortunately, Nashville had some characteristics that made the job a little easier.

“There are seventeen publicly traded healthcare companies in the Nashville region,” says Garlington, hinting at the healthcare-specific labor pool from which to draw accounting and finance people.

But he wasn’t just looking for people who are good at crunching numbers. Garlington is a believer in teams

and teamwork. He also likes people to have a balanced life, at work and outside of it. The mix of people they would hire in Tennessee would ideally mirror that same attitude—and be the type to get on board for creating a new department. “I wanted people who could go on this adventure with us,” he says. The goal wasn’t just to recreate a department, but to actually build a better department from the bottom up.

An all-hands-on-deck approach, with the clock ticking, called for bringing in an outside recruiting firm, VACO Talent & Solutions Services, based in Brentwood, Tennessee. “It was critical for us to get good candidates fast,” says Garlington.

That meant that the firm brought both a process and a track record to the task, which included developing a strategy, all the templates for offering positions to successful candidates, and, of course, an ability to find people who were qualified candidates. “We were offering good jobs with a great company. We wanted the kind of people who valued the opportunity to start something new.”

The tight time frame, beginning in January 2019 with most hires made by June, meant that Garlington was conducting multiple interviews each day for weeks on end. One day he saw nine candidates, spending up to an hour with each. “The candidates were prescreened by the time they got to me,” he says. “Generally, I could tell if a candidate was a likely ‘yes’ or ‘no’ within the first ten minutes.”

Because this was a recruitment task of scale, candidates were also sourced from the nearby cities of

Birmingham, Chicago, and Memphis. When all hires were complete, about 10 percent of the team had to be relocated from those cities.

Despite the magnitude of Garlington’s project, VACO’s Senior Director Jessica Kashyap Ragauskis says his strategy was especially effective and well executed.

“Andy is a personable and committed executive who has terrific project management skills,” Ragauskis says. “When it came to executing the relocation of Envision’s Physician Practice accounting function of more than one hundred employees, Envision couldn’t have hired a more competent and dedicated professional who would get the job done. Andy’s ability to hire talent and build an exceptional team from the ground up made this transition seamless. His leadership skills also helped his team adhere to a very aggressive timeline, all while maintaining great morale.”

All new hires were found with a month to spare, prior to the self-imposed July 1 deadline. This afforded Garlington time to execute a smooth transition, including a period when several members of his Nashville staff were able to travel to Plantation for orientation by outgoing staff.

Despite the seeming awkwardness that would accompany these orientations, Garlington says all outgoing staff proved to be great resources to new team members.

"Although this was a tough message for our outgoing staff, we worked with a national firm to ensure that we supported our staff through the transition by both offering a competitive incentive package to

“That gives us more time to digest the numbers. That means the clinicians now get more time to spend with patients.”

encourage retention and professional support to assist in their job search,” Garlington explains. “I can't say enough about the professionalism we saw from our staff during that time, which had a huge impact on the success of the transition.”

Garlington is clear that with new staff, there is a sense of a fresh start. New hires were screened for their adaptability to new technologies—an increasingly important component of all aspects of healthcare, administrative accounting functions included. “We have to hire people who are comfortable with software,” he says. “The

day-to-day tasks are much more efficiently handled with the tools we have available to us.”

The implication is that in a workplace using best practices and the newest software, cost efficiencies go up along with service levels. This theory was borne out by data at Envision. Even with a somewhat smaller staff, about 20 percent fewer people than before, they are able to close the books in approximately 15 percent less time.

“That gives us more time to digest the numbers,” says Garlington. “That means the clinicians now get more time to spend with patients.” AHL

Liza Hippler

By Billy Yost & KC Esper

Today’s Team Members, Tomorrow’s Leaders

Senior Director of Global Legal Operations

Kristi

Anne Gedid brings her passion for solving puzzles to helping her legal operations team grow and thrive

“Anyone who has spent time working with me will tell you that I am very passionate about what I do,” Kristi Anne Gedid says. Certainly, taking on the role of senior director of global legal operations for global pharmaceutical company Mylan is no small feat, especially considering the company’s recent growth. But Gedid’s dedication to her work, her willingness to be courageous, think big, and take calculated risks, as well as her patience and persistence make her the perfect person for the job.

“I’m a big process and procedure person, much to some people’s chagrin,” Gedid says, laughing. “I like to build things, set them free, and watch them work.”

The senior director who describes every chance to find a new efficiency as a “little treasure hunt” has spent the past nearly six years helping build out standardization and transparency strategies for a globalized company in addition to building her own legal operations team.

“We had to try to piece together a bunch of different business models, practices, and cultures in which people are operating,” Gedid explains. “The biggest challenge has been trying to get everyone standardized into one Mylan, with common processes despite operating in different ways all over the world.”

Gedid says the legal department was able to mitigate many of the challenges

simply by working cross-functionally and in concert with the business. “We rely on that support from the business to back anything we’re trying to standardize or put in place,” Gedid says. “We’ve worked well together as a group across all of our different regions and, fortunately, we have a good group of people regardless of where they are, who make sure things come together.”

Gedid doesn’t believe there is one secret ingredient that makes a team successful. As her team has grown, however, she has learned how to make it stronger regardless of which part of the world they’re in. Taking the time to converse individually with her local legal operations members, planning whole-team meetings, and bonding teams throughout

“These are the types of individuals that I have found bring the most to the table. They are creative, thoughtful, highly adaptive to change, and hungry to use their talents to be part of building something great.”

CARING FOR CRITTERS

Among Kristi Anne Gedid’s passions is her work as a board member for the Animal Care & Assistance Fund (ACAF), a nonprofit organization that assists qualified family-owned pets that need emergency or specialty care.

“I have always been a huge animal lover,” Gedid says. “I currently have three dogs and two cats. All but two are rescues. I am always looking for ways to support local efforts to raise money for various shelters in the Pittsburgh area. It brings me a great deal of happiness to help families and pets who otherwise cannot help themselves.”

the entire business builds trust, rapport, and successful working relationships, she says.

“Having a group of individuals who cannot understand each other and collaborate will cause a team to fail every time,” Gedid notes. “I have been lucky enough to have an incredible team of men and women at Mylan. They are a perfect blend of backgrounds, personalities, and cultures, driven by a common purpose.”

The director of legal operations role— let alone the team—isn’t something that many would have found even half a decade ago.

“If you look back at the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium five years ago, they only had a couple hundred members. Now there’s more than three thousand,” Gedid explains. “What I bring to the role that may be different from those in the past who have been similarly positioned is that I have both the business as well as the legal background. That gives me a unique ability and perspective to be able to communicate effectively with both groups.” Gedid has been able to act as a liaison of sorts between legal and business, effectively keeping a foot in both camps to help facilitate communication and cooperation.

Another reason Gedid has been able to operate so effectively is the degree to which she has gone to learn about Mylan’s business. “I really embedded myself into the business and asked a lot of questions, even when they would get annoyed with me,” Gedid says jovially. “They understood that I really wanted to understand and appreciate what they were doing. And now, I’m able to sit in a place where I can have a conversation with a general counsel in a particular region and recognize when a certain process they’re working to implement may be able to be repurposed to another location so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”

Kristi Anne Gedid Senior Director of Global Legal Operations Mylan

As a leader, Gedid brings that same energy into the rest of her growing team by hiring individuals who are strive for continued education and self-improvement. She looks specifically for people who stray from straight-line career paths—people who work across different industries, different cultures, or have unique educational backgrounds. In fact, within her team of thirteen, almost half have gone back to school to earn MBAs, Master of Laws degrees, or JDs.

“These are the types of individuals that I have found bring the most to the table,” Gedid says. “They are creative, thoughtful, highly adaptive to change, and hungry to use their talents to be part of building something great. Their commitment to the team and their work ethic is something to be emulated. I am very proud of each and every one of them.”

Gedid explains that the high standards she places on herself cascade to her team.

Throughout her professional career, she has learned that leading by example and becoming a mentor is the best way to inspire others to become leaders and mentors of the future.

“Be an advocate for someone, whether it is related to your professional or personal life,” Gedid advises. “I have been fortunate to have a leadership team that gives me guidance and support, and I am incredibly grateful for the time they have set aside to coach me toward reaching my goals.” AHL

Increasingly, legal functions tell us they want to operate more efficiently and transparently, and have insight into the data, analytics, and intelligence associated with their legal matters and operations. General counsels want to relieve their in-house teams from performing high-volume repeatable activities and transform them into a more integrated, strategic partner. EY can help. www.ey.com

Congratulations to Kristi for being featured in American Healthcare Leader and for being a leader in legal operations in the industry.

Standard processes, transparent results and an integrated approach –this is what Kristi Anne Gedid is delivering at Mylan.

The better the question. The better the answer. The better the world works.

“I’m a big process and procedure person, much to some people’s chagrin. I like to build things, set them free, and watch them work.”

By American Healthcare Leader

Thirty Years and 30 Tips for Instilling Change

With more than three decades of experience working with healthcare, finance, and law, Executive Director of Enterprise Risk Management and Legal Operations Mark Boone shares his best advice for personal and professional development

Mark Boone Executive Director of Enterprise Risk Management & Legal Operations Bausch Healthcare Companies Inc.

and deployment—he’s able to work effectively with many functional leaders of the company to identify enterprise risks, measure their potential effect on the company, and with input from the executive committee of the company, to determine the probability, impact, and level of management control of each risk.

Then, with this information in hand, in partnership with functional leaders, Boone develops risk mitigation plans. He reports this information to the executive committee annually and to the audit committee of the board of directors quarterly.

At the start of 2019, Christina Ackermann, the executive vice president and general counsel of Bausch Health, asked Boone to also lead the legal operations department. He became responsible for the systems and processes involved in the management of legal function in the multibillion-dollar global company.

With a BA in business and an MBA in finance, Mark Boone started his career in finance, eventually leading to more senior roles, achieving VP, SVP, CFO, and CIO roles at divisions of Novartis, Ascom Hasler, McKesson, and Stryker. Always open to adding new skills, he then became vice president of compliance at Stryker Spine and chief compliance officer at Orthofix International and Exactech Inc.

In 2018, Boone joined Bausch Health Companies Inc. (Bausch Health)— then named Valent Pharmaceuticals

International—to become part of the corporate legal department and develop the global enterprise risk management office (ERMO), which had previously been managed by the consulting firm Ernst & Young.

With Boone’s broad business background and the many business functions he either led or was closely involved with over his career—from product development to regulatory registration, supply chain, finance, IT, ethics and compliance, upstream and downstream marketing, sales force development,

Using the due diligence skills developed in the senior finance roles he previously had, Boone first analyzed the department’s needs and developed a plan to implement a global legal management system. Bausch Health implemented a system that is configurable (rather than customizable), which allowed the legal operations team to quickly implement this system in the United States and then to move forward to a global implementation. Under Boone’s leadership, the legal operations team has developed and is implementing a global “strategic plan” for legal operations to meet stakeholder needs for effective, efficient systems and processes that provide timely, transparent information to legal leadership and senior management.

As evidenced throughout his experiences, Boone has always welcomed change in his professional life. He recently spoke to American Healthcare Leader about his “Top 30” pieces of advice for other professionals to champion change through every occasion.

Courtesy of Bausch Health

When Developing Goals

1. Take every opportunity to expand business knowledge and expertise.

2. Look for an answer as to why businesses pursue certain strategic goals.

3. Identify the issues and obstacles that either impede the achievement of these goals or serve as obstacles to be overcome.

4. Partner with stakeholders in all functions of the company.

5. Develop a team—one person can only do so much alone.

When Leading a Team

1. Have an open-door policy.

2. When meeting one-on-one with someone, focus on the person. Don’t multitask by reading emails, text messages, etc.

3. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

4. Learn and practice emotional intelligence.

5. Never make a decision based on emotional logic—i.e., making a decision when you are emotionally charged up. (You’ll always make the wrong decision!)

6. Set work goals: long-term (longer than one year), annual, quarterly, monthly, and weekly.

7. Keep monthly highlights of your achievements.

8. Make and meet your deadlines and communicate issues as far in advance as possible.

9. Practice the entrepreneurial approach to your job responsibilities—i.e., how would you do these if you owned the company?

10. Never let your boss be surprised— favorably or unfavorably—by information you have.

11. Remember, every soldier doesn’t aim to become a general. (It’s OK to have subject matter experts who are happy in their roles.)

12. Project management skills are often not emphasized enough. These skills are critical, regardless of your function.

When Enhancing Personal Development

1. Take every opportunity to add news skills to your experiential toolbox.

2. Seek to become well-rounded in business by gaining expertise in all areas of business that interest you.

3. When at work, be in the present.

4. Work is important, but don’t lose focus on your personal growth.

5. Take the vacation time the company provides. (Studies show that employees who take breaks and time away are more productive!)

6. Continue your education—plan to add at least one new skill to your experience every two years.

When Establishing a New Function or Coming into an Existing One

1. Conduct due diligence into the company’s needs.

2. Analyze the current state of affairs.

3. Receive input from stakeholders. (Plan on listening 80 percent of the time.)

4. Develop a project plan.

5. Document key processes.

6. Over-communicate—up, down, and across the “chain of command.”

7. Partner with all functions of the company to continually increase your understanding of the industry and company.

The overriding theme of Boone’s career has been to be open to—and to seek—change and growth in his professional career. Always curious to understand the “why” of business strategies and decisions, he has transformed himself from a “finance person” to a broad-based businessperson with expertise in finance, IT, strategy and business development, ethics and compliance, and now enterprise risk management and legal operations. In closing, Boone challenges us by asking, “What new skill will you look to add to your experiential toolbox in the coming year?” AHL

Congratulations. Thomson Reuters is proud to recognize the work and accomplishments of Mark Boone, Bausch Health. Mark’s dedication and insights are leading positive changes in the healthcare industry.

By A.J. Zak

Take Risks, Make Impressions

When Deborah Vancleave moved to Missouri in 2016 to become vice president of revenue cycle at Mosaic Life Care, her first task was to create a healthy patient financial experience at the healthcare system.

The lifelong Californian had already worked in healthcare for more than three decades, with roles ranging from director of patient financial services at health systems to owning a healthcare medical management and billing company. Given

her breadth of experience, she knew she would be able to add value at Mosaic.

When she arrived in St. Joseph, Missouri, Vancleave knew she had to hit the ground running at Mosaic. So she made an early judgment call to replace two software systems that had proven to be ineffective, she says. The situation required a speed to market approach, and Vancleave had to lead her team through a great deal of change while gaining buy-in through communication

As a healthcare industry veteran, Deborah Vancleave knows that the best patient experiences come from keeping up with the pace of change

and inclusion. It wasn’t ideal, but it was necessary at the time.

But as a thirty-five-year veteran of the healthcare industry, Vancleave also knows that adaptability is key to survival. She is no stranger to breaking molds when changes need to be made. Early in her career, she quickly worked her way up through various positions in corporate healthcare before running her own business. Now, she channels all that she has learned over the years into her role at Mosaic, where her focus is on optimizing the patient financial experience.

“Deborah’s a visionary,” says Paul Shorrosh, founder and CEO of AccuReg, a front-end revenue cycle software provider. “She understands how critical it is to address issues at the front of the revenue cycle in order to increase net

patient revenue, versus the more costly back end approach. AccuReg is proud to help execute her vision.”

Even with all her expertise, Vancleave knows a constantly shifting healthcare industry will always keep her on her toes.

“Your experience is only as good as the last twenty-four months, honestly,” she says. “Because that’s how quickly things change. And that’s how adaptable you need to be. It’s easy to say ‘Oh, thirty-five years of experience,’ but with the fast pace of change, just when you think you’re an expert, everything changes. What have you done lately? That’s really what is important.”

Vancleave started off in the industry as a receptionist for a healthcare business in her native Orange County, California. After a matter of months, she found

herself wanting more stimulation. She was hired into accounts receivable, and six months later, she became supervisor of the department. After spending time in various positions in corporate healthcare, she and a business partner decided to purchase a billing service and grew it into a successful medical management company called Advanced Healthcare Solutions, which they ran for more than a decade.

Before joining Mosaic Life Care in 2016, Vancleave worked from Southern California as a senior leader for revenue cycle at Texas-based Conifer Health Solutions. She decided to take the leap to Mosaic because of the talented team there, she says. She also believed the revenue cycle hadn’t received the capital investment that it deserved.

Deborah Vancleave VP of Revenue Cycle Mosaic Life Care

“I think my first objective was really to build a world-class revenue cycle, and the way I knew we should do that is to put the patient financial experience in the center of everything that we do,” she says. Her passion for providing an excellent patient experience stems from the fact that the revenue cycle is often the first and last part of an organization to interact with a patient.

“I think revenue cycle has a unique opportunity to make the best first impression,” Vancleave says.

Additionally, Vancleave sought to measure the patient financial experience. "That's still a visionary concept for health systems," said Jayson Yardley, CEO of Avadyne Health, a close partner of Mosaic that helps the company measure, predict, and improve patient financial experience through data. "Under Deborah's leadership, patient complaints dropped from dozens per week to two per month."

Part of Mosaic’s growth strategy included the purchase of a new acute care hospital earlier this year. Mosaic’s task was to integrate the new hospital with their electronic medical record platform in the span of about a hundred days. That feat required skill and finesse.

“It was miraculous,” Vancleave says. “We’re still stabilizing, but the team came together, which was pretty remarkable because most of the team had little to no experience in that type of system integration.”

Beyond the immediate and midterm changes she’s spearheaded or been part of since arriving at Mosaic, Vancleave also has a long-range plan focused on making sure the right people are in the right positions and also keeping up with

‘‘Your experience is only as good as the last twenty-four months . . . It’s easy to say ‘Oh, thirty-five years of experience,’ but with the fast pace of change, just when you think you’re an expert, everything changes. What have you done lately? That’s really what is important.”

ClearBalance is proud to partner with Mosaic Life Care, making care affordable for patients in the community with a zero-interest financing program.

Congratulations to Deborah Vancleave, VP of Revenue Cycle, and team for their great strides in enhancing the patient experience.

technological improvements. She created a new department to support technology tools, and employee training to use them. All of that has been crucial in building a strong team that is continually learning, and therefore continually adaptable.

Keeping up with technological advancements is just one part of evolving as a healthcare leader, though. Vancleave believes industry professionals also need to spend less time pigeonholing themselves into one skill set and spend more time expanding their knowledge base. They need to do a better job of accepting feedback as well, she says.

“I think all those things make us as nimble as possible,” Vancleave says.

“You have to communicate the reasons why, you have to communicate the value, and you have to communicate the outcomes expected,” Vancleave explains. “Because I think if you give teams what they desire—they desire a situation where they can be successful. They desire autonomy. They desire respect. And I think if you provide those things, you can achieve great outcomes.” AHL

www.clearbalance.org

Communication between leadership and employees has been key to strengthening the Mosaic team. Vancleave reflects on her decision early on at the organization to unilaterally make changes to help the organization’s finances. She says sometimes it’s necessary for leaders to unilaterally make the call; however, it is important to explain moves like that to employees.

Avadyne Health, rated No. 1 in patient communications and financial satisfaction solutions by Black Book Research, provides self-pay account resolution and bad debt recovery services to 340+ hospitals including the largest, multi-hospital, health systems in the US. With patients’ expectations for healthcare services changing, Avadyne Health excels in addressing the increased need for better and less-complex patient financial communication, experiences, solutions, and technology. Our trained and caring professionals are passionate about the patient financial experience and strive to exceed patient expectations during every engagement on behalf of our clients, and have for over forty-eight years. For more information, visit avadynehealth.com.

“I think if you give teams what they desire—they desire an environment where they can be successful. They desire autonomy. They desire respect. And I think if you provide those things, you can achieve great outcomes.”

$175,000,000

Reduce Operations Costs

Labor expenses eliminated each year for working denials

300% Increase Cash Collections Average increase in pre-service cash collections for one year

$3,000,000,000

Prevent Denials

Value of denials avoided annually

Increase net patient revenue. Deliver price transparency.

AccuReg helps hospitals increase net revenue and deliver price transparency with transformative patient access solutions. Our cloud-based, AI-enhanced suite uses exception-based workflows, an intelligent rules engine, next-generation benefit validation, accurate out-of-pocket estimation and complete prior authorization management to improve revenue capture by preventing denials and collecting more cash at the revenue cycle’s front-end where cost is lower than a traditional, resource-draining back-end approach. Data

www.accuregsoftware.com

Registration Quality Assurance

Eligibility and Benefit Verification

Payment Estimation and Processing

Authorization Management

Identity Verification

Medical Necessity

Financial Assistance Screening

Order Management

By Sara Deeter

Shoulder to Shoulder

Karen Brieger on why HR executives need to work alongside employees and the business itself to understand both the people they work with and their role within the larger operation

“People are people,” says Karen Brieger, senior vice president of human resources at NextPhase Medical Devices LLC. “No matter what industry I’ve worked in—manufacturing, financial services, computer technology—people are still the same.”

For Brieger, understanding people—their quirks and feelings and motivations—is the easy part. It’s another thing entirely, she points out, to figure out how to use that knowledge in a way that furthers the company’s goals. At NextPhase, a New Jersey–based manufacturing company that focuses on the design, development, production, and assembly of leading-edge medical devices, Brieger strives to support the company in its mission to “make products that literally save people’s lives.”

American Healthcare Leader recently spoke with Brieger to gain insight into the strategies that she has found critical to her success as an HR executive: the need for HR departments to justify their existence before attempting to scale, the importance of enhancing one’s HR expertise with on-the-ground experience, and the essential role that empathy should play in all interactions with employees and clients alike.

Justify Your Existence

“One of the biggest challenges in scaling an HR team is justifying the cost,” Brieger says. “You could try to explain that scaling will help you bring people on or support the retention rate, but it’s hard to quantify that. To justify the need for additional HR people, you’ve got to be able to work with your CEO and CFO, and you’ve got to be able to put things in terms of hard costs.”

According to Brieger, anything you can put dollars and cents to is a priority

area. And one of the easiest areas to justify the dollars in, she believes, is recruiting. “For example, I looked at what we were spending in outside staffing agency fees and came up with a rough estimate of how many positions I thought the recruiter would be able to fill versus how many positions in total would need filled,” Brieger says. “And I was able to quantify that and put it in tangible terms.”

But it’s not all about translating HR needs to dollars and cents—HR executives also need to be sensitive to and mindful of what’s going on in the business.

“We are overhead. We are not revenue generators. We can’t go to the CFO or CEO and ask for another resource when our business unit managers are sitting there talking about revenues being down

or margins being squashed rather than growing,” the SVP says.

Walk A Mile

As Brieger notes, it’s one thing to learn the theory of workforce issues in a classroom or to continue developing your HR skill set using resources like the Society for Human Resources Management, known as SHRM. It’s another thing entirely to learn about the workforce, about the team and the business, by actually working with them.

“I want to understand teams better—to learn how I can help and support them,” Brieger says. “I’ve gone out in the field with salespeople, I’ve gotten sales calls, I go to the manufacturing plant, and I’ve worked on the production line to help

“Until you sit there for four or eight hours a day doing the same thing over and over again, you have no way of appreciating what an employee goes through on a daily basis.”

build a product. Until you sit there for four or eight hours a day doing the same thing over and over again, you have no way of appreciating what an employee goes through on a daily basis.

“That’s a big way that I’ve developed professionally,” Brieger continues. “Just by walking a mile in other people’s shoes.”

Everybody’s Human

“Everybody has a personal life, some good and some bad, and we can’t help but bring pieces of that into our work lives,” Brieger says. “There are real world choices that some of our employees have to make on a regular basis, choices like, ‘Do I feed my kids today, or do I purchase my medication? Am I buying winter coats for everybody, or am I putting oil in my tank so I can keep my house warm?’”

It can be hard to truly understand and appreciate circumstances like that, especially if you haven’t lived them yourself, Brieger acknowledges. “But when somebody is late or doesn’t show up to work, I’m not just going to write them off,” she says. “They may be a no-call because they’re a victim of domestic abuse or were just kicked out of the place they were living. When something happens, I sit with employees and talk to them about what’s going on.

“And some days, I’m more of a social worker or more of a therapist,” Brieger adds. “Some days, I’ve gone home in tears because I carry so much of everyone else’s emotional burden. But once people know that you see them as a person, that you care about them as a human being, they are going to be so much more engaged and so much more motivated when they’re here.” AHL

Marsh & McLennan Agency commends

Karen Brieger for her innovative leadership and commitment to making NextPhase a rewarding place to work.

“But once people know that you see them as a person, that you care about them as a human being, they are going to be so much more engaged and so much more motivated when they’re here.”

The Impact

Executives know there is an increasing need to help individuals manage their own health anywhere and anytime. To do that, healthcare leaders are developing products and services and offering resources catered to different communities’ needs—all aimed at motivating them to stay engaged with their health and empowering them to be their best, at home or at work.

162. David Evans

166. Steve Janicak

170. Shawnte Mitchell

174. Lisa Replogle

177. Fernando Rinald

180. Ben H. Lewis

By Sara Deeter

From the Inside Out

Associate Chief Legal Officer David Evans on how his inhouse role helps fuel the top-notch service and community involvement at Sarasota Memorial Health Care System

As associate chief legal officer at Sarasota Memorial Health Care System (SMH), David Evans works primarily behind the scenes. And he prefers it that way, long intrigued by lawyers’ abilities to help clinicians navigate sticky regulatory processes. But the impact of his work—and the impact of the organization—is far from out of sight. As one of the largest public health systems in Florida, Sarasota feels an imperative to serve the community and make its hospitals the “best places” they can possibly be.

A Florida native, Evans fell in love with the day-to-day operational counsel role of a hospital lawyer after graduating from the University of Florida’s Fredric G. Levin College of Law. “Hospitals and health systems have such a breadth of issues that you can be called on to deal with on any given day,” Evans says. “It’s incredibly stimulating.”

And at Sarasota, a system known throughout the area for its top-quality care and services, Evans doesn’t have to look far for excitement. “Part of our mission is about striving to be the best place for patients,” Evans says. To play his part in that mission, Evans has enrolled in a master of health services and administration (MHSA) program, where he learns alongside clinicians, social workers, psychiatrists and mental health professionals, and even members of the insurance industry.

But because Sarasota is a public health system, Evans explains, being the “best place for patients” means far more than enrolling in new programs and employing leading-edge technologies. It means engaging with the community on fundamental level.

“Public hospitals have different responsibilities to the community—they are called on to create arrangements with local safety net organizations,” Evans says. And Sarasota Memorial in particular is focused on creating strong

community partnerships with local stakeholders, he emphasizes. “We work a lot with local law enforcement and nonprofit agencies serving the health of the community so that we are really looking at and dealing with the various social determinants of health.”

Because of this community focus, the care provided by a public hospital like Sarasota cannot simply be the care provided within the four walls of the building. “It’s where patients go, and what they deal with after they leave the hospital,” Evans says, “or where they’ve been and what they’ve gone through before they come here. The hospital has had a strategic focus on those transitions of care in and out of our hospital.”

One of Sarasota’s most impactful initiatives, according to Evans, is an initiative called the First 1,000 Days. “It’s a really unique opportunity to help get treatment to women and pediatric

patients,” he offers. “We’ve joined with sixty community partners to provide families with both prenatal and infant care, and our legal team has been intimately involved in that—taking an idea that everyone loves and formalizing it into a legal arrangement where it can be elastic and compliant.

“That is really the joy of being in-house counsel at a public hospital system,” Evans remarks, “to have that day-to-day impact and be part of a team that can help make those types of arrangements, which are so different than the normal contracts that hospital in-house counsel are usually involved in.”

To help sustain and build on such arrangements, Evans encourages his team to maintain an awareness of the bigger picture beyond the legal requirements. “You have to be aware of what local stakeholders are willing and able to participate in regarding the treatment

“Because I’m able to sit down and have face-to-face conversations with clinicians and healthcare service leaders, I’m better able to find ways to tackle these kinds of issues.”

PKFHealth, LLC, (“PKF”) has worked nationally with hospitals, medical schools, clinics and consortiums regarding technical Graduate Medical Education issues for over 22 years. Our strategies and e orts have helped our clients optimize allowable revenue, mitigate risk and implement strategic changes to enhance its teaching mission and improve their GME programs.

of patients in our community,” he says. “That has to happen before you can take any idea and memorialize it in a written agreement that is executable and operational for everyone.”

Evans’s stakeholders commend his consideration and approach to partnerships. “David is working hard to develop an excellent working relationship between the stakeholders at SMH, in-house counsel, and outside counsel,” says E. Zachary Rans, managing partner at Sarasota Shutts & Bowen office. “He has taken great care to communicate to the stakeholders the need for, and benefits of, legal input and has taken equally great care to make sure that legal effectively works with the stakeholders to understand and meet their needs. His sensitive and proactive approach is fostering relationships of trust and respect between all involved to the benefit of the hospital.”

services

Financing

Program Structure

Regulatory and Policy Issues

Faculty Performance

Consortium Development

Medicare Appeals

Provider Reimbursement Review Board Hearings

Program Feasibility

Medicare Cost Reporting and Business Strategy

Evans himself has recently been appointed to the county’s advisory board, in which capacity he is heavily involved in the local continuum of care program, supported by Suncoast. “The program really tries to tackle homelessness in our area—the homeless population here is staggering, and we as a community haven’t done enough yet,” Evans says. “They reached out to me in part because I’ve helped navigate some of the issues facing homeless patients.

265 Franklin Street, Suite 1702 Boston, MA 02110 617.963.5299

cfrancazio@pk ealth.com

“I’ve made sure they’re able to get treated, particularly when they’re minors, and that they’re able to get medical information and find follow-up care,” he continues. “Because I’m able to sit down and have face-to-face conversations with clinicians and healthcare service leaders, I’m better able to find ways to tackle these kinds of issues.”

And as Sarasota expands its footprint, Evans and other leaders at the hospital

are striving to ensure that it remains the “best place” for patients throughout the community. “It’s a great time to be a part of what Sarasota is doing here,” says the associate legal officer. “Every day, we’re helping real people. And now we’re building on that foundation, growing our services while maintaining—or increasing—our quality.” AHL

PKF congratulates David Evans on this welldeserved recognition. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with him and many of his colleagues at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

“That is really the joy of being in-house counsel at a public hospital system, to have that day-to-day impact . . . ”

An Engaging Presence

Steve Janicak, president of the Healthcare Business Unit at Tivity Health, knows the value of getting people socially and physically active

By Keith Loria

Steve Janicak President of Healthcare Business Unit Tivity Health

Advertising was always the dream for Steve Janicak, but he found his calling in healthcare where he could improve the lives of older adults, like his parents who didn’t have access to resources that his company provides today. Janicak grew up in the Motor City and was fascinated by advertising and its messages. After college, he spent the first decade of his career in advertising, leaving Detroit to open his own advertising office in Atlanta.

“It was during this time I had my first foray into healthcare. I was recruited to be the chief marketing officer for Matria Healthcare, which did care management for women who went into preterm labor, and there was also a disease management component,” Janicak says.

Janicak enjoyed working for Matria, and when the CFO left to join a Nashville firm called MedSolutions, he recruited Janicak as the company’s chief marketing officer. From there, Janicak continued in healthcare, leading sales and marketing teams for IPG and CareCentrix and focusing on supporting health plans serving Medicare and Medicaid members.

Eventually, Janicak joined Franklin, Tennessee-based Tivity Health to support the company’s health improvement programs, particularly those that serve Medicare Advantage members.

The flagship brand of the company’s healthcare division is SilverSneakers, America’s largest senior fitness program sold to Medicare Advantage plans. The company enables healthy lifestyle choices for Medicare Advantage members to achieve better health and reduces medical costs for Medicare Advantage plans by keeping their older population healthier. Programs like this piqued Janicak’s interest and led him to join the company in 2016 as chief growth officer.

“The part that really excited me about this was that I was able to get on the other side of the equation,” Janicak explains. “After spending years advising people against lifestyle choices and explaining how our plans support them, people perceived our health plans as a ‘sick care’ service. I saw this as a chance to help seniors by improving their health and encouraging healthy lifestyle choices.”

This was of great personal interest to Janicak, who served as a caregiver for both of his parents before they were admitted into assisted living.

“My parents suffered from several health issues. Knowing what I know now, I believe social connections would have worked wonders for them,” he notes. “They also didn’t eat well or exercise and as their caregiver, I didn’t feel like I had the kind of support that Tivity Health now provides to caregivers through nutrition, fitness, and social connections.”

In January of 2019, Janicak was named president of Tivity Health’s Healthcare Business Unit, following Tivity Health’s acquisition of Nutrisystem, an industry-leading, customizable weight loss solution, which achieved the company’s vision to create an integrated portfolio of fitness, nutrition, and social engagement solutions to address social determinants of health.

As president, Janicak is responsible for sales, product development, client relations, marketing, member support, and data analytics within the Healthcare Business Unit.

“What we do on a day-to-day basis is to help our Medicare Advantage clients engage their members in meaningful programs that improve health and reduce medical costs,” he says. “To be a great partner, it’s important to understand these payors and their objectives.”

In addition to SilverSneakers and Nutrisystem, Tivity Health’s portfolio includes Prime Fitness, a program providing access to more than ten thousand fitness locations nationwide for individuals ages eighteen to sixty-four; WholeHealth Living, a complementary alternative medicine network offering services like chiropractic and acupuncture with a benefit management component; South Beach Diet, a heart-healthy weight management approach; and Wisely Well, a nutrition solution supporting individuals and caregivers who are seeking meal convenience or are recovering after hospitalization or living with chronic conditions.

“The goal now is to figure out how we can tackle the social determinants of health that are most relevant to members and our health plan customers,” Janicak says.

“We know we do fitness well. Now, we aim to provide our health plans and their beneficiaries resources to combat social isolation and loneliness to improve health by addressing social determinants of health.”

The newly launched Wisely Well product is one such way to achieve the goal of improving health by addressing the social determinants. Janicak explains that Nutrisystem’s commercial success, food development expertise, and national supply chain capabilities have been leveraged to develop Wisely Well meal plans. Wisely Well delivered meals provide seniors with convenient, sustainable nutrition. The meals are medically appropriate for those experiencing conditions or those who are discharged from the hospital—circumstances that cause food insecurity for older adults.

Seniors are acutely vulnerable to nutrition challenges stemming from chronic conditions or recovery from extended hospital stays. Hospital readmissions costs Medicare $26 billion annually, with about $17 billion spent on avoidable hospital visits after discharge.

An additional significant social determinant of health for seniors is also social isolation, which affects as many as 43 percent of seniors.

In a survey of SilverSneakers members against a control group of older adults, SilverSneakers participants were less socially isolated and lonely. Twenty percent fewer participants suffered from social isolation, and 25 percent fewer participants suffered from loneliness.

“In 2019, we launched our first TV ad campaign in the first quarter when people are considering their New Year’s resolutions,” Janicak says. “We had record breaking numbers of people checking their eligibility on SilverSneakers.com, enrolling in the program.

“We understand that for some people, there’s an intimidation factor when they think about going to a gym or fitness facility for the first time,” Janicak continued. “We can coordinate a first visit for our SilverSneakers members to make the experience easier. If there is a decline in visits, our Experience Center reaches out to SilverSneakers members to help them return.”

With a solid strategic plan and a range of solutions to address many of the key social determinants of health, Janicak is ready to help make the world a healthier place. AHL

“What we do on a day-to-day basis is to help our Medicare Advantage clients engage their members in meaningful programs that improve health and reduce medical costs.”

By Sara Deeter

Driving the Cure

Senior Vice President and General Counsel

Shawnte Mitchell leverages every tool available to help Aptevo Therapeutics’ research team develop a “healthy” cure for cancer

Seattle-based biotech company Aptevo Therapeutics is trying to find a cure for cancer—but a “healthy” cure, notes Shawnte Mitchell. As senior vice president and general counsel at Aptevo, Mitchell tries to make sure employees have everything they need—from legal documents to the company culture—to continue with their groundbreaking work.

When Mitchell first set foot on the Stanford University campus in 1995, she

was convinced that she would one day become a physician. She majored in biological sciences and even took the MCAT, but after graduation she took a gap year that brought things into focus for her.

“I was in New York, and I knew a lot of people there who were in medical school or their residencies or were already doctors,” Mitchell recalls. “I realized that while I was really passionate about medicine, I wasn’t as passionate

about actually being a physician. And that’s a career that you really should be passionate about.”

Mitchell still wanted to be involved in healthcare, even if it wasn’t as a physician, so she enrolled in the JD program at the George Washington University Law School in 2001. Upon graduating, Mitchell was offered a position as an associate at Ropes & Gray LLP, which boasted a premier healthcare law

Shawnte Mitchell SVP and General Counsel Aptevo Therapeutics

Whitney Hardie

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR CAREER—CREATIVELY

Throughout her years in leadership roles, Shawnte Mitchell has learned that women need to go after what they want—but creatively. “Be open to nontraditional ways of doing life so that you can get done what you want to get done,” Mitchell advises. “Maybe you need a different travel schedule or more work-from-home flexibility. Just take control of your career.”

practice. But it was when she transitioned to the in-house legal department at Emergent BioSolutions that Mitchell was able to transform her legal career.

“I learned all about the things that pharmaceutical companies need to do to keep the doors open and the products developed,” Mitchell says of her tenure at the biopharmaceutical company. “I learned about supply chains, biologics manufacturing, master services agreements for consultants, how to assist with marketing, and all of the other internal machinations that are needed for a pharmaceutical company to do what it does.”

Very soon, Mitchell’s talent and expertise caught the eye of Marvin White, a former board director at Emergent BioSolutions and the current president and CEO at Aptevo Therapeutics. In fact, when Emergent BioSolutions began planning to spin off the company to become Aptevo Therapeutics in 2015, Mitchell says, “I reached out to Marvin, told him I would be interested in being the general counsel, and asked if he

Whitney Hardie

would consider me for the position. After internal consultation with Emergent senior management, he gave me the job.”.

Officially founded in 2016, Aptevo Therapeutics is a publicly traded biotech company that specializes in building immuno-oncology therapeutics. “We make antibody-like molecules that use your immune system to target cancers,” Mitchell explains. “The idea is that, because it’s your own cells that are mobilizing the attack against the cancers, it should be healthier than chemotherapy or radiation.”

Unlike the large pharmaceutical companies that offer dozens or even hundreds of different products, Aptevo focuses exclusively on this antibody technology, Mitchell says. And because Aptevo only has one product in the clinic—one priority—everyone at the company has to be committed to making that product work, despite the inevitable challenges they face along the way.

“We’ve had a number of setbacks where some of the product candidates we thought were going to be great didn’t turn out that way,” Mitchell acknowledges. “We’ve had to pivot and exercise a lot of patience and flexibility. As general counsel, it’s my job to work with the business as it looks under every rock possible to make this product work.”

Mitchell is especially, and personally, proud of that sense of resilience while

in her role as head of HR and corporate affairs when Aptevo first spun out of Emergent. “We’re like the little engine that could,” Mitchell says with a laugh. “We don’t wallow in setbacks: we look at what happened and try to learn from it.”

But those setbacks do make it more difficult to keep employees engaged, Mitchell acknowledges, which is one reason why she prioritized the professional development of each and every Aptevo employee, from the receptionist to the CEO, even instituting a leadership training program within the organization.

“Caring about people is important to us,” Mitchell remarks. “We want our employees to think of themselves as owners of the organization—but if you’re not happy with your work, if you don’t have opportunities for growth or a manager who empowers you, you’re not going to want to help figure out ways to make the business better.”

This culture of caring for all people at Aptevo and helping them be the best they can be reflects the company’s fundamental mission, Mitchell says. At the end of the day, Aptevo not only aims to care for all people who are afflicted with cancer but to do that in a healthy way, a way that helps those people be their best selves without any fear of the debilitating side effects typically associated with cancer treatments. And every opportunity to learn is one step closer to a cure. AHL

“As general counsel, it’s my job to help the business look under every rock possible to make this product work.”

By Sara Verdi

Not Your Typical Accountant

HonorHealth’s Lisa Replogle uses her light-hearted leadership approach to connect with team members and create an honest, welcoming work environment

To Lisa Replogle, vice president of finance at HonorHealth, leadership is not just about leading— it’s about listening and also having a sense of humor. Replogle joined HonorHealth in the middle of a huge transition. “One of the things that was apparent to me very early on was the need to do some team building,” she says, “So, I decided to do some early team building exercises that focused on goofy, getting-to-know-you type games.”

But Replogle didn’t just organize these team building exercises, she also participated in them. “I wanted people to get to know me and become familiar with my leadership style. I think that in these exercises is where I developed my saying, ‘Even if my door is closed, I have an open-door policy.’”

The strength in the exercises was the reinforcement of collaboration, which Replogle attributes to be another huge pillar in leadership. “Sometimes you have to make

Lisa Replogle VP of Finance HonorHealth

an unpopular decision, and you as a leader may not even agree with that decision, but it is your job to get people on board, to collaborate, and to build trust,” she says.

Beyond those early team building exercises, Replogle believes that infusing humor into the workplace, more specifically her out-of-office email response, encourages a good-natured, collaborative atmosphere.

“An employee sent me an article one time about out-of-office messages, and I took it to heart. I started writing emails with much more description. For example, my uncle won tickets to see Taylor Swift, but he had no clue who she was. My aunt offered them to my daughter and me, so I went ahead and put in my out-of-office message: ‘When your eighty-two-year-old uncle wins tickets to Taylor Swift and has no idea who she is, you go!’” she says, laughing.

“These messages allow me to engage people in a way that they probably otherwise wouldn’t engage with me.

I’m not afraid to laugh, to make fun of myself, or to put myself out there,” she notes. And because of her lighthearted approach, Replogle doesn’t consider herself a typical accountant.

“Someone once told me that I have an engaging personality, which, they say, is rare for an accountant,” she jokes. In a past role, she enthusiastically participated in a flash mob at a company-wide meeting. “I love to throw humor into my presentations or team building exercises. One team building activity was to pick from a collection of items like a box of tissues or a ruler or a stapler. Each team then had to create an online dating profile or a resume for the object they picked. We had so much fun with that.”

To gain a sense of how she is as a leader, Replogle goes straight to the source: the people she works with on a daily basis. “I am open and honest, and in being that, I have found that people trust you, and they want to work

for you and help you,” she says, noting that she asked her peers and team members to review her leadership style. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her team offered sincere, thoughtful words.

One employee remarked, “You have, as a leader, the ability to see and interpret different perspectives which add depth, clarity, and color. You do it with humility. You’re not afraid to dive into the trenches when it’s appropriate.” Another team member commented, “Your leadership strategy of communication and team-building makes you trustworthy and people believe in you, which is easier said than done.” The final employee comment she offered echoes the other sentiments: “I’ve never seen you shy away from doing the grunt work when an issue or concern has been brought to your attention—a trait that I appreciate as you practice a level of professionalism with humanity.”

Replogle’s approach to leadership with communication, collaboration, and humor has an excellent track record for success as evidenced through her employee engagement scores, which have been incredibly high over the past few years. “Higher than the national

healthcare average,” she says, which is certainly apparent given the gracious remarks made by her colleagues.

In addition to her role at HonorHealth, Replogle is also the finance representative on the board of HonorHealth Desert Mission, which supports the organization’s community outreach by serving those in greater Phoenix through a variety of programs. “I love Desert Mission,” she says. “We have a food bank, as well as a child learning center and an adult day healthcare center for adults with dementia or injuries that don’t allow them to be at home alone. These two centers are in the same building, which allows the children and the elderly to interact regularly to help them reach their full potential for health and self-sufficiency.”

Replogle’s shining leadership approach and penchant for laughter are evident in this role, too. Executive Director of Desert Mission Sue Sadecki says to Replogle, “In the few years that I have been extremely fortunate to work with you, I have recognized that your leadership style is incredibly thoughtful, honest, and extremely sincere. You are an absolute delight to work with, and most importantly, you have an incredible sense of humor.” AHL

“Sometimes you have to make an unpopular decision, and you as a leader may not even agree with that decision, but it is your job to get people on board, to collaborate, and to build trust.”

By Sara Deeter

The Backbone of Care

Fernando Rinald has long seen a critical connection between supply management and patient care, and at OSF HealthCare, he works to strengthen that connection throughout the state of Illinois

Fernando Rinald may operate on the supply chain side of healthcare, but his mission is the same as any doctor’s—to help save lives.

It is the duty of any supply chain executive, Rinald explains, to help improve patient outcomes by lowering healthcare-related costs and ensuring the efficient, reliable provision of critical supplies. And as VP of the supply chain

collaborative at OSF HealthCare, Rinald is dedicating himself to achieving that mission on a larger scale than is possible for any single healthcare organization by collaborating with a network of hospitals, clinics, and healthcare centers all across the state of Illinois.

Rinald went to college never imagining that he would end up working in a business-oriented role. But after

completing a degree in philosophy at Eckerd College, Rinald obtained a position on the staff at Deaconess Medical Center and began a decades-long career in healthcare operations.

“I really enjoyed helping people and being able to care for those that were coming to us in their most vulnerable state,” Rinald recalls of his days transporting, prepping, and cleaning up after

surgeries at Deaconess. “When I moved into the purchasing department, it was like a light bulb went off. I really started to realize the granularity of the logistics and the infrastructure behind everything in a hospital—I spent time after work watching surgeries and really appreciating how products were used.”

And by 1998, just three years after Rinald graduated from Eckerd, he found himself working as an assistant director at Highlands Regional Medical Center in Sebring, Florida. Working in a senior role so early in his career certainly presented its own challenges, Rinald acknowledges, but because he was in a leadership role at a smaller hospital, he was able to gain key insights into “how the different departments function, what’s important to those departments, and how the finances work at a macro level.”

After securing that first leadership role, Rinald held progressive roles at Health Management Associates Inc., during which time he not only increased his tactical knowledge of supply chains but also helped create a supply chain from scratch for a new hospital within the Physicians Regional Healthcare System.

In 2014, Rinald’s expertise led him to OSF Healthcare, a nonprofit integrated health system based in Peoria, Illinois. Transitioning to a nonprofit organization from the world of for-profit healthcare has been eye-opening, Rinald says. “What I’ve found is that your priorities shift—and it’s a delightful shift,” the VP enthuses. “You’re moving from the concern of stock prices and margins back towards patients, community, mission, partners, charity, your fellow employees, and the well-being of those we serve.

“We do business,” Rinald continues, “but we keep the community and the patient at the heart of what we do.”

As VP of OSF’s supply chain collaborative, Rinald is tasked with overseeing the supply chain team, sourcing and contracting as well as developing standards for supply chain governance. “The collaborative has been run in some shape or form since the 1980s, and in its historic state it has been more of an affiliate network,” Rinald explains. “We have a group of affiliated facilities that would like access to our contracts, and we offer our contracts outward to them so they can lower their costs.”

This type of network is especially valuable in rural areas like central Illinois, Rinald says, as it prevents smaller communities from being “taken advantage of by the vendor community” simply because “they don’t have the volume to leverage a rational price point.”

But now, Rinald shares, OSF is expanding on that mission to engage member organizations in a collaborative forum that allows clinicians and supply chain members to review offerings together. Clinicians help supply chain members determine the most efficacious offering for standardization among the group, resulting a consolidated, clinically preferred offering at best-in-class cost. Rinald is also aligning other portions of his team to help member organizations “actively maximize the use of the contract portfolio and understand where they’ve got contract disconnects, where they’re not utilizing agreements, and where they could lower costs.”

In other words, Rinald says, the supply chain collaborative is now designed to

Fernando Rinald VP of Supply Chain Collaborative OSF HealthCare

be truly collaborative, not just an affiliation. “If we can come at it from this collaborative perspective, we can get our supply chain leaders from among the membership around the table with our stakeholders to really explore the space and understand where clinicians prefer to go, how we can operationalize that, and how we can standardize to lower cost, then we effectively improve patient outcomes and financial sustainability,” Rinald remarks.

To facilitate this rebranding effort, Rinald and his team have gone above and beyond in their efforts to listen to the other collaborative members. Each organization has their own priorities, and their own business practices, he explains, and it is his team’s job to help find a strategic direction that works for everyone.

But no matter what, Rinald keeps his eyes fixed on the bigger picture. “Our social mission is to care for the well-being of our communities and patients,” he says, “and we want to extend that mission through our collaborative members because that’s what their mission is as well. If we can help them not just limp along but really thrive just by applying a little more business acumen in our supply chain, let’s do it.” AHL

Premier Inc. (NASDAQ: PINC) is a leading healthcare improvement company, uniting more than 4,000 US healthcare organizations and approximately 175,000 other organizations to transform healthcare. With integrated data and analytics, collaboratives, supply chain solutions, consulting, and other services, Premier enables better care and outcomes at a lower cost. PremierInc.com

“Our social mission is to care for the well-being of our communities and patients, and we want to extend that mission through our collaborative members because that’s what their mission is as well.”

Ben H. Lewis Senior Managing Director and Head of Institutional Sales TIAA Individual & Institutional Services LLC

Ready to Retire?

A nest egg just doesn’t cut it anymore.

TIAA’s Ben H. Lewis highlights the importance of having a retirement plan that provides a steady stream of income and details an organization’s efforts to help employers and employees alike benefit from those plans.

By Sara Deeter

Ben H. Lewis has spent his entire professional life involved with retirement planning. From his first job explaining benefits to a live audience of retirees to his current position as senior managing director and head of institutional sales at TIAA Individual & Institutional Services LLC, Lewis has dedicated himself to helping Americans understand why they should save for retirement—and how they can save.

A Fortune 100 financial services organization, TIAA specializes in retirement planning for educators and healthcare professionals. “Income is the outcome,” Lewis says. “We focus on helping people get a steady stream of income in retirement—which is critical to avoid the risk of outliving your savings. Our commitment to improving outcomes is best demonstrated by the $459 billion in lifetime income benefits we’ve paid to retired participants since our founding in 1918.”

But as Lewis has learned over the years, ample money itself is not always the biggest obstacle in guaranteeing that steady stream of income.

“Financial literacy was a huge challenge when I first started out and it’s still a challenge today,” he notes. “People want to pretend money troubles don’t exist, that it’s not a problem. But turning a blind eye doesn’t mean it’ll turn out any better.

“So, the first step is to just get people engaged,” Lewis continues, “engaged long enough that they reflect on and learn more about their individual financial needs, which are basic to their own survival and well-being.”

At TIAA, Lewis and his colleagues work to engage healthcare employees and employers alike in strategic retirement planning discussions.

For healthcare employers, Lewis explains, retirement planning is critical to “recruiting, retaining, and retiring.” Today, millennials are joining the healthcare workforce in record numbers at the same time that baby boomers

are exiting the workplace. But those baby boomers are retiring slowly, notes the senior managing director, often leaving the workplace well past the time they should be.

This is unprecedented, Lewis says. For the first time in history, five generations are working side by side in the US workforce. And as might be expected, this is causing some unprecedented issues.

“Employers are facing rising healthcare costs with an aging workforce. But because baby boomers are delaying retirement, employers are also seeing a disruption in their efforts to recruit and retain Gen Xers and millennials trying to move up in the workforce,” Lewis describes.

But when healthcare institutions offer structured benefit programs that help employees retire on time— and educate employees about those programs—those disruptions become much easier to navigate, if not avoid altogether. And as Lewis points out, the benefits to healthcare employers don’t stop there.

“Financial stress has a huge impact on the workplace and on employee productivity,” Lewis says. “And it isn’t created by retirement worries alone. Nearly half of Gen Xers have provided some level of financial support for a grown child in the last year, and just under a quarter of them are providing support for an aging parent.

“That puts pressure on them to pursue career advancement,” Lewis continues, “to help them to increase their savings, and to increase their retirement

contributions.” Accordingly, Lewis says, employers that put a premium on retirement benefits and help alleviate financial pressures attract and retain employees who prove to be more loyal and more productive.

Employers obviously aren’t the only ones to benefit from an effective retirement planning process. TIAA works with healthcare institutions to create plans that are not only structured and informed but also tailored to each person’s needs and situation.

“No two individuals are alike,” Lewis emphasizes. “Each person has unique needs and financial pressures, so we need to be able to address a broad set of needs. Employees today are struggling with everything from student debt and affordable healthcare to long-term care for their aging parents.”

By helping people improve their general financial literacy, Lewis says, TIAA enables employees to better understand their situation and “gain confidence about the lifetime income that they would receive in retirement based on the actions they’re taking today.”

While TIAA’s financial literacy curricula are comprehensive, accounting for an array of social determinants and other factors, they are also targeted and individualized, Lewis says.

“You can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to communication and education about the retirement planning process,” he emphasizes. “You have to make information personal if you expect it to resonate with the listener—especially if you expect them to take action on what they’ve learned.”

According to Lewis, 76 percent of recently surveyed healthcare employees have taken action—to increase their contributions or change their asset allocation— based on a TIAA advice session.

“Education is incomplete without actionable advice,” Lewis says, simply. “Folks don’t always feel comfortable or confident making financial decisions, especially with shifts in the healthcare industry and changing workforce dynamics. But with clear communication and education, people can really see that what they’re doing today will have a life-changing, positive impact for them down the road.” AHL

“You have to make information personal if you expect it to resonate with the listener—especially if you expect them to take action on what they’ve learned.”

The bottom floor of Rush University Medical Center is home to its supply chain operations. Here, robots and people work together to deliver goods to frontline staff and clinicians throughout the hospital. Supply technicians like Carlos Russell (middle left) coordinate where the robots travel based on a programmed digital grid system. Then, the robots pick up their load from designated areas and, using the elevators, carry it to supply closets on the upper floors of the building. Not only do they deliver supplies accurately and on time, but they also can speak to patrons they share the halls with—so everyone is in sync.

Pictured: Linen Specialist Flenard Thomas (left), Lead Supply Technician Carlos Russell (middle left), Associate Vice President of Supply Chain Quincy Stanley (middle right), Vice President of Supply Chain Jeremy Strong (right). Cass

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