American Healthcare Leader #08

THE MIRACULOUS TRUE STORY OF

AND HOW A HEAD ATHLETIC TRAINER’S PREVENTIVE CARE PHILOSOPHY MADE THE IMPOSSIBLE SEASON POSSIBLE

P. 40

PJ Mainville's dedication to preventive care helped lead to a World Series victory for the Chicago Cubs

The World Market

Providing healthcare in one country is no small task, but these executives work across borders and manage care on an increasingly global scale

48

In her role as vice president and chief counsel for corporate law at Cigna, Thi Phan draws strength and inspiration from her family’s history

10

Hope Scott is helping Blue Shield of California integrate Care1st into the organization

13

In less than a year with Hackensack Meridian Health, Jim Blazar has helped oversee some of the company's most groundbreaking partnerships

22

Carl Waller leads Northside Hospital by strategically planning the health system’s expansions

32

Scot Elder’s lifetime of giving back has culminated in his work at Medtronic, where he helps develop lifesaving medical devices—including some that have appeared in Hollywood blockbusters such as Marvel’s Doctor Strange and Star Trek

62

Karen Hall is driven

Health’s mission to impact the well-being of the people in the San Francisco Bay Area

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From his first two-building medical office in Aurora, Illinois, Peter Westmeyer has built an impressive real estate portfolio for MBRE Healthcare

76

Charles Dadswell reflects on his legal career and his work as the general counsel of Illumina

by Sutter

Gregory Bartning (Hall)

Impact Prognosis +

108

178

At HealthSouth, chief human resources officer Cheryl Levy makes sure retention and development are as important as hiring 222

Myra Davis leads the IT team at one of the nation’s most wired hospitals, Texas Children's Hospital

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Stay humble, make work fun, and treat people with respect: these are some of the leadership principles Kerry Parker puts into action at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York

128

Marissa

the

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Jamie Meeks brings a food-first athletic training approach to the New Orleans Saints

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Texas Health Resources and Dr. Cole Edmonson are implementing programs that will disrupt healthcare for the better

210

Marc Berger navigates the legal side of Flatiron Health’s revolutionary oncology tech platforms

Most people think a healthcare company's pharmacy division is simply responsible for filling prescriptions. But these executives show it's so much more than that. 164 Rx Marks the Spot

216

From on-site telemedicine kiosks to more traditional methods, Lesley Billow and Teva Pharmaceuticals focus on a holistic approach to employee well-being

Song promotes diversity at Gilead Sciences; she even founded

organization's LGBT employee resource group

CREATIVE

VP of Creative

Kathy Kantorski

Editorial Directors

Megan Bungeroth

Cyndi Fecher

Senior Editor

Adam Kivel

Editors

Dan Caffrey

Joe Dixon

Jonas Weir

Design Director

Joshua Hauth

Designer

Lauren Keeling

Photo Director

Caleb Fox

Photo Editors & Staff

Photographers

Kristin Deitrich

Gillian Fry

Contributors

Steven Arroyo

David Baez

Galen Beebe

Olivia Castañeda

Jennifer Draper

Peter Fabris

Lori Fredrickson

Russ Gager

Chris Gigley

Michael Hernandez

Mary Kenney

Russ Klettke

Kelli Lawrence

David Levine

Lindsey Lewandowski

Jeff Link

Porcshe N. Moran

David Phillips

Lior Phillips

Connor Shioshita Pickett

Jeffrey Silver

Alex Stewart

Jonas Weir

Brian Welk

Billy Yost

SALES & ACCOUNT

MANAGEMENT

EVP of Sales

Katie Else

VP of Sales

Kyle Evangelista

Director of Sales

Operations

Philip Taylor

Managing Director of Sales

Steven Zucker

Sales Director

Kemp Pile

SUBSCRIPTIONS + REPRINTS

Content and Advertising Managers

Megan Apfelbach

Peter Castaldo

Lauren Cavers

Danielle Cole

Abbey Cunningham

Mike Gortowski

Max Krevitz

Erin Malone

Kate Pfau

Lexi Widger

Director, Executive Success

Anna Jensen

Executive Success Managers

Christina Brown

Daniel Lopez

Josh Rosen

Executive Relationship Manager

Jenny Vetokhin

PUBLISHING

Guerrero Howe, LLC

Putting the W in Weep

Almost exactly a year ago, the Chicago Cubs made me cry.

Over the course of my life, the lovable losers from the Northside continually disappointed me, and I never thought that I would see a Cubs championship. So, on that nerve-racking night in November, I cried. Perhaps it was a way to release all the stress that goes with watching your favorite team come back from a 3-1 series deficit to barely eke out a W in the tenth inning—after a seventeen-minute rain delay, no less. Perhaps it was because I thought of the people in my life who weren’t around to witness the long-awaited victory, like my late grandmother who, on the day my dad scored free Chicago White Sox tickets, infamously and quite bluntly told my family that the only way she’d go to Comiskey Park was in a body bag. Whatever the reason, I cried; I cried like a baby.

CEO

Pedro Guerrero

Executive Assistant

Jaclyn Tumberger

Managing Director of Marketing

Sean Conner

Recruitment Director

Elyse Glab

Circulation & Reprints Director

Stacy Kraft

Events Director

Vianni Busquets

Client Services Director

Cheyenne Eiswald

Senior Client Services Manager

Rebekah Pappas

Client Services Manager

Katie Richards

Financial Analyst

Mokena Trigueros

Junior Analyst

Amanda Paul

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Now crying isn’t traditionally the most masculine thing to do. But then again, neither is admitting you’re hurt. And that’s the type of thinking that Cubs head athletic trainer PJ Mainville has spent his career fighting. For years, he’s tried to reduce the stigma that surrounds visiting the training room. His theory aims to prevent injuries before they happen and have an open dialogue with the players and coaches when they do. And that’s exactly what happened with Cubs outfield Kyle Schwarber. During the fourth game of the Cubs’ season, Schwarber left with an injury that looked like it would keep him out for the remainder of the season. And it did—that is, until he returned to pinch hit during the World Series and make a number of all-star plate appearances that helped turn the tide for the Cubs and contributed to their eventual victory. It was a medical feat that was possible in part thanks to the forward-thinking leadership of Mainville, who helped Schwarber recover.

Now the story of the Cubs’ head athletic trainer might seem like an outlier in American Healthcare Leader. But his story is more similar to the other executives in this magazine than you might think. His model of care for athletes reflects current industry trends: he focuses on preventive care; he coordinates care with patients; he fights the stigma that seeing the doctor is a bad thing and promotes the idea that’s better to have a checkup early than visit the ER later.

So, if you think about it, Mainville’s ability to think outside of the box resulted in not just a win for the Cubs but a win for healthcare. His win just happened to be celebrated with a parade that six million people—and one crying magazine editor—attended.

Jonas Weir Editor

“My own personal leadership philosophy is to support and serve the people who really deliver the core services in the organization.”

More Than Just a Checklist

Hope Scott understands the real impact compliance, privacy, and risk management can have on Blue Shield of California’s members

By Jeff Silver

When Blue Shield of California was founded in 1939 as California Physicians’ Service, it served about twenty thousand members. Since then, it has never stopped growing and improving. Today, it provides access to healthcare for more than four million members through its network of nearly sixty-five thousand physicians, thanks to the complex work of Hope Scott.

Part of that growth was the acquisition of Care1st, a subsidiary that allows Blue Shield to provide enrollees to Medi-Cal (California’s version of the federal Medicaid program) access to healthcare. “Care1st enables us to fully extend our mission of ensuring that all Californians have access to quality, affordable healthcare to the state’s fourteen million Medi-Cal patients,” says Scott, Blue Shield’s VP and chief risk and compliance officer. Care1st also brings benefits that go beyond new patient populations. Founded in 1994, the managed care company established a highly engaged and extraordinarily effective level of customer service. This is particularly impressive in the Medi-Cal arena, which provides care to poor, underserved patients who face elevated health risks. To ensure patients receive appropriate care, Care1st developed close member relationships to help patients navigate the healthcare system and proactively take control of their health.

“Care1st knows its members, understands their neighborhoods and their concerns, and collaborates with other community resources to enhance their ongoing health and well-being,” Scott says. “We’re very eager to learn from them so we can incorporate those lessons across all our operations.”

With the addition of the new subsidiary, some current Blue Shield Medicare members might now also qualify as dual eligibles. This classification enables some lowincome seniors and people with disabilities in California to receive extended services through both Medicare and Medi-Cal.

Scott is part of the team that is handling Care1st’s integration into Blue Shield and making sure that its operations, objectives, and strategies are aligned. “There are so many positive synergies between Blue Shield and Care1st,” she says. “We want to do everything to facilitate them, not overwhelm and overengineer them.”

Before the acquisition, Care1st had one thousand employees and was small enough that its executive leaders were involved in many day-to-day decisions. However, as those leaders now take on more responsibilities, there is an opportunity for employees to expand their knowledge and skill sets to begin making those decisions themselves.

“Care1st is now part of a larger culture that provides extensive training, resources, and support so

individuals can make appropriate decisions independently,” Scott explains. “With the right tools and fully understanding expectations, it will be very empowering for them.”

Blue Shield will also be putting more formal risk-management programs in place. Scott indicates that this has always been a company priority, but a comprehensive riskmanagement framework could become even more important to effectively navigate any changes to the Affordable Care Act.

Risk management is nothing new for Scott, though. She has been a passionate advocate for risk management, ethics, compliance, and privacy ever since her days as inhouse counsel with Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia more than twenty years ago. During her tenure as one of the lead attorneys implementing the new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy regulations, she quickly recognized the impact privacy issues could have on the most personal levels. She saw that failure to keep health information confidential from certain family members, for example, could jeopardize individuals’ safety or impact whether they could maintain custody of their children.

“That was a turning point for me,” she says. “I realized that securing patients’ data wasn’t just complying with the law. These were tangible human connections with real repercussions that compel us as a company to act the way a thoughtful human being would to best serve our members.”

To help raise the profile of a different kind of compliance at Blue Shield, Scott recently launched a Medicare compliance initiative. She anticipates that this unique collaboration between the company’s Medicare business units and its

VP, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer

HOPE SCOTT

Blue Shield of California

CAPABILITY AND FULFILLMENT ARE THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF REMARKABLE LEADERSHIP

Aspire to greatness

Dragonfly Consultants helped me set clear, achievable goals aligned to the expectations of my leadership and internal teams. Their deep understanding has provided me with the inspiration and support I’ve needed throughout my journey of becoming an effective leader. Dragonfly is, in a word, awesome!

Hope H. Scott, Esq. Vice President, Chief Risk & Compliance Officer Blue Shield of California

“I love that what I do and the decisions my company makes can have real, direct, and positive impacts on the lives of the people we serve.”

risk-management professionals will bring the rigor of enterprise risk management to the highly detailed and stringent requirements of the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services’ (CMS) annual reviews.

“Integrating specific business units with the enterprise view will create a holistic perspective and raise accountability around all the factors that contribute to Medicare compliance,” Scott says. “The objective is to make ourselves the gold standard in that space, not just to succeed at checking off boxes for basic CMS compliance.”

In addition to her leadership, Scott says that staying curious about topics outside her own areas of expertise and remaining focused on professional development has helped sustain her career. She believes that any position should contribute to an individual’s broader objectives. Simultaneously, she often investigates seemingly unrelated specialties, such as finance or IT, that ultimately enhance her capabilities and lead to new opportunities.

The integration of Care1st is a perfect example. In addition to focusing exclusively on ethics, risk management, and compliance, she also studied how the company manages operations, structures contracts, and builds relationships with community organizations.

“If you only do what your job title requires and stop being curious about what’s going on around you, you stagnate and become a less effective leader and employee,” she says. “I love that what I do and the decisions my company makes can have real, direct, and positive impacts on the lives of the people we serve. I’m proud of using my time and talent to help make those good things happen.” AHL

A Partnership Made in Heaven

By Kelli Lawrence

H“Healthcare is best delivered by teams,” says Jim Blazar of Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH). He’s only been the executive VP, chief strategy officer since the beginning of 2016, but decades of experience at Hartford Healthcare Cleveland Clinic and Henry Ford Health System have schooled him on the power of partnerships, particularly in wellness-centered communities.

“It’s not just about the procedure a patient has, but also how we can extend the care outside the four walls of the hospital to help them deal with their diabetes, their single-parent family situation, and their mental health issues, to name a few,” he says. “The best way to raise the next generation of healthcare providers is to create partnerships that help us focus on population health— keeping families well.”

Blazar’s interest in the healthcare industry developed quite early. At age twelve, he saw his father permanently hospitalized with multiple sclerosis, passing away when Jim was only fifteen. But he says his dad received amazing care at his Veterans Affairs facility, and that created a lasting impression that made a young Jim eager to contribute to healthcare.

As Blazar honed skills with which he could make an impact in healthcare, he a found an inspired match in HMH because the company has an appreciation and interest in partnerships—fueled, in large part, by co-CEOs Bob Garrett and John Lloyd.

Jim Blazar shares what makes healthcare partnerships work at Hackensack Meridian Health—or anywhere

“Developing strategic partnerships is one of my sweet spots,” Blazar says. “I came here because I was eager to see the organization grow by leveraging and optimizing the expertise of other partners. Here, one plus one equals three. You can actually create something better than what you can on your own.”

When Blazar arrived at HMH, partnerships were already part of the DNA of the company and its legacy organizations, which made Blazar a natural fit. These collaborations included fitness and wellness centers, an ambulance company, urgent care facilities, and more.

The opportunity to create a new partnership came within Blazar’s first week at HMH, when he learned of Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s (MSK) interest in joining forces. He says, however, that MSK had already suggested a partnership that was interesting but wouldn’t be a win-win for HMH.

But by the end of 2016, the two institutions signed a deal that Blazar says is the first of its kind in the United States. Most partnerships with cancer centers have the hospital or health system paying the cancer center for use of its brand and some of its expertise. In this arrangement, however, the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center brought clinical expertise and programs that, in many cases, equaled MSK.

Together, HMH and MSK have some of the largest programs in bone marrow transplant, multiple myeloma, and colorectal, breast, and lung cancer. In the partnership, no money was exchanged. Instead, an operating board that comprises representatives from each organization oversees the partnership. The board functions with the advice of a formal clinical council—which is led by internationally recognized experts in all subtypes of cancers from MSK, the John Theurer Cancer Center, and HMH—and a formal executive advisory group that comprises institutional leaders in key areas.

The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hackensack Meridian Health partnership now looks to develop a single standard of care whether patients visit an MSK or HMH location. “As they progress, the standard will be updated and upgraded,” Blazar explains. “Going forward, the partnership plans to open up to ten new centers that will be a fifty/fifty joint venture.” It’s not a merger, he explains; it’s a partnership of equals.

The partnership also answers the call from former Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, which asked for unprecedented cooperation among leading cancer centers to make more therapies available to more patients and to improve the ability to prevent cancer and detect it at an early stage.

In more tangible terms, the two groups jointly have the second-largest bone marrow transplant program in the world and one of the largest multiple myeloma programs in the country. But the whole deal happened without commingling any of legacy organizations’ money. “Everyone saw the value—that we would actually have

“The best way to raise the next generation of healthcare providers is to create partnerships that help us focus on population health—keeping families well.”

Chris Gahler

JIM BLAZAR Executive VP, Chief Strategy Officer

Hackensack Meridian Health

UBER x HMH

A win-win of a different kind was on its way after Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) co-CEO Bob Garrett met Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in early 2016. Garrett wanted to do something progressive with Uber due to the company's innovative nature. At the time, Hackensack University Medical Center had a problem with congestion on its campus and transportation for many of its patients. The partnership analyzed the campus pick-up and drop-off spots and created multiple locations that could be easily accessed by Uber drivers. Patients can get access to Uber through a Hackensack app or its website and receive a discount on their first ride. The John Theurer Cancer Center can also arrange rides through a grant for patients that cannot afford the fare.

The result is a first-of-its-kind partnership between the transportation networking pioneer and a health network—one that takes people both to and from various HMH hotspots with relative ease while also lessening congestion on its campuses. While Uber provides additional access for patients, HMH is able to track more data for when they need rides and where they go on campus. The number of rides doubled in the first six months, and the partnership is now being extended across the entire health network.

better and faster cures for cancer, take care of more patients, and save more lives than if we did it separately,” Blazar says. “The joint expertise of those two places is unsurpassed anywhere in the world.”

Of course, partnerships like this don’t materialize out of thin air. Blazar says sharing a joint vision and developing clarity from both sides is critical; tackling the difficult elements of the partnership first is just as important, too. Blazar says that this gives people on both sides confidence for the rest of the project rather than kicking the can down the road. Conversely, realizing early on that not everything will work—or that a partnership isn’t in the best interest of everyone involved—is just as important. The approach can be adjusted or the parties can agree to end dialogue and move on to partnerships that create mutual value.

But if the organization tracks a partnership’s metrics to ensure progress is being made and expected yields are coming to both sides, then the union’s success is tough to

dispute. All of HMH’s partnerships have steering committees or operating committees that are responsible for achieving milestones and evaluating progress toward the vision.

HMH was also in the early stages of a partnership with South Orange-based Seton Hall University when Blazar came on board. Now, the Seton Hall–Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine is set to be New Jersey’s only private medical school, and it’s on track to seat its first class in 2018.

The school will be located on the former campus of multinational healthcare company Hoffmann-LaRoche, which benefits the community by putting the space back to use and training the next generation of medical students right in New Jersey’s backyard. Seton Hall will also move its Nursing School and Allied Health professionals to the campus and develop integrated curriculum so that these medical disciplines are learning together as teams rather than operating in silos.

Cheers for Jim Blazar! Leading the Convergence of Healthcare x Sports

A TOUCHDOWN FOR CANCER RESEARCH

One of Hackensack Meridian Health's newest high-profile partnerships is on the fundraising side of the business. Tackle Kids Cancer unites its Children’s Cancer Institute at Hackensack UMC with Eli Manning and the New York Giants and has proven to be hugely successful. In fact, it generated nearly $4 million for pediatric cancer research in a little more than a year. The initiative also relies on other partners, including Modell’s, Pepsico, and more, to help raise money. All donations to the organization go to benefit the essential clinical care, support services, and groundbreaking cancer research needed to find a cure.

In addition to the new medical school, HMH will open an Innovation Center on the campus that is connected to the medical school. This, Blazar says, will be an economic driver for the region. He has been involved with developing strategy to attract new strategic partners to the campus and create innovation incubators that will help transform healthcare. He is also partnering with the medical school’s dean to create and execute the brand strategy for the medical school.

“The partnership with Seton Hall and HMH is unique because both organizations are supporting integrative approach to education,” he says. “It’s a win-win for New Jersey, for the medical community, and for economic development on that campus.”

But whether a partnership started before or after Blazar’s tenure at HMH began, his intentions remain the same. “It’s about trying to immerse yourself and realizing the vision,” he says. “It’s about rolling up your sleeves and trying it out, learning from your mistakes, getting with the right people, and making improvements.” AHL

Bendigo was focused on the business of sports, but was challenged to rebrand and lead marketing for a major healthcare system in 2011. Now, we are dedicated to bringing these worlds together. We support healthcare executives navigating the complex world of sports, including strategy, evaluation, negotiation, activation, media, research, and facilities rights.

Healthgrades gets more than thirty million visits every month from consumers searching for the right healthcare in their community. When your health system partners with Healthgrades, we can show your practitioners how to attract and retain those prospective new patients. Operating the nation’s largest healthcare-focused review site gives us a better understanding of how Americans choose providers and what your organization can do to grow demand for your services, while our strategies and solutions empower you to act on that information. To learn how Healthgrades can help you reach and acquire more patients, visit healthgrades.com/hospitals or call 855-665-9276.

Skin in the Game

Bendigo’s Jeff Sofka is the only person he knows who’s enjoyed senior leadership roles in top sports marketing and healthcare organizations alike. That makes him the perfect person to talk about the sports/healthcare research platform STRATA.

By Kelli Lawrence

In 2011, Hackensack University Medical Center (now Hackensack Meridian Health) enlisted Bendigo to lead a complete rebranding, restructuring, and repositioning of its brand. Led by Jeff Sofka, who did marketing and branding for the NFL and other sports and entertainment entities prior to healthcare, Bendigo has since stayed on as Hackensack’s official agency for sports and marketing partnerships since 2013.

But for all of Hackensack’s high-profile partnerships— including the New York Giants, New York Red Bulls, Northern Trust PGA Golf, and recently its causemarketing platform, Tackle Kids Cancer—there were no metrics available to measure the merits of these partnerships. This led to the development of STRATA, a proprietary research platform designed to monitor, evaluate, and measure the performance of marketing partnerships between healthcare providers and sports.

“I felt compelled to deliver ROI analysis on behalf of my client,” Sofka says of Hackensack. “So, Bendigo sought out a partnership with Turnkey Intelligence to deliver a custom research tool for healthcare institutions heavily invested in sports.”

Turnkey Intelligence is known as a leader in sports consumer-brand marketing research. The firm has done work for brands such as NASCAR, the University of South Carolina Men’s Basketball, and more.

“Turnkey works hand-in-hand with a myriad of premier sports leagues, teams, and events—and the consumer brands that sponsor them—to measure the effectiveness of sponsorship investments through strategic research tools and insights,” says Turnkey Intelligence’s president, Haynes Hendrickson. “Applying these methodologies to healthcare, by way of our partnership with Bendigo, has helped us unlock tremendous insights into these healthcare and sports partnerships.”

These marketing investments stretch well beyond

JEFF SOFKA Principal Bendigo

the realm of Hackensack Meridian. Leading hospitals, health networks, orthopedics, and urgent care brands’ investing nationally is a testimony to the growing relationships between healthcare innovators and sports properties. And hospitals nationwide—particularly topnotch academic medical centers—are deeply invested in sports partnerships for everything from building medical/practice facilities to naming rights for team venues. But according to Sofka, there’s been no tool available until now that is custom-built to uncover the value propositions between sports-health network unions.

“Because there are very unique partnerships, with different goals and values for each organization, you can’t just have a traditional tracking mechanism for brand awareness,” he says. “Each partnership needs to be evaluated on its own goals, return on investment, and return on strategy.” In doing that, STRATA has already developed four different research platforms:

Performance Tracking

STRATA utilizes research in the form of multiwave, multiyear online surveys intended to measure metrics including brand awareness, partnership awareness, and partnership relevance. Sofka says that STRATA revealed that of the 30 percent of New York Giants fans who accurately identify Hackensack as an official partner of the team in the survey, more than half were more likely to consider Hackensack’s services because of that partnership. “With one million-plus Giants fans in their trading area, that’s a strong base from which to market,” Sofka says. He adds that, as there are multiple healthcare systems sponsoring the Giants, he and his team were curious to see if the activation and investment had paid off. As it turns out, it did. “We were surprised by how many people were willing to transfer their trust in the Giants to the Health Network,” he says.

Live Event Research

At last year’s Barclays (now Northern Trust) PGA Golf Tournament, Hackensack Meridian’s Tackle Kids Cancer program became the official charity of the tournament. Bendigo and Turnkey surveyed more than seven hundred patrons and determined that this formality would make them more likely to donate to Tackle Kids Cancer. “That has caused us to change some of our tactics moving into 2017 with new signage and activation programs reinforcing our official designation and close ties

to the tournament,” Sofka says. “Figuring out not only what happened and why, but the opportunity to change course based on what we learned is the key. At the end of the day, only the consumers you’re trying to reach can tell you if your efforts are paying off.”

Sponsor Fit Assessment

Turnkey-owned data can help hospitals evaluate teams for potential future partnerships. NASCAR and Major League Soccer fans, for example, are much more likely to consciously support their team’s sponsors by buying their products and services, according to Hendrickson. “By evaluating a team’s fan population and looking at demographics, psychographics, and sponsor support intensity,” he says, “we can help hospitals proactively identify the partnerships and activation elements that will provide the best ROI.”

Asset Valuation

STRATA takes advantage of Turnkey’s asset-valuation experience and methodologies to determine a price range for the value of the marketing assets delivered by sports teams. “It helps our healthcare clients understand the mix of advertising value versus brand value that different teams and leagues are providing,” Sofka says. “It allows them to work with the teams to ensure they have strong enough marketing impressions to break through the clutter.” Sofka says that Hackensack is a great example of a company taking advantage of these tools. “Jim Blazar, Hackensack Meridian’s chief strategy officer, has a long-term view in regard to these partnerships,” Sofka says. “He feels that when two great companies are invested together in success, they help each other; they align their objectives and goals. These sports properties are 5–10 year investments, so you need an ongoing effort to make them as valuable as possible. This research helps Jim identify opportunities and continually update strategies and tactics.”

Sofka says that he is the only person he knows who has enjoyed senior leadership roles in top sports marketing and healthcare organizations alike. He believes it provides unique insight into their collaboration—particularly now with the wave of investments by healthcare institutions into sports marketing partnerships this past decade. “It’s a big wave, with lots of money being spent,” he says. “We think we can help decision makers like Blazar spend it wisely and get the best return possible.” AHL

The Strengths Seeker

By Kelli Lawrence

“I’m not interested in coming to work at Fairfield Medical Center ,” Debbie Palmer told a colleague who was trying to persuade her back in 2008. “I’ve been retired six months. I’m learning bridge. I’m playing golf.”

But the colleague persisted, and Palmer offered to come and do a one-time analysis for Fairfield—a 222-bed nonprofit hospital in Lancaster, Ohio. Fairfield’s problem, she was told, was the less-than-successful decentralization of the training and education department. But as a short-term opportunity became one accepted job offer after another, and as months at Fairfield turned into years, she helped create a work environment that is not only more efficient than ever, but is also infinitely more satisfying. She currently serves as Fairfield’s chief human resources officer and corporate compliance officer.

“I’m no expert,” Palmer says, discussing basic process improvement skills. “But I do know that really understanding what your services are, what you’re trying to deliver, what your customer wants from you—they’re all important. And then you have to deliver it in an effective and efficient manner.”

Palmer kept all that in mind as she began her initial assessment, which involved Fairfield’s education and training department. She quickly perceived an unmistakably negative vibe: We’re terribly busy all the time. We’re underappreciated. Nobody cares about us She responded by trying to verbally identify what was keeping them so busy and so unhappy. That proved easier said than done, especially without any measurable

data. So, she got rudimentary about it, produced slips of paper, and required each employee to track their daily activities in fifteenminute increments.

“We did that time study for a month,” Palmer recalls. “There was a lot of moaning, lots of groaning, lots of, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re making me write down what I’m doing every fifteen minutes.’ And I told them, ‘This is about understanding how you spend your time because most of you cannot tell me.’”

The standout discovery from the study was that a whopping 30 percent of each educational staff member’s time was spent helping people either register, reregister, or cancel registration for classes. “One of the first things I said was, ‘I want to get these people on the phone so they can tell me why we can’t do self-registration,” Palmer says. “One of my educators, an IT educator who really functioned more like a help desk, told me there was no way, that it just wouldn’t work. I said, ‘Let’s ask the question anyway.’”

Chief Human Resources Officer, Corporate Compliance Officer

Ten days later, self-registration was working, the help-desk educator was questioning if she could do the job being asked of her, and Palmer was meeting one-onone with the remaining four educational staff at Fairfield, leading each conversation with a question: “Are you doing the job here you really want to be doing?”

DEBBIE PALMER

Fairfield Medical Center

By asking the right questions, Debbie Palmer crafts a more ideal work environment for Fairfield Medical Center

DEBBIE PALMER’S THREE ASPECTS OF A POSITIVE WORK CULTURE

1) Understand who you have working for you, and get them in the most suitable job for their skills and strengths.

2) Understand what managers are looking for, and develop personnel accordingly, including promoting from within, prepping for leadership, and addressing performance issues.

3) Empower people to do their jobs, evaluating and supporting without micromanaging them.

It turned out that none of them were. One nurse was teaching computer classes when what she really wanted to do—and was capable of doing—was run Fairfield’s new simulation lab. A second person was primarily doing clerical work while she longed to be an actual educator. A third was in dire need of streamlining her efforts teaching CPR, ACLS, and orientation. The fourth was struggling with her responsibilities in delivering nursing orientation.

In short order, Palmer addressed each of their issues: For nurse number one, she helped the computer classes become more self-contained so she could move over to the simulation lab as she desired. For the aspiring educator, she helped the employee take full advantage of Fairfield’s tuition reimbursement program, and the employee began to learn to coordinate Fairfield’s new student orientation program. And the life of nurse number three got a lot more productive when Palmer initiated some long-overdue discussions with nursing supervisors. And nurse number four worked hard to improve her nursing orientation work.

Then, the overall benefits of these changes kicked in. “The end result of that was that we were able to start offering a variety of different programming because the team was spending 30 percent of their time doing all the registration,” Palmer says. “We got people out of mundane tasks, got them the

training they needed, and when necessary, put the staff in the right roles.”

Fairfield’s regimented HR department underwent a similar transformation when it began reporting to Palmer. She recalls one employee, a recruiter at the time, who yearned for more of a leadership role and now has one as an HR manager. And another young woman initially spent all her time doing data entry when she really wanted to help Fairfield’s staff as a benefits coordinator—which she does today.

These efforts toward efficiency and effectiveness were met, at first, with plenty of resistance. “I remember getting a lot of pushback in the form of managers saying I was too aggressive,” she says. “They’d say, ‘Things are fine the way they are. Why are you trying to shake things up?’”

She even encountered resistance with the employee satisfaction surveys, which had been executed in-house until Palmer determined it would be more cost-efficient to outsource them. But with the results Fairfield receives nowadays—rankings of fours and fives instead of twos and threes on a scale of 1–5—she knows a significant corner has been turned. And she’s more than a little excited to be a part of it.

“There are many cool things happening now in our organization,” Palmer says. “And it all starts when you get the right people in the right roles and give them the freedom to do their jobs.” AHL

Growing into the Future

Northside Hospital’s optimized supply chain operations helped address logistic and financial concerns as it moved into its new Cherokee County facility

By Jeff Silver

Northside Hospital serves the metropolitan Atlanta area, which is expected to grow by more than 30 percent to more than eight million residents by 2040. Operating three acute care hospitals and more than two hundred outpatient locations, the Northside system handles more than 2.5 million patient encounters annually and has itself grown to more than 15,000 employees with a network of more than 2,500 physicians.

Northside Hospital Cherokee, located due north of Atlanta, was struggling to keep pace with Cherokee County’s population growth of more than 10 percent from 2010 to 2015. Quite simply, demand for its comprehensive clinical and ancillary services had outgrown the capacity of the existing facility, which was built in 1960.

In response, Northside has recently opened the new Northside Hospital Cherokee, a $264 million, state-ofthe-art, eight-story hospital and medical center complex. The fifty-acre campus more than doubles the square footage of the old facility and adds 25 percent more inpatient beds. Plus, an additional three hundred acres have been set aside for future expansion.

The person ensuring a smooth transition—Carl Waller, VP of supply chain management—had to work closely with stakeholders, including vendors and subcontractors, to execute a project plan. This encompassed everything from coordination to procurement to installing equipment, furniture, and fixtures.

CARL WALLER VP of Supply Chain Management Northside Hospital

“The master project plan was an initial set of guidelines that was refined over the past two years to reflect various course corrections and unforeseen circumstances,” Waller says. “Staying as nimble as possible, we made numerous real-time adjustments and updates to ensure equipment and products were purchased and delivered in the most efficient and effective manner.”

Although the two sites are only three miles apart, the project required careful timing to make the site transition as seamless as possible. There was a brief overlap when both hospitals were active and emergency department patients were shifted to the new facility. Then, a floor-by-floor process transferred the remaining patients while the Northside team put contingency plans in place for situations such as mothers in labor or critical cases that had to be stabilized before being moved. The entire process was completed over the span of one weekend in May 2016.

FACILITY SPOTLIGHT

Parking might initially appear to be a simple consideration, but in vehicle-centric metropolitan Atlanta it is a prime concern. The original Northside Cherokee location was limited to fewer than 75 spaces. The new location has capacity for 1,600 vehicles: 700 in surface parking in front of the facility and a 900-space deck. Other medical additions include a Level 2 neonatal ICU, the newly developed Women’s Center, and pharmacy automation.

“Our philosophy is that if you streamline processes, optimize technology, and continuously monitor performance, you achieve the desired operational and financial results without having to add headcount or capacity. It enables you to do more with less.”

Although this is the first time Waller was fully immersed in the healthcare world, he spent years honing the skills needed to make transitions like this go smoothly from an operational standpoint.

Waller, a certified public accountant, came to Northside with more than twenty-five years of experience working as a consultant at several international accounting and consulting firms that primarily served Fortune 500 clients. He has used that experience to revolutionize Northside’s procurement and distribution systems since assuming his role four years ago.

“Even though most of my previous experience was not in healthcare, I have been able to apply leading best practices from other industries to Northside that have yielded very positive results,” he says.

Soon after joining Northside, Waller began conducting a current-state assessment and stakeholder survey to determine the most critical needs of supply chain management’s internal customers. He and his team then developed a comprehensive transformation strategy that focused on four distinct business segments: acute care, outpatient, pharmacy, and services. From there, he developed key performance metrics and targets to measure progress. This was followed by implementing a road map to guide efforts to achieve the targets.

This highly specific approach, which focused on detailed objectives and targets for each segment, enabled the hospital to achieve significant improvements, including reducing nondrug supply spend as a percent of revenues by 23 percent and increasing distribution fill rates to more than 97 percent. In addition, new physician practices can be onboarded in only two or three days, and overall efficiency has dramatically increased because Waller has fully automated supply chain processes while keeping the headcount relatively flat.

“Our philosophy is that if you streamline processes, optimize technology, and continuously monitor performance, you achieve the desired operational and financial results without having to add headcount or capacity,” Waller explains. “It enables you to do more with less.”

Working with stakeholders to develop and implement supply chain innovations is one of Waller’s favorite parts of his job. But he is quick to point out that the progress that has been made would not have been possible without the collaboration and support of key stakeholders, such as staff, clinicians, physicians, executive management, and vendor partners. Together, they were able to successfully implement initiatives such as product standardization and, with coordinated efforts from Northside’s IT staff, a new technology platform. Waller also highlights vendors who provided innovative solutions for delivering patient

right time.

care and other senior-level executives who visibly supported Northside’s supply chain strategy transformation. And although his role is a nonclinical function, his work goes to support Northside’s overall goals.

“At the end of the day, we are here to support the delivery of unsurpassed patient care in the communities we serve and to make things easier for our stakeholders to deliver that care,” Waller says. “It isn’t just satisfying and fulfilling; it’s our mission.” AHL

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A cutting-edge pharmacy robot installed at the new Northside Hospital Cherokee finds prescription medications, pulls them, and dispenses the right amount for the right patient at the

Keeping Things Close to Put Patients First

By Russ Gager

Growing up in a family that owned a small manufacturing company in Milwaukee gave Mary Bakken a solid grounding in how to run a business. “My roots are in a family business,” she says. “It’s now third-generation. I’m so proud that two of my three brothers continued it, and now their sons and sonsin-law are continuing the business. That really became part of my core in terms of seeing how a business runs, how to take care of employees, and how to be successful. But I had no desire to move into engineering and manufacturing; I was drawn to healthcare.”

Today, Bakken applies that family business knowledge—along with her experience as a medical technologist—to her position as executive VP and chief operating officer at New Lenox Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox, Illinois. The hospital is independent, though it partners with a variety of prestigious area hospitals, including University of Chicago Medicine, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Lurie Children’s Hospital, and Northwestern Medicine. A little more than five years ago, Silver Cross opened its new 296-bed hospital to replace a facility that was more than a hundred years old. The older facility had been expanded in various ways over the decades into what Bakken calls a hodge-

podge. For example, the emergency department was located at one end of the hospital, far away from the patients’ rooms. The new hospital puts each department in the best place for patient care.

“We developed a procedural care unit, a new unit that consolidates all the traditional procedural areas— such as surgery, endoscopy, interventional cardiology, radiology, and neuroendovascular surgery—and located them on one platform, one integrated unit,” Bakken says. “We actually saw, within a matter of less than two weeks, an example where that proximity of all those different medical skill sets and equipment likely saved a patient’s life. Everyone that needed to be was right there.”

The new facility was designed with the input of hospital staff to improve patient care. Inpatient units in the new hospital have been reduced from forty to fifty beds in the old hospital to eighteen beds each—all private rooms. The new hospital’s hallways also have been curved so that caregivers can see down the halls more easily.

MARY BAKKEN Executive VP, Chief Operating Officer

New Lenox Silver Cross Hospital

Mary Bakken’s philosophy at New Lenox Silver Cross Hospital is to always put patients’ needs first

Bruce Burns

NOT JUST HOSPITAL FOOD

The new 560,000-square-foot hospital is located on a 158-acre campus that encompasses a 20,000-squarefoot cancer center, two medical office buildings, and an ambulatory surgery center that’s scheduled to open this fall. The hospital also plans to expand its 20-bed behavioral health unit into a standalone 100-bed hospital that, if approved by the state, could be completed by 2019.

Silver Cross Hospital has five satellite facilities throughout Will and southwestern Cook Counties and a 24/7 freestanding emergency care center in Homer Glen, Illinois.

Bakken oversees the day-to-day operations of the hospital’s facilities and, along with her peers, its strategic endeavors. “My role is to ensure that our doctors, nurses, and other caregivers have what they need to provide excellent care,” she says. “My own personal leadership philosophy is to support and serve the people who really deliver the core services in the organization, who are on the front lines.”

Silver Cross Hospital invests a lot of time to educate leaders and caregivers in safety habits and errorprevention techniques. Bakken also leads a daily safety huddle for all department heads to develop situational awareness—a collective understanding of the state of operations. This includes reports of safety events such

Mary Bakken exercises regularly, but if she had more time for hobbies, she would also exercise her skills at gourmet cooking more often. That interest has spilled over into her work at Silver Cross Hospital, where she ensures the hospital’s cuisine is prepared by an executive chef. At the new Silver Cross Hospital, not only can patients order room service customized to their diets, but visitors also can purchase meals in patients’ rooms or in the hospital’s modern dining facilities.

Jeffrey Totaro

as falls, medication errors, and delays in care; assigning ownership for issue resolution; and ensuring a common understanding of the focus and priorities for the day. “These huddles represent our ongoing commitment to safety and transparency,” Bakken says. “Problems that were previously unknown or unresolved are now addressed in a day or two.”

The hospital has a strategic plan with three pillars: access, culture, and excellence—or ACE. “Within each of the pillars, we have strategic initiatives and actions, and we hold ourselves accountable to those,” Bakken explains. The three-year strategic plan is reviewed and, if necessary, revised annually.

About 2,600 people work at Silver Cross Hospital, its satellite locations, and other facilities. Silver Cross promotes from within and hires from the outside when a fresh approach is needed.

The hospital’s Lean Learners program trains more than one hundred people annually in process improvement methodologies. The participants choose a project from their department to improve, and they report on its progress at the end of their training sessions and again in ninety and 180 days. “That really has created a significant spread in terms of employee development that is also aligned with improving the performance of the hospital,” Bakken says. “We create a community of problem solvers. They see problems, and they have the wherewithal to address them.”

Bakken has spent more than thirty-five years in the healthcare industry, working on the front lines, first as a phlebotomist and medical technologist and then in management and senior management. Her master’s degree in business from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and her background as a certified public accountant in a public accounting firm have helped her manage the financial aspects of healthcare without losing sight of the healthcare industry’s mission. “My advice is to keep the patient at the center,” Bakken says. “Always ensure that decisions are being made with the patient being central to that decision.” AHL

A Decade of Collaboration

In the span of ten years, Martin Littmann transformed Kelsey-Seybold Clinic’s IT infrastructure into one of the most sophisticated in the healthcare industry

By Porcshe N. Moran

MMartin Littmann isn’t a healthcare provider himself, but he’s been an important player in the southeastern Texas medical community for more than a decade. “I’ve always wanted to be part of a business where the focus is on making a positive difference in people’s lives,” Littmann says. “Kelsey-Seybold is an organization that is about keeping people healthy. There is no more exciting pursuit to me.”

After working as a consultant for IBM, Littmann joined Kelsey-Seybold Clinic in 2006 and became the organization’s chief technology officer and chief information security officer. The multispecialty physician group has twenty locations in the greater Houston area, and Littmann manages thirty of the clinic’s 140 IT professionals. His team works across the organization’s network, systems, security, and compliance functions.

Littmann’s first initiative was to upgrade the organization’s antivirus and Internet protection. From there, he and his staff implemented geographic blocking, encryption of all desktops and laptops, and the use of the FairWarning protected health information system.“When I came here in 2006, what we had at Kelsey-Seybold was fairly rudimentary,” he explains. “We beefed up what we were doing to ensure the protection of patient data. We achieved full encryption status before pretty much any other healthcare facility.”

MARTIN LITTMANN Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Security Officer

Kelsey-Seybold Clinic

“We achieved full encryption status before pretty much any other healthcare facility.”

Although these advances made a big difference, a natural disaster posed a new challenge. In 2008, Hurricane Ike swept through Houston. The tropical cyclone caused power outages and generator failure at Kelsey-Seybold’s primary data center. After, Littmann and his team took steps to be better prepared for future natural disasters. They consolidated their data centers into a single facility one hundred miles northwest of Houston in Bryan, Texas. The Tier 4 site now meets the most stringent requirements for a data center.

“The data center is highly secure and has highly redundant infrastructure,” Littmann says. “It is outside of the hurricane zone but still within a couple of hours’ drive from Houston. We have a storage management program that automatically backs up our data from local computers to a protected network.”

The enhanced emergency plan also included network and desktop virtualization to allow employees to work remotely in disaster situations. “We have done a significant amount to mitigate for disaster, and we have done it at a fairly economic pace,” Littmann says. “Our approach allows us to recover from situations and return to operational capability quickly.”

Littmann had also introduced another efficiency initiative that improved recovery in August 2007. That’s when Kelsey-Seybold began converting from paper documents to Epic EMRs. Littmann says Kelsey-Seybold was among the first major medical entities in Houston to use the software.

Patients can use the MyKelseyOnline Epic portal from a desktop computer or mobile device to refill prescriptions and access medical records, in addition to scheduling appointments, e-visits, and video visits. Kelsey-Seybold healthcare professionals also use Epic’s Care Everywhere tool to exchange relevant patient information with each other and with other Epic healthcare organizations throughout the United States.

The Epic implementation contributed to KelseySeybold’s 2012 recognition as the first accredited accountable care organization in the country. It received a Level 2 designation, the highest achievement available in the first year of accreditation. “We have been on the leading edge with Epic for some time,” Littmann says.

“We do Epic upgrades regularly. We work closely with their technology people. Our focus is to administer a private and secure system that supports the clinic’s mission to provide proactive, coordinated care and evidence-based medicine.”

To protect from data loss, Littmann restricts nonessential use of social media to read-only and blocks uploads to cloud storage services. He also strengthened the employee password policy by prohibiting the use of dictionary words. “Through third-party risk assessment and vulnerability testing, we’ve found that the ability to crack internal passwords has decreased from 40 percent to less than 5 percent,” Littmann says.

Littmann is also a member of the Houston chapter of InfraGard, an FBI-private sector alliance.

“We receive appropriate briefings from the FBI on cybersecurity and physical security issues,” he says. “Everyone who is in InfraGard is vetted by the FBI. It’s a great information-sharing opportunity, and it is exciting to be involved.”

Littmann credits the progress he has made in Kelsey-Seybold’s technology and security to the support of his staff and the physician leadership. He says he feels empowered to do his job well. “I have a great amount of management autonomy to have an impact on what Kelsey-Seybold does,” Littmann says. “I have the respect and the ear of leadership. In managing my team, I take a collaborative approach. I prefer group consensus instead of mandates when making critical choices. That has been a big part of our success.”

Innovations have led to great success for KelseySeybold, something of which Littmann is incredibly proud. The organization has invested more than $200 million into recent capital improvements, including a new, state-of-the-art radiation therapy center. It also launched a telemedicine service that allows doctors to treat some patients through video and e-visits. “Our cancer therapies are among the most advanced in the country,” Littmann says. “We continue to expand into additional specialties and investigate new growth paths that will improve patient care. I love working here, and my intention is to be a significant contributor at whatever level I have the honor to be able to serve.” AHL

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/ solutions/industries/enterprise/healthcare

From Brain Surgery

to Blockbusters

From everyday operating rooms to Hollywood fantasy, Medtronic’s Scot Elder brings surgical attention to his legal work

By Michael Hernandez

What do spinal alignment, deep brain stimulation, and Marvel’s Doctor Strange have in common?

At one point or another, they have all come across Scot Elder’s desk. Elder is the VP, chief counsel of Medtronic’s Restorative Therapies Group, which is an $8 billion division of the largest medical device manufacturer in the world, which itself operates in more than 155 countries and has 260 locations and 85,000 employees. Elder is responsible for the legal department of Medtronic’s Spine and Biologics, Orthopedics, Brain Therapies, Pain Therapies, ENT, Pelvic Health, and Advanced Energy business units. Elder has even overseen the use of Medtronic’s 3-D imaging technology in big-budget Hollywood movies such as Star Trek and Doctor Strange

“On average, I travel 120 days out of the year, globally and domestically,” Elder says. He travels extensively in order to oversee that vast range of responsibilities, covering everything from patent litigation in Texas to business-development transactions in Israel.

Elder’s dedication stems from a lifelong mission to help others. He sees a clear connection from his Mormon missionary work in Japan in the 1990s to his work with the Ronald McDonald House to his contribution to Medtronic’s life-saving devices.

“I absolutely connect the work I did as a missionary in Japan to the work I do now, assisting people whose lives are changed by our products,” Elder says. “When I look back at that experience, it’s really the same thread. It gave me a solid foundation to think first about other people. It’s the most rewarding part of my job. If you start with helping people first, it’s easy to find meaning in what you do and indicative of the vast possibilities that we, as a society, can do when we come together. It’s heartening and inspiring.”

One project Elder has been contributing to that furthers Medtronic’s mission of alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life is the company’s partnership with Mazor Robotics. In combination with Medtronic’s imaging software, Mazor’s spinal surgery robot enhances spinal surgery results by using multiple-source data, precision guidance, and optical tracking.

But to Elder, a deal like this is business as usual. “Mazor is an important partner, and it gets people’s interest outside of the company, but we have many important and exciting transactions every year,” Elder says. “The project is really an indication of the kind of work we typically do.”

Elder might be modest about the importance of the partnership, but there’s no denying that the surgical robotics field is only growing. In fact, Mazor was behind more than sixteen thousand successful spinal surgeries as of 2016, making the deal a bright point in Medtronic’s future.

Elder's cutting-edge work doesn’t hurt his reputation as a father either. He recalls moments such as drafting licensing agreements to use Medtronic’s devices in movies such as Star Trek and laughs as he recounts his son’s recent reaction to seeing Medtronic’s devices in Doctor Strange. “My kids are usually like, ‘I don’t even know or care what dad does,’ but when they see it on the screen they say, ‘Holy cow, dad does something pretty cool,’” he says.

“If you start with helping people first, itʼs easy to find meaning in what you do.”

SCOT ELDER VP, Chief Legal Counsel for Restorative Therapies Group Medtronic

Megan Hausman

Greenberg Traurig congratulates Scot Elder of Medtronic on his recognition in American Healthcare Leader.

It is a privilege to work with Scot and his tremendous legal team to help Medtronic transform the healthcare industry.

GIVING BACK IN THE COURTROOM

From 2006 to 2009, Scot Elder served on the board of the Ronald McDonald House of Jacksonville, Florida. His work at the nonprofit organization went to support families of children receiving medical treatment. He brought the community together for fundraising efforts such as the annual fun run.

Today, Elder’s desire to help others extends to his role on the board of directors for the Atlantic Legal Foundation, a highly respected and influential nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest law firm. The foundation was established forty years ago, and it has a history of advocating for individual rights and sound science in the courtroom. The foundation frequently files amicus curiae briefs in high-profile court cases in front of state supreme courts, federal circuit courts, and the US Supreme Court. In his capacity as a member of the board, Elder helps people in the courtroom. The foundation, for example, played a pivotal role in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, a landmark case that definitively set the evidentiary standard for expert scientific testimony in federal court.

“I have known the chairman of the board of the foundation, Hayward D. Fisk, for almost twenty years,” Elder says. “Dan has always inspired me to find time to give back to the community in meaningful ways.”

Elder can’t claim all the glory, though. The groundbreaking work that Medtronic does is a team effort, and Elder says that both the Restorative Therapies Group and legal department at Medtronic are led by two incredibly intelligent, talented, dynamic, inspirational, and compassionate leaders, Geoff Martha and Brad Lerman. “Respectively, Geoff and Brad have the highest ethical standards and the highest order of concern for patients and patient safety,” he says. “It makes my job incredibly easy and meaningful to work for folks like this. I am motivated and energized every day that I have the opportunity to work with such talented and amazing colleagues at Medtronic, as well. The future is bright, and I’m honored to be a part of the team.”

As for what kind of exciting new developments are in store for Medtronic’s bright future, Elder is less humble but as discreet as a good lawyer should be.

“It’s confidential,” he says, “but there are definitely a lot of exciting things on the horizon.” AHL

"Scot Elder is a tremendous leader and legal partner—brilliant, strategic, forward-thinking, truly a trend-setter. He makes Medtronic and the businesses he leads stronger and his legal teams more effective. He has the unique ability to combine business realities with legal strategies. He is a true partner to his outside counsel." –Lori Cohen, shareholder, Greenberg Traurig LLP

“Lead the way you want to be led.”

Rick Wagner, VP, corporate controller for Dentsply Sirona, uses lessons learned through the Boy Scouts to direct his company’s financial management

By David Levine

Rick Wagner admits that he was never the best Boy Scout as a kid. But as an adult, he more than makes up for whatever scouting skills he lacked then. As the VP, corporate controller for Dentsply Sirona, the world’s largest professional dental products and technologies manufacturer, Wagner believes the leadership abilities that he developed from scouting have served him well. And as he has served as a scout leader for the past decade, he has remained passionate about passing those skills on to the next generation of young leaders. “It’s not about the camping or the hiking,” he says. “It is about instilling moral and ethical values to help the kids make good choices over their lifetimes.”

With his Boy Scout training, Wagner has made good choices in his professional career. Born in Waynesport, Pennsylvania, he attended Penn State University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. He started his career as a public accountant at Deloitte and then worked his way up the corporate ladder, first at Kennametal in various financial and accounting roles, which included living in Nuremburg, Germany, for two years while working on an acquisition. From there, he moved to Bayer Corp., where he served as director of financial reporting in the United States, and then to Harsco Corp., where he was VP and corporate controller.

In 2011, Wagner took a job Denstply Sirona, based in York, Pennsylvania, and Salzburg, Austria. Wagner came to the company for the opportunity to work with a market leader and within a collaborative work environment. He was also attracted to the level of responsibility and opportunity to contribute to the organization. As VP, corporate controller, he is responsible for the company’s financial-closing, financial-reporting, and capital-appropriation processes—along with policy compliance and financial policy maintenance. Wagner leads a direct, multinational staff of ten and a global organization of about 650.

One of his biggest projects of late is helping redesign the company’s financial processes and systems to help it become more effective and efficient. In the summer of 2015, when the company was just Denstply, it decided to implement a new financial reporting system to better forecast budgets and actual results. This project included establishing a data warehouse to store financial and other data. “We started that, then merged with Sirona, so the project was put on hold,” he says. “When the merger was completed, we continued the redesign with a new operating model for the organization.”

The model modified the company’s financial reporting and the data and managerial reporting that is necessary to support the organization’s financial management. “We

RICK WAGNER VP, Corporate Controller

Dentsply Sirona

“You lead by example. You show that you are not afraid to roll up your sleeves and get into the details when you need to, but you are also able to step back and be an effective decision maker.”

had to mobilize a sizable team with different talents to establish the warehouse connections and the ability to gather data from ERPs and store it in the warehouse,” he says. “We designed tools to prepare budgets and tools to train and educate staff on the new operating model along the way so that people could use the tools to budget 2017 in a way that aligned with this new model.” This system is being implemented in phases. The process started with a few pieces in the fall of 2016 and has now reached the point of refining the reporting processes and some of the ways data is gathered and analyzed.

Wagner also notes that this endeavor might take a while to complete. “We knew it would not be perfect or as robust as we wanted at first,” he says. “Now, our aim is to get it refined and improved and then add even more tools for the finance and operations teams.” A key element will be ensuring that the system is aligned with the company’s executive team and operating leadership. “This process can always add more tools, put more data in the warehouse, and then streamline the data and make it information,” he says. “It is a journey we could be on for years to come.”

The goal is to demonstrate his team’s value as a business partner through metrics. “You manage what you measure, right?” he says. “You need the statistics, so in the truest sense, we are more focused now on how we use our data to come up with different analyses.”

Another challenge Wagner faces is finding and retaining a strong labor force on a global scale. “You are only as good as the team you have, so no matter where the

team is, you want to get the best talent you possibly can,” he says. “The next step is to provide them a challenging opportunity to contribute to the overall success of the organization.” Working outside the United States means dealing with different languages, skills, cultures, and experiences—all of which require patience and understanding to ensure communication and knowledge transfer is conveyed clearly and everyone is aligned with the tasks at hand.

Wagner takes a similarly patient approach to his role with the scouts, a relationship he still values greatly. He, his wife, and their teenage son and daughter are all active in the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Wagner and his son have hiked to the bottom the Grand Canyon several times on scout outings. But he is especially proud of watching his scouts, including his son, attain Eagle Scout status and become leaders themselves.

“You lead by example,” Wagner says. “You show that you are not afraid to roll up your sleeves and get into the details when you need to, but you are also able to step back and be an effective decision maker. I tell my scouts to lead the way you want to be led and follow like you would like others to follow you.” AHL

Resources is proud to be a long-term, strategic business partner to Rick Wagner and DentsplySirona. Rick’s commitment to excellence, dedication, and leadership are qualities that we try to replicate in all aspects of our business dealings with him and all of our clients. With about 2,800 consultants in seventy offices around the globe, RGP is well equipped to help clients solve their problems.

Look closely.

Because these are the world changers. Because they have ideas. About a new technology. A cure. A company. A family. They are going to make the world a little better. They just need someone to believe in them. What if a bank made that its job?

Where people come together to imagine something, create something, build something, we’re there to help make it real. For over 200 years. Around the world.

Resources is a pioneering professional services firm. As a global network of seasoned professionals, we work with your internal teams to help solve problems, implement initiatives, transfer knowledge and build internal capabilities across business functions. Our practice areas include finance & accounting, information management, human capital, supply chain, legal and internal audit. Collaboration leads to innovation. Let’s work together.

Regaining Its

Vision

By Alex Stewart

In a minute-long TV spot, a young boy struggles with things like going up stairs, reading sheet music, or pouring orange juice into a cup. He keeps having to lift a pair of oversized glasses away from his eyes, or pick them up off the floor after they fall off. His concerned parents take him to Pearle Vision for an eye exam. During the visit, the boy shows the optician a photo of him and his late grandfather, wearing the same eyeglasses he has now. Even though the child doesn’t have a vision issue, the doctor changes out his grandfather’s prescription to blank lenses so he can see clearly and keep wearing those cherished frames. “It isn’t just about vision,” the narrator says. “It’s about care.”

Doug Zarkin, VP and chief marketing officer of Pearle Vision, created this commercial in partnership with advertising agency Energy BBDO to kick off the company’s Small Moments campaign. The initiative is dedicated to ensuring that customers come for the eye care but stay for the relationship.

Zarkin came to Pearle Vision in 2012 with an extensive consumer marketing background. He was charged with differentiating Pearle Vision from its big-box competitors. Instead of doing what all large eye care centers do—slash prices and advertise flash promotions—Zarkin went back to the company’s roots to rediscover what made the brand so great.

He realized that Pearle Vision had lost focus—and much of its aging customer base—along with it. “We were drinking a bit too much from the hose of promotions,” he explains. So, he honed in on the company’s initial positioning: genuine eye care with a commitment to local communities. “We wanted to make sure our growth was driven by quality of care, not promotion,” he says. “It’s about understanding that trust is earned through a series of small gestures. Big gestures curry favor; small gestures earn loyalty.”

Zarkin shifted the company’s narrative from its efforts to keep up with the prices of national competitors to the little things that initially made the brand successful. And the Small Moments campaign was born.

Pearle Vision opened its doors in 1961 in Savannah, Georgia. Dr. Stanley Pearle founded Pearle Optical, as it was known then, in a small office with five employees and a focus on eye care in a comfortable, neighborhood setting. More than fifty-five years later, nearly six hundred stores in North America bear his name.

Zarkin knew that eye care customers were not interested in the impersonal, corporate feel of national chains. Data from a recent consumer trust survey showed that doctor quality and trust were the factors that mattered most to Pearle Vision customers. “We recognized that we needed to be even more emphatic about reinforcing that this is not fast-food, big-box eye care,” he says. “This

DOUG ZARKIN VP, Chief Marketing Officer

Pearle Vision

How Doug Zarkin reinvigorated Pearle Vision’s commitment to neighborhood eye care

is truly the same quality caliber, if not even better, than what you would find from Dr. Fred down the street who’s hanging a shingle.”

Part of the brand’s commitment to the communities it serves is a program called Community Outreach Reinforcement of Neighborhood Eye Care Activation, or CORNEA. It debuted in 2013 as a way to get Pearle Vision’s eye care experts outside of their offices and interacting with their neighbors. So, CORNEA set up booths at small events such as school football games or church health fairs to offer complimentary screenings, eyeglass cleanings, adjustments, and appointment scheduling. Last year alone, Pearle Vision representatives attended more than four hundred events.

Zarkin also spearheaded efforts to renovate the company’s physical exam and retail spaces. What were once sterile, uninviting brick-and-mortar spaces are now warm, welcoming, and modern—with more of an apothecary feel, he says. Each eye care center has a wall dedicated to the community, with a sign that reads, “Welcome to your neighborhood Pearle Vision.” There’s an area to showcase Polaroids of happy customers and thank-you notes. Shopping for frames is easier and more convenient, too, with products divided by gender and brand, and new merchandising that takes frames off the wall to better showcase eye candy—the artistry along the temples of the glasses.

All of these changes were made to appease Pearle’s target consumer, whom Zarkin calls the chief health officer (CHO). The CHO is typically the female head of household, the one making health and wellness decisions for her family. What’s important to Zarkin is ensuring that the brand satisfies this customer’s intellectual and emotional needs at every step of the eye care process. Catering to this particular audience was not a new challenge for Zarkin. He has plenty of experience working for companies that care about women, including marketing stints at Avon, Victoria’s Secret PINK, and Calvin Klein Intimates. Those years spent marketing makeup and brassieres have helped him understand his current audience, he says.

The Small Moments campaign case study earned Pearle a silver Effie Award, which recognizes effectiveness in marketing, in 2015. The past few years have seen a significant increase in eye exams, Zarkin says. Online exam scheduling has seen double-digit growth for the past three years as well, he says.

The improvements are exciting, certainly, but Zarkin doesn’t want to be the proverbial hare in the industry race anymore. He says that Pearle Vision’s next step is to become consistent, something he says you don’t see in many brands. “Finding, identifying, and anticipating small moments is where we can earn trust,” he says. “Nobody cares for eyes more than Pearle, and nobody cares about the brand more than we do.” AHL

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GAME

HOW EVOLVING VIEWS OF ATHLETIC TRAINING HAVE SHAPED PJ MAINVILLE’S CAREER

CHANG

AND

THRUST HIM

INTO ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS IN BASEBALL HISTORY

BY STEVEN ARROYO | PHOTOS BY KRISTIN DEITRICH

t wasn’t so long ago that the people who PJ Mainville has made a career of helping were reluctant to see him. Although athletes only stand to gain from seeking Mainville’s services, conventional wisdom was that his presence could only mean bad news.

“Years ago, there was a manager that didn’t quite understand because he’s kind of old school,” Mainville says. “I can remember him coming into the athletic training room one day and pointing at a player, and he goes, ‘Hey, what’s wrong with him?’ I said, ‘Not a thing. Even a Ferrari needs a tune-up.’”

The exchange illustrated the flawed status quo that, to this day, has an impact on Mainville, who since 2013 has served as the head athletic trainer for the Chicago Cubs, the reigning champions of Major League Baseball. “The training room is becoming less taboo,” he says. “That’s where the game is changing.”

It’s no mystery why it was taboo in the first place. After all, some players still enter the athletic training room with an expectation to be diagnosed and restricted, to not be given options, to not be heard. Predictably, then, they hide their injuries or oversell their physical condition to coaches and trainers. The consequences of this cycle are obvious, but to mitigate them as much as possible, Mainville finds that a trainer’s job is to sometimes relinquish some control.

“The biggest thing for me is to realize that they have a voice in their career, and they need to be listened to,” Mainville says of his players. “If they tell you they’re fine and they just want to work on some things, you need to respect them for that. These guys are professionals, and you try to make the athletic training room an inviting place without the stigma.”

Over nearly twenty years in athletic training for MLB teams, Mainville has committed himself to converting those who still see athletic trainers as the playingtime police, much like the manager whose response to the Ferrari analogy Mainville still remembers. “It stunned him. He said, ‘There’s nothing wrong? But he’s in here, so what does that mean?’ And we’re like, ‘There’s no meaning here. We’re trying to maximize his performance,’” he recalls. Maximizing performance, with or without injury, is what drives Mainville.

“I HOPE ONE DAY, IN THIS PHILOSOPHY BASE OF TEACHING THOSE BELOW YOU, THAT I CAN LEAVE A LEGACY IN THIS GAME, AND THAT LEGACY IS HELPING OTHERS GET TO THE MAJOR LEAGUES AND OBTAIN THEIR GOALS.”

PJ MAINVILLE Head Athletic Trainer Chicago Cubs

“I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to see a guy that tore his ligament in his medial elbow back pitching in games twelve months later,” he says. “The gratification when you see him on TV—that’s what it’s about, and that’s why I do what I do.”

It wasn’t an elbow, but a knee—Kyle Schwarber’s left one—that provided Mainville’s first test of the Cubs’ 2016 season. In just the third game of the season, the team’s prodigious left fielder collided with teammate Dexter Fowler while chasing a long fly ball. He went down and was writhing in pain as Mainville sprang from the bench.

“As I’m running out of the dugout, I realized it was a pretty hard collision,” Mainville recalls. “I’m ensuring that he didn’t have a compound fracture or anything along those lines. Once I realized it was the knee, I tried to make him as comfortable as possible. That’s a very difficult thing to do in the moment.”

Mainville helped Schwarber off the field and to the training room for a full medical exam. The outfielder had fully torn his ACL and LCL ligaments, rendering him definitively inactive for the rest of the year. For the twenty-two-year-old sophomore player—and the team and its fans—it was crushing news. Mainville’s first job then was to set the opposite tone. To be a rock of positivity in bleak times, he drew from some early training.

“When I was in college, an emergency room physician in my hometown gave me the opportunity to come shadow him on weekends,” he recalls. “When I was going through this training, my whole purpose was that I didn’t want to get worked up over that type of thing; I wanted to be able to be comfortable in an environment where people are in pain. I guess the one take-away for me was that when I’m going out to manage an injury, first and foremost, I try to take myself out of it and realize that I did not create that. I’m there to help manage it.”

Over the next six months, Schwarber rehabbed with the team and worked on his knee in Chicago with the Cubs sports medicine staff while simulating his role in games. Meanwhile, the Cubs were outperforming their own lofty expectations on their way to the league’s best win-loss record and optimistic odds in the playoffs.

When the team advanced all the way to the World Series, unexpected news broke that reverberated throughout the sports world: because his progress was far ahead of schedule, Schwarber was medically cleared by his knee surgeon for a limited, hitting-only role and would be activated for the series.

Even though the outcome was improbably positive this time, Mainville again subtracts himself from the formula that created it. “Kyle’s an amazing athlete,

After suffering from an injury early in the season, Kyle Schwarber worked his way back to the field, with the help of PJ Mainville and the Cubs sports medicine staff, just in time to make a major impact on the World Series.

probably one of the more determined people that I’ve ever been around, and ultimately deserves 100 percent, full credit for his ability to come back,” he says. “We, as an athletic training staff, follow the protocols early on, but ultimately, Kyle put forth the effort, time, and sweat to do what he did.”

Stretching is an important part of the preventive care that PJ Mainville has advocated for his entire career.

The Cubs won the World Series in its full seven games and in dramatic, comeback fashion, bringing the team its first title in 108 years and thus capping the longest championship drought in American professional sports. A base hit by Schwarber started the rally that won the final game in extra innings.

“I’m going to be quite honest with you: I was very nauseated at the end of the bench during game seven,” Mainville says of the series’ final moments. “It was phenomenal.”

Throughout the most stressful times, Mainville credits his wife as a constant support. “Michele has gone from low-A ball all the way through the minor league system, to Arizona, to Chicago,” he says. “She’s been all over the place with me and has been one of my biggest supporters. She deserves a ton of credit.”

Luckily, that support and care extends to his employer as well. In fact, the Cubs organization invited the training staff and families to join the World Series parade, and Mainville and his family loved the experience. “That was something that I’ll cherish and ultimately never forget,” he says. “The Cubs were gracious to involve us support staff. I’m very fortunate to work with guys like Joe Maddon, Theo Epstein, and Jed Hoyer. They are absolutely just amazing professionals—but more so just amazing people.”

On the field, Schwarber’s return after just six months is a testament to the progress that’s possible when an athlete is comfortable receiving treatment—but Mainville’s time to shine comes when injuries aren’t occurring. He places a high premium on preventive treatment, which requires players to spend free time in the athletic training room even when nothing hurts.

“A lot of people might not necessarily want to put that kind of time and effort in,” he says. “I look at it two ways: I can either wait for the injury to occur, and then I’m going to rehab them for several weeks on end—or I can do maintenance with them on the front end and probably put in less time than I would for an actual rehab scenario.

If you’re reactive, then you’re just waiting for the next hamstring to occur. That’s probably not exactly ideal for either of us. One, I’ve got to rehabilitate them for the next three to four weeks, and two, they’re not playing.”

Mainville began cultivating his philosophies at East Carolina University (ECU), where he studied athletic training while he worked summers installing road signs for the state highway department. When the highway department couldn’t bring him back one year, Mainville turned to ECU’s head trainer, Mike Hanley, who connected him with his roommate, Jamie Reed, an assistant athletic trainer for the Baltimore Orioles. The resulting internship kicked off eleven years that Mainville would spend with the organization.

In 2007, Mainville left the Orioles for a role with the Arizona Diamondbacks as the minor league medical and rehabilitation coordinator. After four years there, he was promoted to assistant athletic trainer and worked with Ken Crenshaw, the club’s longtime head trainer, under whom Mainville learned a key to preventive treatment: investigating the larger origins of an injury—beyond, say, the one awkward step that results in a sprained ankle. It requires an understanding of anatomical function.

“Throwing a baseball is not natural,” he explains. “There are a lot of adaptive processes that take place with the body and cause changes in joint motion. These adaptations, over time, just from throwing a baseball or hitting, become dysfunctional. Dysfunction is not bad; we’re all in a state of dysfunction. It’s when we can’t manage dysfunction that leads to injury. What we try to do is normalize some of these adaptations, and by doing that, we reestablish normal joint function in hopes of restoring more efficient movement. There’s been a huge push to understand function and functional movement. What’s come of that are multiple different disciplines of how to screen function.”

As far as Mainville’s preference, there’s no substitute for the hands-on. “We pride ourselves in manual therapy, massage-type therapy,” he says. “There’s good tissue, and there’s not-as-good tissue. You start to realize what normal tissue should feel like and how it adaptively changes.”

Alongside the medical administrator, Mainville’s codirect reports include two massage therapists—on top of two associate athletic trainers and a strength-andconditioning coach—that enable him to delegate toward their strengths and maximize his clinical time with players. He leads under what he insists is a very simple philosophy: teach those below you to take your job one day.

“I believe in that mainly because you strengthen your system,” he says. “If I can teach those in rookie ball or the Dominican Republic the information and knowledge we

have, then it gives them an opportunity to make an impact all the way through the system. I use this analogy a lot: If there’s a young, rookie-ball kid who might have some medical deficit that might be a potential issue down the road, if we can find that early, who’s to say that kid doesn’t get to double-A? And maybe he’s thrown in the back end of a trade somewhere. So, I look at that as an ability to create value for the system and the organization. I hope one day, in this philosophy base of teaching those below you, that I can leave a legacy in this game, and that legacy is helping others get to the Major Leagues and obtain their goals." AHL

Henry Schein’s Athletics & Schools Division is pleased to be one of the leading medical supply providers for Major League Baseball and the World Series Champions, the Chicago Cubs. Henry Schein provides medical supplies, modalities, diagnostic equipment, furnishings, and imaging equipment for all MLB teams, and this year, as part of the Chicago Cubs’ renovation project, Henry Schein installed a Viztek Ultra U-Arm S X-Ray System and Diagnostic Ultrasound Unit.

During spring training at Sloan Park in Tempe, Arizona, PJ Mainville keeps his eye on the field to see how each player is performing.

“Turn a curious nerd into a patent attorney, and the possibilities look truly endless.”

The

Virtuous Cycle

How a close-knit community paved the pathway to Cigna VP and chief corporate counsel Thi Phan’s career in healthcare

By Lior Phillips | Photos by John Carlano

THI PHAN VP, Chief Corporate Counsel Cigna

hen she was less than two years old , Thi Phan’s family left on a boat from their native Vietnam with just the clothes on their backs and the family’s photos. They landed in a refugee camp in Guam, before eventually moving to Minnesota.

Her father was a surgeon and her mother studied law, but as is often the case with refugees searching for a better life, the transition wasn’t an easy one. “When we came to this country, we were on food stamps,” Phan recalls. Her father worked to pass the board exams and eventually got a job in a community health clinic. Phan, meanwhile, had to adjust to growing up in Minnesota, living with a Lutheran pastor and his family before moving to the Philadelphia area when she was six years old.

“Thomas Nyman was a pastor and is actually my godfather,” Phan says. “I eat a lot of herring to this day because I lived in Minnesota in that Scandinavian community. And my godmother was a sixty-year-old lady who taught me how to make Christmas cookies; it was all really wonderful.”

But that experience taught Phan a lot more than an appreciation for small fish and cookie dough shaped into trees; she quickly learned both the impact that an individual can make on others and the reality of the American Dream. Not only did the Nyman family make them feel at home, they aided Phan’s father in his transition back to a life of medicine.

“My parents pushed toward the American Dream, which I think they fulfilled,” Phan says. However, they also made sure to honor their Vietnamese traditions and blend them into Phan's American upbringing; as a prime example, she notes that her grandmother lived with the family until she passed away. “The food and the ideas about roles people played in the family were carried with my family, down to family-style food,” she says. “But I grew up in American culture so I really see myself as a hybrid.”

Initially, Phan’s parents had hoped she’d become a doctor, to follow in their footsteps. “It's very much the immigrant Asian cultural mind-set,” Phan explains. “They really wanted me to pursue that for a better sense of security, but it just wasn't my path. My dad became very respected, as he’s been practicing for more than thirty-five years now. He treats families where he has been seeing the great-grandparents and the great-grandchildren, which really reflects this continuity in the community.” Little did they know, however, that she’d find security by forging her own somewhat parallel path.

“Learning is so important to me; it's a mind-set and way to constantly explore things and take up new challenges.”

In another hybrid blend of the past and present, Phan developed a career that has led her to an executive legal role at a worldwide health services organization. In 2005, she joined Cigna as senior counsel for the Securities Law group, and as the organization has drastically changed in the ensuing years, she has risen to the role of VP and chief counsel for corporate law. In that time, her varying positions and roles have called for differing focuses, but her primary responsibilities throughout have included leading strategic transactions law, intellectual property, information technology, tax, investments, and real estate law.

Although healthcare remains her passion, the intellectual inquiry of the law appealed to Phan; she initially hoped to couple that with her love of the arts. “Learning is

THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME

Although her roots are essential to the development of her career and life, Thi Phan’s relationship with her son, Liem, and her role as a mother have become equally as important. “I didn't envision that becoming a mother would actually make me so much more confident in my life and my role at work,” she says. “Before I had my son, I was a perfectionist. I would keep working, working, working until I felt like I had all the information and everything was there. And I realized that that's not something I wanted to do or could do after having my child. That's just not the way I wanted to live my life. So, now I strive for excellence not perfection, and that has really opened me up to make sure that I am collaborating.” A prime example of that came when she needed to teach Liem how to ride a bike—a tricky proposition, as she had never properly learned herself. “I decided to learn with my son, which is great from an experience perspective,” she says. “Now, we as a family take these biking trips. It's become a new memory that we will have for the rest of our lives.” Rather than worry about perfection, she taught herself to ride, and has built lasting memories for herself and her son.

so important to me; it's a mind-set and way to constantly explore new things and take up new challenges,” she says. “When I first started law school, I thought that I might become an intellectual property or entertainment lawyer. What's funny now is that I do oversee the intellectual property for the Cigna organization, but also I now know that law is in itself creative as well. It's all about taking the legal issue and solving it in creative ways, and that's really kept me excited and involved.”

Thankfully, she’s been able to pair that intellectual curiosity with the knowledge of how important it is to help others that was instilled in her at such an early age. “Cigna recognizes that people are at the heart of what we do,” Phan says. As an example, she details an executive education program, in which she and other team members traveled to India and China to understand the impact that the global business has in each of the individual cultures. “I have the great benefit that it's an international company,” she explains. “It's really important that we think globally.”

Staying aware of individual cultures’ various traditions and mind-sets is important, but Phan is quick to assert the importance of every individual whom Cigna might be able to help. “Customers deserve

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to be at the center of everything we do,” she says. “I think that it is really imbued in our culture, where it is very outside-in. We don't make products or think about policies in a vacuum; it's got to be in response to what the customer and our clients need. We recognize that everybody is unique.”

That insistence on the unique journey of each individual extends to her team. Phan prioritizes teamwork and feels that her job is to support her team, give them the necessary resources, make sure to communicate the organization’s vision and priorities, and communicate transparently. “Then, I get out of their way to let them shine,” Phan says with a laugh. “I am a huge believer in what I call the virtuous cycle. The more I help promote and support my colleagues or other people’s work, the better I am going to be at my job.”

As a new refugee crisis unfolds around the world, Phan sees the potential for both individuals and Cigna to make an impact. “Our mission is to improve the health, well-being, and sense of security of our customers,” she says. “We're a global organization and we very much care about the communities that we live in.” As an example, Cigna ensures that customers whom might be immigrants or refugees have the right interpreter services. “We're coming at their needs in a culturally sensitive way so that they can really tell us what they need,” she says. “I think there's a lot that we as a healthcare industry can do to help.” AHL

Susan Seabrook of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC is proud to support Thi Phan and Cigna by providing highly focused and industry-specific tax counsel and representation. Susan and her colleague, Caroline Setliffe, assist clients in addressing their most sophisticated tax challenges, from M&A structuring to bet-the-company litigation. Learn more at www.bipc.com/tax-controversy.

Ladas & Parry congratulates Thi Phan on this welldeserved honor! We are proud to protect the association between Cigna brands and their quality health services throughout the world. Ladas & Parry represents owners of intellectual property at every stage of development, both domestically and internationally.

Paul, Weiss proudly joins in celebrating Thi Phan’s career at Cigna Corporation. Thi brings an exceptional combination of skill, experience, and good judgment to her role as vice president and chief counsel, and is a pleasure to work with. Paul, Weiss is a firm of more than nine hundred lawyers with market-leading public M&A, regulatory, and litigation practices.

We Salute

Phan

An Advocate for World-Class Care

By Porcshe N. Moran | Photo by Caleb Fox

A desire for excellence has been the driving force in John Norenberg’s thirty-three-year career . He started his professional life in 1984 as a printer-design engineer/marketing representative for IBM. Today, he is the VP of clinical systems for Advocate Health Care—the largest health system in Illinois.

“I am always striving to do things better,” Norenberg says. “You have to decide whether your life is going to be about execution and results or reasons and excuses. I find happiness and self-worth in taking action and delivering value.”

In 1992, Norenberg obtained his MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Although he had a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota, he was inspired by colleagues at IBM who had increased their potential by attending graduate business school.

“That degree was amazing for me,” Norenberg says. “It unlocked my ability to speak so many different languages in the business world. I used to be the typical uncommunicative engineer. The MBA taught me to how to talk about finance, marketing, and more.”

Norenberg’s fluency in a variety of functions has helped him to transition to positions at software, manufacturing, and financial services firms. When he lost his job in 2002, after the dot-com crash, he rebounded as an independent consultant. Norenberg had no experience in the healthcare field when he joined Advocate in 2004. His diverse background, however, prepared him to tackle the installation of the hospital’s EMR system.

“The basics of business are pretty much the same across all industries,” he says. “I focused on learning the language rather than learning the individual intricacies. Once I had that down, it was time to dig into the nittygritty of healthcare and the things that truly are different about healthcare IT.”

John Norenberg’s enthusiasm for success pushes him to deliver top-notch technology systems for Illinois's largest health system

In 2009, Advocate promoted Norenberg to VP of physician services. In that role, he spent seven years leading IT for the network’s nonhospital business until he was promoted again in 2016, this time to VP of clinical systems. Now, he oversees more than a hundred employees. He handles all hospitalbased large applications. This includes revenue cycle management, physician and patient portals, and EMRs. He is also in charge of imaging technology, such as the picture archiving and communication system. Currently, the biggest project on Norenberg’s plate is replacing Advocate’s thirty-fiveyear-old revenue cycle system, which registers patients, prepares bills, and tracks claims processing and payments. He says his team will complete the three-and-a-half year undertaking in 2019.

“We have whole generations of users who have never used another system,” he says. “It’s a breathtaking endeavor.”

This kind of ambitious goal is what keeps Norenberg motivated. Hospitals & Health Networks magazine has named Advocate to their list of the “Most Wired” hospitals and systems in the nation for twelve years straight. It was also recognized by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) for achieving the highest levels of EMR implementation and use.

“There have been a lot of moments throughout my career with Advocate when my team has achieved audacious results,” Norenberg says. “The idea that we might get to world-class status from time to time is intoxicating to me. I strive for that and work hard to join teams that agree with it.”

Norenberg spends his free time coaching high school rugby and soccer teams. He says a combination of knowledge, commitment, and focus is a winning formula for productivity and high-quality work both on and off the field.

JOHN NORENBERG VP of Clinical Systems Advocate Health Care

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THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF MENTORING

Years of watching the positive effect that teachers, coaches, and business professionals had on the development of his three daughters sparked Norenberg to mentor young leaders.

“I feel the need to pay it forward,” he says. “I try to help young people see the bigger picture of how what they do ripples through the entirety of their work environment. That was something I had to learn on my own, so I want to give them a head start in thinking that way.”

“Both in coaching and my job, I spend a lot of time working on the fundamentals so that everybody understands what they are doing, how they are doing it, and why they are doing it,” he says. “At Advocate, my aim is always to find ways for my team to do its job better. We also want to help other people do their jobs better through the use of our systems.”

Reflecting on the past three decades, Norenberg says he has become a more sophisticated professional. He credits much of his growth to strong mentors. He counts his father as his first business role model. Bruce Smith, Advocate’s senior VP of information systems and CIO, is another one of Norenberg’s mentors.

“I see things less black and white than I did before,” Norenberg says. “My decision making has improved as I’ve taken more consideration of the human impact of my choices. As you evolve, you gather wisdom and become a more mature leader.” AHL

Allscripts is a proud partner of Advocate Health Care and is a global leader in healthcare information technology solutions that inspire smarter care delivery. Our solutions connect people, places, and data and help build open, connected communities of health across the globe.

Impact Advisors is proud to partner with Advocate Health Care and its forward-thinking leaders, like John Norenberg, as they have set the course for unprecedented change through the innovative deployment of healthcare information technology. As a nationally recognized healthcare consulting firm dedicated to improving healthcare through technology and process improvement, our working relationship with John and Advocate Health Care epitomizes partnership. We proudly join in celebrating John’s career! Thank you for allowing us to be a trusted business advisor.

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A Lasting Healthcare Legacy

Former VP and general counsel at Partners HealthCare Brent Henry retired in June after forty years in healthcare law, with a fascinating perspective on the industry

By David Levine

f anyone has had a front-row seat for the topsy-turvy world of healthcare over the past four decades , it’s Brent Henry. He retired this June from his position as VP and general counsel with Partners HealthCare in Boston, a nonprofit hospital and physicians network that includes Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, two of the nation’s most prestigious medical institutions. Before joining Partners HealthCare, Henry worked in New York City’s Medicaid program and with what has become MedStar Health, which now operates more than 120 entities, including ten hospitals in the BaltimoreWashington, DC, metropolitan area. Throughout his career, he has seen the industry transform itself, witnessed the birth of “RomneyCare”—the Massachusetts plan that was in large part the blueprint for the Affordable Care Act—and now is leaving the industry with the future of healthcare in the United States in flux.

Henry, originally from New Jersey, graduated from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and went to law school because he really didn’t know what else to do. “People advised me to go to law school and keep my options open,” he says. “It was a means to an end.” Henry was accepted at Yale, where he earned a JD and a master’s degree in urban studies. “This was the late 1960s, when cities were burning, so I thought urban affairs would be an interesting challenge,” he says. Henry wanted to get into real estate law and accepted a job at Jones Day in Cleveland. But the recession of the mid-1970s prevented much real estate development, and in 1978, a friend called him about coming to work in New York City for the administration of incoming Mayor Edward Koch. “New York was coming out of bankruptcy, and Koch was bringing in a whole new team, recruiting thirty-somethings, and I was one of them,” Henry says. He interviewed with Koch, who asked which of three jobs he might want. “The only job [Koch] could articulate his goals for was director of Medicaid,” Henry says. “I was a fledgling antitrust lawyer, but he was clear about what needed to be done, and I was willing to take a chance.”

Henry was charged with automating the provider payment system, renegotiating the first HMO Medicaid contract, and downsizing a nine-hundred-person unit

“I wanted to be a healthcare lawyer, and this got me back to practicing law. Healthcare is an incredibly complex industry, with lots of regulations. I see law as a tool to solve problems.”

BRENT HENRY VP, General Counsel Partners HealthCare

that was paying healthcare providers with handwritten checks. Emerging from that experience, he realized he’d rather be a lawyer than a manager, but he was hooked on the healthcare industry. When his leave of absence from Jones Day ended eighteen months later, he agreed to come back to its Washington, DC, office. “I wanted to start a healthcare practice,” he says. “But the firm didn’t see this as a growth area for them at the time, so I left after three years.”

Henry then took a job as chief of staff with a DC hospital. “The CEO said he didn’t need a lawyer. He was running the hospital and said he could teach me what it’s like to work in the healthcare industry,” Henry says. “He said, ‘With your talent, in two years, you will move on.'” Two years later, Henry was lured to what is now MedStar, taking a role as general counsel. “I wanted to be a healthcare lawyer, and this got me back to practicing law,” he says. Henry likes the legal side because healthcare is incredibly complex and highly regulated, and he sees law as a tool to solve problems.

In 2002, he was recruited by Partners, which has now grown to $12 billion in revenue and almost seventy thousand employees. In this role, he led a staff of twenty-five lawyers that handles all the legal functions for the vast J. Kiely

THE POWER OF LISTENING

Brent Henry tells young lawyers to make choices that maximize their options. He also stresses they get to know their community and give back to it. “The most important ingredient to my success has been learning to be a good listener,” he says. “Understand your colleagues’ and clients’ needs and concerns, and communicate your recommendations clearly. People don’t have time to wade through a lot of legalese.”

organization that includes community and specialty hospitals, a managed care organization, a physician network, community health centers, home care, and other healthrelated entities. He also advises the board of directors and C-suite executives and oversees upwards of five hundred lawsuits at any given time.

“This has been one of the best jobs I’ve ever had,” he says. “My colleagues are some of the brightest, most committed, and hardworking people that I have ever worked with. We are all trying to find solutions to significant problems every day. People are amazed at how little work we send out, because my colleagues can handle a broad range of content with their deep experience. We negotiate our own deals, do our own investigations, and handle cutting-edge research issues. There are always unique problems that keep me and my colleagues on our toes and make sure we enjoy what we do.”

Henry says that the past decade or so has been the craziest time in the world of healthcare. And he also acknowledges that it is hard to predict what comes next. “I am intrigued to see what happens,” he says. “This will be one of those exciting cycles in healthcare, and I expect to keep working on a part-time basis. But I also am looking forward to retirement.” AHL

We at Donoghue Barrett & Singal greatly appreciate the opportunity to work with Brent Henry, and admire his vision and impeccable leadership. We congratulate him on his well-deserved recognition from American Healthcare Leader and on his distinguished career at Partners Healthcare.

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Mentors Matter

Dionne E. Wong explains why coaching employees is good for business and the community—and how she has utilized that to support a stable, nurturing business in an ever-evolving industry

By Chris Gigley

Dionne E. Wong brings collaboration and teamwork to every part of her day.

As senior VP and chief human resources officer at Broward Health, she is sure to seek input from the people around her and is mindful of recognizing and rewarding effort.

“My team has been with me for a long time. They work well together and take great pride in their contributions to the organization, one another, and the HR discipline,” she says. “I will say they couldn’t be led by someone they didn’t respect.”

Wong’s management style is paying off. She has consistently scored in the top 1 percent of leaders at her company and across the country based on scores from her direct reports, according to the biennial Employee Perspective Survey conducted by Press Ganey.

Wong’s team certainly respects and admires her. They describe her as inclusive, collaborative, mindful, inspirational, and strategic, with an innate ability to convene the room. These and other qualities have shaped her career and are borne out of a passion for helping people—especially women and young people— discover their strengths.

Wong was raised by her grandparents, and she experienced the strength and value of mentorship, leadership, and kindness from her grandmother, Violet McDonald. Wong often tells others to not take someone’s dignity because you cannot replace it—her grandmother’s golden rule and something she tries to practice every day. Outside of these family lessons, Wong’s mentorship experiences date back to high school.

“In the secondary teaching profession, primarily dominated by women, there was no shortage of strong female role models for me,” Wong says.

One teacher in particular, an English instructor in the

“The timeliness of my mentors and their investment in me made such an impact that I decided that mentoring others would be a part of my personal and professional life.”

magnet program, took Wong under her wing, provided invaluable coaching and mentoring, and even helped Wong identify and complete college and scholarship applications. The presence of a strong mentor was instrumental in helping Wong fulfill her goal to graduate at the top of her high school class and attend an Ivy League school.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Wong found another valuable mentor: Diane Hunter, an instructor who helped her balance the responsibilities of a heavy Ivy League course load and the transition to young adulthood. While attending Wake Forest University School of Law, she gained yet another key mentor who became a lifelong friend. In her third year of law school, she crossed paths with patent and intellectual property professor Simone Rose, who was also a University of Pennsylvania graduate. They bonded over that, and Wong ended up doing an independent study with Rose.

DIONNE E. WONG Senior VP, Chief Human Resources Officer Broward Health

Jacqueline Marie

“The timeliness of my mentors and their investment in me made such an impact that I decided that mentoring others would be a part of my personal and professional life,” Wong says.

After graduating from law school, Wong worked for both small and large national law firms. During this time, she discovered that female mentors were far scarcer in the legal profession, and that was due less to choice than to circumstances.

“Our responsibilities as professionals, mothers, spouses, caretakers, and volunteers leave little time to recognize and provide the opportunity to mentor someone,” Wong says. “It gets lost. So, I pursued becoming the change I wanted to see.”

As a law associate, she served on the associate committee to address the recruitment and retention concerns of her colleagues. She discovered that young lawyers wanted mentorship, and that there was a direct correlation between mentorship and retention.

Wong continues to realize the benefits of having strong role models. She acknowledges that although there is great value in mentorship regardless of gender, as she was the beneficiary of both male and female mentors, she strongly believes that the common experiences and perspectives women share take on a heightened sense of relevance and purpose. When Wong joined Broward Health in 2002, she brought this passion with her. Its necessity was apparent in an industry that is highly regulated, competitive, and ever-evolving.

Wong has implemented a number of formal programs to foster mentorship and development. As a result, Broward Health is now in the ninety-eighth percentile of employee engagement as of the latest Press Ganey Employee Perspective Survey.

Wong recently collaborated with the chief nursing officer to create the nurse residency program, which incorporates mentorship to socialize new nurses to the professional role, assist with goal-setting, and chart a trajectory for career success and retention in our organization.

She also spearheaded Broward Health Leadership University, which includes course contents on the topic of coaching and mentoring. The training equips formal and informal leaders with the skills and tools needed to support mentorship, which in turn strengthens the talent pool and improves employee engagement.

Wong, who is now one of the most tenured executives at the corporate office, says she believes that regardless of where an organization or person is in their journey, the value of mentorship and coaching cannot be overemphasized. She has been the been the beneficiary of good mentorship, and now it’s among her most important pursuits. AHL

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Never Look Back

Karen Hall had a career in litigation she hated. After searching her soul and asking around, she found herself in healthcare law, making a difference in the health and well-being of the Bay Area.

By Lior Phillips

Although no one in her family had ever gone to college, Karen Hall had an insatiable drive to reach a position from which she could help others. Growing up in Texas without the advantages and money of her eventual college classmates, Hall just knew that she could and would change her life. “There was just something innate that said I am going beyond this,” she says. And though she might not have known she would wind up as chief legal officer for the San Francisco Bay Area at California nonprofit health system Sutter Health, Hall knew early on that giving back was the way to lead a fulfilling and powerful life.

The first step on her journey came when Hall reached college and earned degrees in political science, economics, and women’s studies at Southern Methodist University. Hall’s passion for learning and drive to succeed were integral to achieving that goal, but she’s quick to point out that she could not have done it alone. “Thankfully, I had so many institutions and people that supported me financially, because otherwise it would have been impossible,” she says.

Her time at Southern Methodist was followed by law school at Yale University, perhaps an even more unlikely place for her to wind up. Yet, Hall thrived. Her first job out of law school, though, didn’t go quite as smoothly.

While her now-husband, a Yale classmate, accepted a job in litigation at a law firm, Hall joined the US Department of Justice in the Attorney General’s Honors Program, in the commercial litigation section. “There were lovely, wonderful, committed people there, but I really hated litigation,” she explains. “I really wanted to do something in the public interest. I knew that litigation wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life.”

“I really wanted to do something in the public interest. I knew that litigation wasnʼt what I wanted to do with my life.”

KAREN HALL VP, Chief Legal Officer, Bay Area Sutter Health

Gregory Bartning

To find that next step, Hall again returned to her best source of information and inspiration: her community. “I had a little bit of chutzpah to call up denizens of the healthcare bar and say, ‘I’m not looking for a job; I really just want to understand what you do every day,’” she recalls. “People were incredibly generous with their time.” After taking a few lawyers to lunch and discussing their roles, Hall jumped at an opportunity to step into healthcare law at McCutchen Doyle, before eventually joining Catholic Healthcare West. “I’ve never looked back,” she says. “I love healthcare. I love everything about it.”

The key takeaway from those motivating conversations with mentors was that these lawyers all represented nonprofits and tax-exempt organizations, which gave them a stronger sense of purpose. She found— and continues to find—that Sutter Health’s charitable mission was essential to drawing her to the organization. Hall appreciates the opportunity to give back to others, much like how she received guidance and help, particularly in her role as Bay Area chief legal officer. “We are providing services in the name of and to the benefit of our communities,” she says. Through that charitable mission, she knows she is always doing the right thing, rather than just doing what’s legal. Hall feels empowered to make sure decisions are as ethically driven as they are legally effective.

Although the Bay Area section of Sutter Health for which she is responsible is bigger than many other entire health systems elsewhere in the country, Hall and her team of six attorneys, two paralegals, and two assistants ensure that the health system supports its many patients and that it does it in the right way. “I place a great deal of emphasis on communication and collaboration because healthcare is so complex,” Hall says. “If there’s any one person who thinks they have all the answers, I’m sorry for them. I help run interference for my team to get the job done, and then try to help mentor them through growth opportunities. Nobody can do it alone.”

Whether in her work itself or the relationships with those she works with, that last sentiment is key for Hall. Every day, she goes into work knowing that she can make a serious impact on the well-being of the San Francisco Bay Area. But she also knows she can make a big difference in the careers and lives of the young women on her team. “If we create a culture in the organization where people feel like they can’t be with their families and support their families the way they want to support them, then what kind of place is that to work?” Hall says. “It’s really important to me that our employees have a good work/life balance. They’re going to be loyal to the institution that allows them to have those priorities.” As such, she’s not afraid to be honest when needing to schedule a meeting around her daughter’s recital and encourages others to be similarly transparent.

As an organization, Sutter Health has truly supported Hall’s family- and community-first philosophy. When she had her first child, the health system allowed her to ease back into her full-time role over time. After her second

A CARING COMMUNITY

Karen Hall values close work with the community, in part to know what the people of the Bay Area might need and which organizations are providing that. “We know we can’t be everything to everyone, but we recognize that there are other social organizations that really can help do other social outreach, such as mental health help,” she explains.

“We’re supporting the community not only with direct healthcare services, but also with partnerships, such as an Interim Care Program with WellSpace Health. If you don’t have any place to stay and you’re living on the street, your health is going to come second to that. Also, we get to help federally qualified healthcare clinics that can better provide needed services for chronic and primary conditions to underserved populations than we can in our hospitals’ emergency rooms. I’m so proud of the work that we’re doing within Sutter Health and with other community partners to help shore up the social networks that really affect the health and wellness of our community.”

child, she took two and a half years off. And when Hall felt ready to return, the general counsel welcomed her back with open arms. “I think so many young women—and I’ll be honest, I think it does usually fall on young women— feel like they can’t be transparent about those familial obligations and opportunities because they feel like it somehow diminishes their role or their power within the organization,” Hall says. “But if everybody has that viewpoint, it will never change.”

And that viewpoint will change, as long as mentors like Hall continue to educate young women, in whatever industry they work or point in their life they might be in. “I had the opportunity to give my oldest daughter some advice on her bat mitzvah this past weekend,” Hall recalls. “I encouraged her to continue to make her voice heard and continue to share her own ideas, and to find a way that’s comfortable for her to do that. She’s going to have to do it even in the face of criticism and opposition, and that’s a really hard thing for many people, not just women, to do. So, giving people the opportunity to do that and to support and encourage them to do that is really important.” AHL

Congratulations to Karen Hall on this well-deserved recognition. She embodies integrity and excellence in action. Jones Day is proud to work alongside Karen and her colleagues at Sutter Health.

Navigant Consulting team members have worked with Karen Hall and others at the Sutter Health Office of general counsel on multiple third-party professional services valuations. We appreciate how Ms. Hall has always exemplified the highest standards of professionalism, thoughtfulness, and candor to help all of the participants in these matters.

Pharma

Fighter

Maria Pasquale leads the legal department at Celgene Corporation to protect the intellectual property of its disease-altering medicines in more than fifty countries worldwide

By Russ Gager

aria Pasquale started her career as a biochemist, researching cancer and genetic diseases for five years at the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Nassau, New York, and the Institute for Basic Research in New York.

But while she was working as a biochemist, she also was attending law school at night. Her background in biochemistry helped her take the fight against cancer and other diseases to the courts when she became a lawyer. For ten years, she specialized in biotechnical and pharmaceutical litigation at boutique law firm Pennie & Edmonds LLP in New York. “My focus and my passion has always been innovation in the biotechnology and healthcare space,” Pasquale says. “That has always been an area of acute interest to me. So when I was an outside counsel at an intellectual property (IP) firm, I had the opportunity to continue to work on cutting-edge research and be involved in protecting IP and the issues that came up with it.”

In 2001, Pasquale joined Celgene Corporation in Summit, New Jersey, and became the company’s first in-house counsel. At the time, Celgene’s business was only in the United States. But as it developed new cancer-fighting drugs and treatments, it decided to go international. “Many companies of our size might have consented to partner with a large pharmaceutical company,” Pasquale says. “We decided, in spite of the risk involved, that we would do it ourselves and grow organically internationally. It was a great decision for Celgene and a great professional experience for me.”

That decision meant setting up affiliates that included medical directors, general managers, and commercial, medical, and sales personnel in countries outside the United States. “It affected our department because we needed to be on the ground to help set up each of the affiliates and to expand our legal footprint with the company,” Pasquale says. At the time of the expansion in 2006, the in-house legal department had grown from Pasquale to seven lawyers. It now numbers more than forty lawyers and more than forty paraprofessionals and other staff who are stationed around the world.

As Celgene’s senior VP, legal, and deputy general counsel, Pasquale’s responsibilities include overseeing critical litigation and regulatory matters, intellectual property, employment matters, and contracts including R&D agreements. The lawyers she hires specialize in

“We want people who are comfortable with an innovative culture and with asking the right questions of the business.”

many of these legal areas, and the department also works with outside law firms in some of the countries.

“If we think we need a particular type of expertise, we will reach out to local counsel in the respective regions,” Pasquale explains. “We’re committed to helping Celgene achieve its mission, which is to develop innovative and lifechanging medicines for our patients.”

Helping Celgene achieve its mission means that many of Celgene’s lawyers need familiarity with the pharmaceutical industry. “It’s very important for our lawyers to understand the business and the culture of our company,” Pasquale emphasizes. “There’s a lot of client interaction. It’s not just some e-mail that comes in. It’s a lot of working closely in collaboration with the business and knowing what their priorities are so that we understand what is happening in the company and how to best advise our clients.”

PASQUALE Senior VP, Legal, and Deputy General Counsel Celgene

When hiring lawyers, Pasquale seeks out those with a high degree of intellectual curiosity. “We want people who are comfortable with an innovative culture and with asking the right questions of the business—people who are willing to expand their knowledge base to give quality legal advice,” she says. “Recruiting them has become a lot easier as our reputation has grown for being an excellent employer and a significant global player in the medical innovation space.”

MARIA

IT’S PERSONAL

Maria Pasquale is strongly motivated to help Celgene achieve its goal of developing important cancer medicines that help people with serious unmet needs. “It’s always been important to me to do that,” she says. “My own mother died of breast cancer at forty-four years of age. She was diagnosed when I was in college and died soon afterward. As a result, it’s been my life’s work, and it’s been a privilege to be part of a company like Celgene that develops drugs for serious unmet diseases.”

To get the right talent in the legal department, Pasquale believes in promoting from within through formal and informal mentoring programs. “If we’ve invested in our lawyers, they’re showing quality work, they fit in well with our culture, and there’s an opportunity to advance them, we work hard to make that happen,” she says. “I have an open-door policy where people can ask me anything in terms of their professional development, and we try to determine what is best for them and the company.”

Her management philosophy is to make her employees feel empowered and supported. “I like to challenge people by allowing them to be as independent as possible and to take charge of matters,” Pasquale says. “There always has to be some oversight, but I really like folks to take on as much as they can and challenge themselves.”

Pasquale’s career path has always been toward biomedical innovation like that at Celgene, which is branching out into pharmaceuticals for inflammatory and immunological disorders such as psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis in addition to its oncological drugs. “Frankly, a company as dynamic as ours doesn’t lend itself to just sitting still,” Pasquale says. “A company that’s branching out into different regions of the world requires that you continue to grow to best serve the company.” AHL

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A Reformed

Scientist

Min Wang took a winding route to her role at Agios Pharmaceuticals, Inc., but that experience is paying big dividends for the pharmaceuticals company

By Chris Gigley

Min Wang doesn’t let anything get in the way of meeting her goals. She didn’t let that happen growing up in China, and she didn’t when staking out a career in the United States. That’s still the case now in her role as senior VP, general counsel, and corporate secretary at Agios Pharmaceuticals in Massachusetts.

Wang’s determination is rooted in her childhood. Her parents were both science professors in China in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. She says she was too young to grasp what was happening around her, but her father, a physicist, seized on one of the first opportunities to benefit from it.

Soon after reestablishing diplomatic relations between the United States and China in the late 1970s, the government selected Wang’s father to be part of a foreign exchange program between the two countries in which scientists from different disciplines went abroad to work and study for several years. He spent two years at Stanford University.

“After his two-year stint was up, he came back to share what he learned to help build up the economy and advance research in China,” Wang says. “That was right around the time I was about to go to middle school. But what he told me about the United States then really shaped my career objectives.”

Wang says her father captivated her with talk of the ethnic and cultural diversity he saw during his time at Stanford. The emphasis on individuality and entrepreneurship in the United States was completely different from the homogeneous society in China at the time. Wang set her first big goal right then. She wanted to live and work in America.

Eventually, Wang went to graduate school at Brown University and enrolled in the PhD program in organic chemistry. About halfway through her five years there, however, she realized an academic career in sciences wasn’t for her. “It wasn’t the perfect fit for my temperament,” she says. “I wanted to be more entrepreneurial, closer to the business side.”

MIN WANG Senior VP, General Counsel

Agios

Wang says her parents taught her to always see tasks through, so she completed her PhD and set a new goal for herself. She wanted to find a way to stay close to the sciences and leverage the vast expertise she’d gained.

“I discovered a niche for reformed scientists in patent law,” Wang says. “Given that this is a country that thrives on innovation and arguably supports the world with new discoveries in the pharmaceuticals industry, I saw it as my calling.”

After Brown, Wang enrolled in law school at Fordham University. During that time, she also worked as a patent agent and associate at the intellectual property firm Fish & Neave. The company supported her night classes and gave her on-the-job training working with its pharmaceuticals and tech clients during the day. She worked that grueling but invigorating schedule for four years, setting yet another goal for herself in the process. She wanted to be an in-house counsel and to get even closer to the business.

Wang met that goal, too. In 2004, she became a senior patent attorney at Merck & Co., managing its patent portfolio around antifungal products. She moved on to Genentech in 2006, serving as senior patent counsel. She managed oncology and immunology patent portfolios and oversaw IP aspects of potential and existing collaborations.

Wang joined Agios in February 2010 as its only attorney. Now, she runs a legal department with six attorneys, two contract specialists, and three paralegals.

“Transitioning from the front lines to being more of a coach for my team has been a gratifying learning experience for me,” Wang says. “I have enjoyed helping them be more effective business partners than just operational lawyers.”

It’s a strategy that Wang herself follows and says has been imperative to her success as an in-house counsel.

“I have really embedded myself in the whole business cycle, from discovery and clinical development to the commercial marketing of the drug and patent litigation work,” she says. “Really understanding the business is key.”

Her background in chemistry, Wang adds, has helped her better understand drug discovery and development, thus helping her evaluate legal risks in the entire context of the business and achieve the best results for the company and shareholders.

An example of this, she says, is her ability to recognize that innovations and scientific breakthroughs are also happening outside the walls of Agios. Wang says she helps Agios scientists engage with the scientific community and collaborate with academic thought leaders to accelerate advances in scientific discoveries. ww w . f chs .c om

Fitzpatrick is proud to serve as legal counsel for Agios and applauds Min Wang for her business integrity and impressive leadership. We’re proud to join American Healthcare Leader in recognizing her career.

At Fitzpatrick, IP is not just a practice area – it is our sole focus. Our practice is dedicated exclusively to providing legal services in the intellectual property and related fields, including applying for patent and trademark protection, litigation, appeals, contested patent office proceedings including post-grant challenges (e.g., IPRs) and priority of invention disputes, licensing, opinions, corporate transactions and due diligence. Recently the firm was recognized as Hatch-Waxman (Branded) Litigation Firm of the Year by LMG Life Sciences, 2016.

NEW YORK | WASHINGTON, D.C. | CALIFORNIA

Faber

Daeufer & Itrato PC congratulates

Wang and her colleagues at Agios Pharmaceuticals , for their inspiring work to address serious unmet needs of oncology patients and for always striving for the Other Side of Possible. Uniquely Focused on the Business of the Life Sciences Commu nity

Boston New York

Philadelphia San Francisco

www.faberlawgroup com

“I have really embedded myself in the whole business cycle, from discovery and clinical development to the commercial marketing of the drug and patent litigation work.”

“Intellectual property rights are critically important for our business,” Wang says. “The feasibility of these collaborations hinges on getting the allocation of the IP rights from these discoveries right and creating a win-win scenario for us and the collaborators.”

Wang and her team have partnered closely with the scientific and business leaders at Agios to create a framework to negotiate these collaborations rapidly. The result is helping to advance science and the company’s product pipeline.

Wang also works closely with the Agios executive board, which values her as a key player in all major decisions made at the company. Her relationship with the board is collaborative, beginning with her asking what they hope to achieve on certain initiatives and how they intend to reach the goal.

“If it’s not the right approach for the business or isn’t the right thing to do, I’ll walk them through why it might be a problem,” she says. “Then we brainstorm alternative solutions that advance the business to seize the opportunities and improve success.” In the end, Wang adds, the company still achieves its goals.

“With that approach, they don’t see you just as a lawyer policing what they want to do,” she says. “They value you as a problem solver with the best interest of the company in mind. I know that, ultimately, everyone here wants to do the right thing and do right by the company and patients we serve.” Wang’s goal now is ensuring they find the right way to do it.

AHL

Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto congratulates Min Wang on this well-deserved recognition. We are privileged to work with Min in providing counsel to Agios Pharmaceuticals as the company develops important metabolic immuno-oncology therapies.” -John D. Murnane and Alicia A. Russo

Faber Daeufer & Itrato have proudly partnered with Agios for nearly a decade, helping to accelerate their discovery and development of novel cancer therapeutics through business transactions with leading academic research institutions, thought-leaders, CROs, and industry collaborators. Our team comprises over thirty lawyers and contracts specialists, with creative insight and keen judgment that comes from our deep experience. For more information, see www.faberlawgroup.com.

Find demand, and let it run you over

By David Levine

Peter Westmeyer calls it “an unfortunate hiccup,” but looking back, a failed business deal actually launched him on the path to his current position as founder, president, and managing principal of MBRE Healthcare. The organization is a fullservice real estate company that currently owns, manages, and leases over twelve million square feet of healthcare properties in more than thirty states across the country, valued at more than $4 billion. Born in Toledo, Ohio, Westmeyer attended the University of Vermont and then earned master’s degrees in finance and real estate from the University of Denver. After two years as an investment banker with Bank of America, he moved to MB Real Estate, one of the most respected and well-capitalized real estate firms in the United States. “Real estate intrigued me,” he says. “I liked both the transaction piece and the ongoing relationships you have with people.”

While working with one investor, he grew interested in the healthcare sector. “The ‘silver tsunami’ demographic was intriguing to a real estate investor,” he says. “It had a long runway, a lot of tailwind, and favorable fundamentals. It seemed like a good investment over the long haul.” His client purchased three properties with Westmeyer’s help, but a fourth deal unexpectedly

fell apart. “As their advisor, I said, ‘If you don’t want it, I’ll take a shot,” Westmeyer says. “It was an unfortunate hiccup, but it enabled us to expedite our move into private equity.”

Westmeyer closed his first deal, a two-building medical office portfolio in Aurora, Illinois, in early 2010. And then he started buying more. What started as a one-person operation has turned into a company that is the largest private owner of healthcare real estate in the United States. An operating division of the Chicago-based MB Real Estate, MBRE Healthcare offers a wide range of services including acquisitions and project financing, development and project management, leasing and property management, and consulting, with about one hundred people staffing its multiple service lines from offices in Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, New York, Orlando, Florida, and Columbus, Ohio. “To quote a business partner, ‘You find demand, and then let it run you over,’” Westmeyer says.

Westmeyer’s responsibilities include sourcing, analyzing, and financing investments, as well as structuring and raising capital for the firm. He raises and manages private equity funds for MBRE Healthcare’s acquisition and development efforts and oversees business development and the ongoing performance of MBRE Healthcare’s national portfolio.

PETER WESTMEYER Founder, President, Managing Director MBRE Healthcare

Peter Westmeyer, founder of MBRE Healthcare, turned the demand for medical office space into the largest private healthcare real estate portfolio in the United States

Among the team’s biggest recent projects was the acquisition of an Illinois Bone and Joint Institute portfolio, a $130 million deal involving nine locations in and around Chicago. In late 2015, the team acquired a nearly $700 million, seventy-building portfolio of mainly Texas and southeastern US properties. “It’s hard to take on seventy properties in a short period of time, but we have the team and infrastructure in place to parachute in, assess the market and competitive healthcare landscape, and execute,” he says.

The organization has doubled or tripled in size every year from 2010 through 2016, in both square footage and dollars—but all of this growth hasn’t been easy. While building out that portfolio, Westmeyer lives in Chicago with his wife, Sofia, and their three young children. “That big seventy-building deal was happening just after our third child was born. There were a lot of late-night phone calls during late-night baby-rocking sessions,” he says with a laugh. But Westmeyer has no plans to slow down. His goals are to continue expanding relationships with leading healthcare systems and portfolios across the country. “We want to make informed investment decisions, and any opportunity that can help a health system in their growth strategy and simultaneously offer an attractive, risk-adjusted return to our investors is something that we are interested in,” he says. “We will grow our portfolio to align with the best health systems we can.”

There are risks, of course, especially from the headwinds of change blowing from Washington. As healthcare policy debates continue, the tenants of his buildings face enormous pressures in not knowing how they will be reimbursed for their services. That does change the way he approaches new deals, Westmeyer says. “We do

Peter Westmeyer has led MBRE Healthcare to double or triple in size every year from 2010 to 2016 in both square footage and dollars.

a comprehensive credit review of all the health systems we align with to try to understand the pressures that our tenants face and their ability to succeed,” he says. “We want to align with profitable systems that can stomach these changes that are coming, that are positioned to handle cuts in reimbursement and still be successful.”

No matter how the coverage debate plays out, though, Westmeyer believes that he is still in a healthy business sector. “We don’t know the specifics of what doctors will be paid, but whatever it is, healthcare will still be around, and it will largely be done in a real estate setting,” he says. In fact, he believes that coming changes will help him. “Frankly, that is part of our strategy,” he admits. Pressures to lower healthcare costs will continue to bolster demand for outpatient facilities, to push procedures from high-cost hospitals to lower-cost settings. “These are market forces as well as regulatory forces,” he says. “We are trying to house that lower-cost setting. It’s not like retail, where you can go online to buy things. With healthcare, you still have to see a doctor and have procedures done in person for the most part.” AHL

"On behalf of Capital One Healthcare, I'd like to congratulate Peter Westmeyer on his success. As a long-time lender to Peter and MB Real Estate, we remain impressed with their ability to source strong medical office transactions and execute on their business plans.” –Erik Tellefson, managing director, Capital One

As part of a top ten US bank, Capital One Healthcare is well positioned to meet your medical property financing needs. Our dedicated team develops solutions that align with your business plan—whether that’s growing capital, funding capital purchases, financing replacements or acquisitions, funding tenant improvements, or leasing commissions, and more.

A Heritage of Care

Having been born in the hospital where he now works, Tim Dutton has a longstanding relationship with Kettering Health Network, an organization that champions an empathetic patient experience and impactful employee culture

By Jenny Draper

Tim Dutton drew his first breath in the hospital where he now governs human resources. Yet, he considers his path to healthcare more circular than linear. In college, he was majoring in history with the idea of going to law school when a pivotal conversation around a campfire influenced his decision to jump into healthcare—his family’s history—instead. That’s when he took the suggestion to apply for a management and healthcare internship at Adventist Health System based in Altamonte Springs, Florida. He got the internship, kickstarting a meaningful career that would lead him back to the wooded suburb of Dayton, Ohio, twelve years later as the third generation in his family to join the healthcare community.

Dutton was born in Kettering, Ohio, to a nurse and a financier at the local hospital. His grandfather had served as a medic in the US Army during World War II, marrying his grandmother, also a nurse, before they joined a few hundred others in the community to form Kettering Memorial Hospital in 1964. Decades of expansion later, the Kettering Health Network now encompasses eight hospitals and 120 outpatient facilities where Dutton ensures the health and development of 12,000 employees, 1,500 volunteers, and 2,500 physicians as the VP of human resources.

“When I was a kid, I loved to collect baseball cards,” Dutton says. “I spent hours in my room putting teams together, reordering the lineup. Human resources is about creating a team and a culture, understanding roles, and thinking through what’s ideal for the organization. That’s how my brain is wired, and I love how

human resources is that intersection between business and people.” His calling clicked during that first internship, and Dutton never looked back. He graduated from Andrews University with a bachelor’s degree in social studies and an MBA from Webster University, then led human resources at Takoma Adventist Hospital in Tennessee and Florida Hospital.

But in July 2011, his roots called him back to Kettering Health Network. “It was a chance for me to make a difference in the community I grew up in,” Dutton says. “I have many family members who work in diverse areas of healthcare here, and it brings us together around the dinner table, so to speak.” Two years later, Dutton was promoted from administrative director to VP of human resources, and he continues to set his sights on service.

Kettering Health Network is a faith-based nonprofit sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, of which Dutton and his family are members. The ministry’s healthcare philosophy blends education and outreach, a central force in the company as well. “We think of each patient not as a symptom or an illness, but as a person who needs healing,” Dutton says. “And not only physically—also mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We try to create a workplace culture that not only supports and encourages our patients through quality care, but also treats our employees like VIPs, too.”

Since half of the business comprises outpatient services across ten counties, a strong culture is the unifying link. Dutton focuses on two programs: “Called to Care Orientation” and the leadership training program “Called to Lead.” His team hires about two hundred people per month, so in addition to a ninety-day onboarding

TIM DUTTON VP of Human Resources

Kettering Health Network

program, cultural initiatives are key to individual and team success. The latter program invests in managers to cultivate effective translators of the company’s strategic vision, prepping them to align and scale teams through communication tools.

“We’re making sure our leaders know what’s happening in advance so they can help us explain the intent behind the purchase of a building, for example, or the intent behind a strategy for cardiac services,” Dutton says. “Our managers are the people that our employees go to first because they trust their managers, and they want to understand what this means for their department, personally, or for the organization—they want to be stakeholders and our managers help us accomplish that.”

Dutton cites recognition as a primary focus guiding their collective conversation across Kettering Health Network. His team encapsulates the company’s mission, vision, and values through storytelling: examples of an action of service or word of kindness are collected in culture reports. Videos highlighting stories of improvement or innovation are shared company-wide. Plus, an employee-driven, grassroots program called “Learnapalooza” engages employees in TED Talk-style knowledge shares.

“They’re not doing it because they want a headline, but we feel that by capturing those stories and sharing them, it boosts the spirit of our team,” Dutton says. “We’re a 24/7 operation. There are ups and downs; there are a lot of emotional moments just because of the nature of our work, so we’re really trying to focus on the stories—our story.” The organization’s hybrid HR structure (a centralized strategic office and experts at hospital campuses) requires clear, transparent communication.

Providing tangible ways and “emotional fuel” to connect employees to the mission is crucial, according to Dutton, as it often manifests in the communities they serve. Town halls spotlight examples of employees’ direct impact, from helping patients regain balance and motion in their bodies to all the newborn deliveries they’ve been a part of for growing families. Dutton claims being a lifelong learner and looking for win-win opportunities are key to creating a strong internal culture that provides optimal care for the external community.

Dutton adds that growing up in Kettering and being a part of the faith-based organization helps him to put people first, not rules. “We see what we do as really sacred work, and we want our leaders to understand there’s a difference between a job and a vocation—that they’re doing more than earning a living,” he says. “We strive to be more of a vocation for people who feel called into healthcare and the idea of helping the healing process for our neighbors, our friends, and our community at large.” AHL

A healthy future. Play to win.

From Pharmacy Fascination

to Legal Leader

By Matt Brijack

Charles Dadswell reflects on his career and where science and law intersect

pending time in the neighborhood pharmacy as a kid helped foster Charles Dadswell’s love of chemistry, physics, and electronics. This enthusiasm led Dadswell to attend pharmacy school before working in the neonatal and pediatric intensive care unit at a hospital following graduation.

Dadswell was always interested in the law and continued working part-time as a pharmacist at Rite Aid after being accepted into law school. After graduating, Dadswell continued his legal education, receiving a master's degree in patent law and trade regulation and working for a federal appellate judge in Washington. He gained experience as a patent attorney and subsequently as general counsel working for several big-name companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Glaxo, and the French diagnostic company bioMerieux. He started as general counsel with Illumina in 2013.

What’s your leadership philosophy?

Dadswell: That people are well intentioned, hardworking, and should be trusted. It’s then a leader’s responsibility to match an individual’s level of experience, areas of interest, and the needs of the organization.

After that, it’s been my experience that the best way to lead your department is to develop your employees. Provide individuals the opportunity to make decisions and help them to understand what they might miss if they don’t know a specific business or legal area and encourage the use of subject matter experts to help make matrixed decisions—for younger attorneys this is sometimes a tough bridge to cross.

What early leadership roles did you have and what lessons did you learn?

Dadswell: As an Eagle Scout, I learned early leadership as a patrol leader and troop leader. Quickly, I realized that people need to feel that their contributions are valued, and that having a team of diverse individuals is extremely beneficial, both to the success of an endeavor and to the overall satisfaction of the team members.

In business, a successful team needs to have people who think differently and tackle problems in a myriad of ways. When this happens, issues are examined from multiple perspectives and different angles; this input from a variety of perspectives and experiences leaves teams less likely to be surprised or to have missed an angle, because they are all using their diverse knowledge and experiences.

How do you handle the scope of the role of general counsel?

Dadswell: First, you need to have a great team. I am privileged to have a tremendous team of talented individuals who work well together and who are always looking out for the best interest of the company; they excel at seeking out other views and subject matter experts across the organization. Next you need to have a true global presence and to function as a cohesive team. Finally, you need to give the individuals leading your organization the freedom to manage their teams and provide the support for them to take on opportunities that will move the business forward.

How can legal and government affairs “move the business”?

Dadswell: We believe genetic sequencing is the foundation and future for diagnostic testing and treatment, which will, over time, significantly reduce the cost of healthcare. As a growing company, our government affairs team is assisting us in interacting with government officials and is able to educate and explain our technology. On the legal side, it is our responsibility to protect and enforce our legal rights, and the decisions we make have a direct impact on our business. The other role we play is to advise and assist in business decisions while balancing risk. However, we have to be careful to balance risk while still allowing the business to grow at the quickest pace possible.

How have you handled the ethical questions related to genetic sequencing?

Dadswell: Illumina has always had an Ethics Advisory Board to handle practical questions that come from our lab directors. We have just reformed the board with some of the top genetic ethicists from around the world. Our goal is to understand the ethical questions that arise from our technological advancements. This talented and experienced group of individuals will be discussing current and potential future ethical questions and providing us a vision into the future as genetic testing advances.

CHARLES DADSWELL Senior VP, General Counsel Illumina

Knobbe Martens proudly congratulates Charles Dadswell for his exceptional achievements for Illumina and in the life sciences industry.

Who We Are

Consistently ranked among the top intellectual property firms, Knobbe Martens has over 300 lawyers and scientists nationwide and dedicates its practice to all aspects of intellectual property law, including litigation.

Many of our biotech attorneys have advanced degrees or industry experience, which translates to a rapid ability to understand a technology and to develop and implement effective IP strategies. More information about the firm can be found at www.knobbe.com.

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“Turn a curious nerd into a patent attorney, and the possibilities look truly endless.”

Could you give us an insight into what you see as possibly having an ethical impact?

Dadswell: Interestingly, our noninvasive prenatal screening test for genetic disease has produced outcomes that didn’t square with our typical results. When this was investigated further, cancer was found in the mother; this was an ancillary finding and the debate over the ethical treatment of ancillary findings is robust and ongoing. Other ethical issues we are looking at include gene-editing technology, and the ability to isolate and sequence whole embryonic cells circulating in a pregnant mother’s blood.

What advice would you give to attorneys looking to become general counsel?

Dadswell: Be an expert in something—whether that’s regulatory, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property, or litigation—but be interested in everything. Listen to everyone, absorb different and opposing views, and never stop learning. Interface and check in frequently with your stakeholders, and never forget that you are in the service business. Businesses run on the basis of good advice and efficiency, so be an effective communicator and an impartial voice in the organization.

What drives you as an individual?

Dadswell: Success. I hate to lose; call it the litigator in me. Illumina’s scientists, engineers, and programmers give us our competitive advantage, and we will continue to innovate, grow, and create markets with our technology. This advantage is tremendous when measuring success. However, I also measure success on an individual level: is every single person that works for the legal and government affairs function successful, and what can we do to assure they are totally engaged?

What do you look for when hiring?

Dadswell: We hire experienced professionals and competence is typically not an issue. Then questions of fit, style, and manner become the most important areas I consider. With experienced professionals coming from different companies, they carry with them the experiences and feel of that past organization. I ask questions about what they liked and disliked in their past position, which says a lot. I also want to see how they treat other employees, particularly employees of the level they manage. Everyone should be treated with respect.

Illumina is a quickly growing company. How have you kept the legal and government affairs teams ahead of the growth?

Dadswell: When I started at Illumina in 2013, the company had 3,200 employees. We now have over 6,000 globally, including 3,400 at our San Diego headquarters. We have three primary sites: San Diego, Singapore, and Cambridge, United Kingdom. To keep the legal and government affairs groups ahead of the curve, there are three things I’ve focused on: organic growth in line with the company’s growth, creating new organizations within the department such as a regulatory and quality group and government affairs, and having strong relationships with several highly respected external law firms. We also recently expanded our legal teams in Asia and Europe to place resources closer to where our international clients are housed. This takes some of the burden off our San Diego team and further aligns our international locations. As I think about the legal department, the next expansion of the group will likely be adding to our commercial and compliance team.

You’re a proponent of innovation. What drives that thinking?

Dadswell: As a lifelong nerd with a penchant for science, engineering, and technology, I believe anything is possible. Turn a curious nerd into a patent attorney, and the possibilities look truly endless. Seeing the positive impact we can make on people’s lives using sequencing motivates me, and Illumina as a whole, to continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with our technology. It’s no coincidence that I was drawn to a company where one of the core tenets is, “Innovation is in our DNA.” AHL

Fish congratulates Charles Dadswell on this well-deserved recognition of his visionary leadership, sharp legal mind, and business acumen. We have been fortunate to see him apply this expertise to achieve remarkable results for Illumina during the multiple matters that we’ve had the privilege of handling for Illumina.

Beyond Four Walls

Terrebonne General Medical Center chief operating officer Diane Yeates says keeping a visible community presence is the key to its success and remaining a strong asset

By Lindsey Lewandowski

In the ever-evolving healthcare industry, Diane Yeates says the primary challenge she’s encountered as chief operating officer of Terrebonne General Medical Center (TGMC) in Houma, Louisiana, is funding—"having to make more investments while revenues continue to get reduced.”

To successfully meet this challenge, Yeates acknowledges whom she and TGMC are ultimately serving as an organization: patients. An important organizational goal is to keep patients close to home and make decisions that provide the best outcomes for the most people in the community.

“Sometimes that decision entails initiatives related to our physicians or employees,” Yeates explains. “Sometimes that’s about an expansion, renovation, or equipment for our facility. Sometimes that’s going to be a decision that might involve partnering with various other organizations that have like philosophies.”

Making all of these decisions has yielded successful outcomes. For instance, most recently, TGMC completed the implementation of a new EHR system through Epic, a yearlong project in conjunction with Ochsner Health System. This new system is expected to yield valuable data in measuring patient outcomes and allow patients to be seen seamlessly across the various hospitals in the Ochsner Health Network. “Ochsner Health System has brought various avenues of value to TGMC through a recent affiliation,” Yeates says.

Another positive addition to the community is the Mary Bird Perkins TGMC Cancer Center, which opened in 2011 and brought more cancer services to the area. Yeates says having had significant involvement in the planning, development, and opening of the cancer center was a meaningful professional accomplishment.

To ensure that TGMC remains a strong community asset, Yeates must remain abreast of the changes within the healthcare industry that she’s observed during her twenty-seven-year tenure with TGMC.

DIANE YEATES Chief Operating Officer Terrebonne General Medical Center

These changes have been related to: the move from cost- or case-rate reimbursement paid on volume to current value-based paid on quality; the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act; HIPAA; the Affordable Care Act; movement of more inpatient services to outpatient; increased use of physician extenders; expansion of devices; clinical trials; and the move away from a charity care system in Louisiana—just to name a few factors. The impact of just one of these changes can cost a hospital a significant amount of money in decreased reimbursement rates or increased operational costs to comply with regulations, Yeates says.

DIANE YEATES’S TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Don’t overreact.

2. Be open-minded, and always stay several steps ahead of current strategy.

3. Recognize it’s difficult for a community hospital to stand alone; some partnerships or affiliations are necessary and valuable.

4. Create relationships across all providers to give the best care for the community.

5. Be comfortable moving strategy into operations.

6. Stay educated and involved with your peers.

7. Surround yourself with excellent people.

8. Embrace change.

9. Be bold.

10. Most importantly, keep the patients at the center all the time.

In addition, it results in an increase in patients’ interaction in decisions regarding their healthcare. “Patients are much more participatory,” Yeates says. “There’s more information that’s available to them; therefore, they know more about their options than they did in the past.”

One of the benefits of Epic is that patients have access to MyChart, a patient-specific portal where individual medical information is updated as results are complete.

Preventive care and wellness also have become a priority for patients in recent years, and in 2013, TGMC significantly increased its visibility in the wellness arena, Yeates says. Examples are providing health screenings to employers in the region, sponsoring athletic trainers for all the high schools in the community, and partnering with a local grocery chain to promote healthy lifestyles through cooking demonstrations or opportunities to shop with a nutritionist.

“We’ve really taken healthcare outside of the four walls and are bringing it into the community,” Yeates says. “TGMC is sixty-three years old, and it’s our responsibility to make sure that we are around for another sixty years. We’re a significant community asset.” AHL

For more than twenty-five years, Toshiba Medical has been a proud imaging partner of Terrebonne General Medical Center (TGMC). TGMC has continued to be a leading cardiac care provider in the market, and we congratulate their physicians and staff for all they have achieved.

Compliance From a Provider’s Perspective

By Galen Beebe

Law was never a route that Ann Ford thought she would travel . Her path was nursing. But while she was studying nursing at Marquette University, she found out one of her nursing instructors was attending law school. “That was probably the first time that it occurred to me that a nurse could become a lawyer,” she says.

After graduating, Ford worked as a bedside nurse, but she never forgot that instructor. “I loved patient care but wanted to figure out how I could have a broader impact,” Ford says. “After evaluating some different options, what really kept coming back to me was practicing law.”

Today, Ford is the chief ethics and compliance officer at Medline Industries Inc., a medical supplies and devices distributor. Since Ford was recruited in 2010, Medline has tripled in size; it currently sells more than 360,000 different products. As it’s growing, Medline is distributing more physician-preference devices, including implants for foot and ankle surgeries, advanced wound-care products, and innovative tissueregeneration products.

Introducing these products to market involves clinical research and talking to key opinion leaders, including physicians, advanced practice specialty nurses, and scientists. Evidence is essential to support Medline’s advanced wound- and skin-care market, as compared to more commodity-type medical supplies. “It requires a more evidence-based approach than selling bedpans,” Ford explains. To address these new requirements, Ford says that Medline is enhancing and formalizing clinical, scientific processes around its ability to manage the

compliance aspects of conducting and publishing clinical research.

From a compliance standpoint, it’s exciting. “One of the main goals I have for running my team is to help the business reach its goals in a way that is compliant but also expedient,” she says. “We want to sell quality products that improve the lives of patients.”

However, with that excitement comes new challenges. “When you’re introducing new processes, there can be tension or concern that perhaps those new processes will interrupt the flow of the business,” she says. “So the challenge is to nurture a trusting relationship with the business as a strategic partner.”

Ford’s background in healthcare law informs her compliance work. Before joining Medline, Ford worked in a private practice where she defended doctors and nurses in medical malpractice suits, and then she went in-house at a hospital. “The cornerstone of any compliance program is its code of conduct,” she says. There are similarities in any company’s code of conduct like respecting your colleagues and business partners, acting with integrity, following laws and regulations, and protecting the company’s assets. Although there is some commonality in the codes of conduct across industries, there are specific healthcare fraud and abuse laws that Ford says make her healthcare legal background relevant to her current role.

ANN FORD Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, Deputy General Counsel Medline Industries

How Ann Ford’s background as a nurse prepared her for a career in law

From the beginning, Ford’s caregiving experience gave her practical skills that other lawyers had to develop on the job. “Right out of the gate, I had an advantage over my colleagues who were very bright lawyers but had to learn medical technology and had to learn how to read a chart,” Ford explains. “I already had the ability to do that.”

Having knowledge of the industry from a provider’s perspective also impacts her relationships with Medline’s customers, almost all of whom are healthcare providers. “The longest standing and the most important aspect of how my nursing experience has affected my career is that it helps me to relate to and understand the provider side,” Ford says. “I can understand the day-to-day challenges that nurses and physicians have.”

Outside of the office, Ford puts her healthcare knowledge to work as the Advocacy Committee cochair of the Illinois chapter of JDRF, a global organization that funds Type 1 diabetes research. Ford has a personal connection to the cause; her nineteen-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age six.

“The research dollars are absolutely critical to making any changes and advances in trying to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes,” Ford says. “When you do research on chronic diseases like this, it's really important to have multiyear trials. To do that you have to have guaranteed funding over a multiyear period, or you don't get the researchers to take on the project.” Before joining the board, Ford and her family participated in the organization as individual contributors. Although these gestures were meaningful, she knew she could do more. “I really wanted to use my background as a nurse and a lawyer and figure out how I could contribute in a broader way to JDRF and its mission,” Ford says. “A few years back, I decided that with my background as a nurse and a lawyer and working in healthcare, I would have something to add from an advocacy/ government relations perspective.”

Along with her advocacy work with JDRF, Ford says her nursing career has absolutely shaped her legal career. “I like to think of what I do as still having some impact on healthcare and patients,” she says. “There are other ways to reach them, beyond the bedside.” AHL

Where experts go for expert advice.

FTI Consulting congratulates Ann Ford for her leadership and dedication to Medline Industries and the healthcare community.

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In an increasingly connected world, healthcare—a traditionally community-focused industry—is experiencing both growing pains and new opportunities.

WORLD

Many sectors of the industry, from insurance providers to medical device manufacturers, must now navigate the uncharted landscape of a newly globalized healthcare market.

MARKET

Whether it’s providing insurance to Americans abroad or looking at the differences among individual nations’ healthcare laws and taxes,

these executives share their insight into what the global health market will look like down the road.

By Chris Gigley

A ADVOCATE

s companies and employees become more globally mobile, managing their healthcare, safety, and overall well-being around the world has become an increasingly critical consideration. UnitedHealthcare Global is a leading partner for companies with these needs, and Brian Iaia, senior VP and general counsel, leads the team that helps ensure members get the care they need.

“UnitedHealthcare Global provides healthcare coverage on a global basis,” Iaia says. “We integrate clinically led medical care and case management oversight. We offer travel assistance and security intelligence services when necessary. And, when an evacuation is needed for personal safety or medical reasons, we also manage those end-to-end.”

Iaia and his team thrive at the intersection of commerce with the constantly changing web of complex laws and regulations. “The global commerce market is complicated from a legal, regulatory, and compliance perspective,” he says. “My team takes international, geographically specific legal and compliance issues fully into account when guiding the services UnitedHealthcare Global delivers and advising our clients regarding their globally mobile employees. Our intent is that we remain compliant and that it is all seamless for our clients.”

Iaia and his team track the ever-changing landscape of health insurance regulations in more than 190

How UnitedHealthcare Global’s Brian Iaia helps international travelers and expatriates get the care they need virtually anywhere in the world

“We take a proactive approach with our members and engage with them before they even know they need our services.”

UnitedHealthcare Global makes legal and compliance a big part of its value proposition, Iaia says, and partners with clients and brokers to ensure all stakeholders are informed and aligned.

countries around the world, in support of the company’s diverse offerings. “When you’re buying domestic healthcare insurance coverage, compliance is just assumed,” Iaia says. “The regulatory structure is well settled, and the rules are fairly consistent. The international side is different. Rules and regulations vary greatly by country, and it is important to understand those nuances to ensure our members have easy access to the care they need.”

Iaia has developed a legal framework to manage, anticipate, and respond to regulatory developments with experienced attorneys on his staff and access to expert, outside counsel as needed. He knows the leading legal and commercial publications that are the first to report on emerging laws and routinely meets with regulators around the globe to discuss trending issues. His team has to maintain their expertise at a level that is as wide as it is deep. For example, in certain Middle Eastern countries, expatriates cannot obtain a work permit or residence visa until they get healthcare coverage from a locally licensed insurer. UnitedHealthcare Global coverage won’t work in this case, so Iaia established a relationship with a local strategic partner to satisfy those particular regulations. It’s all taken care of, instead of the expatriates and their employers having to scramble to find local coverage and other services on their own.

The work of Iaia’s team reaches all the way through to the consumer who is traveling abroad. “We take a proactive approach with our members and engage with them before they even know they need our services,” he says. UnitedHealthcare Global attempts to reach all of its members upon enrollment to provide pretrip information alerts about the countries they’re traveling to before they go. Within these alerts and calls, members receive critical information that allows them to better adapt and thrive in their new environments. Members receive information about health facilities, illness trends, country infrastructure concerns, and common crime schemes. UnitedHealthcare Global also provides information about local regulations that might impact members or the medical or pharmaceutical care they need to receive.

Iaia cites another example in Singapore where there are strict regulations on some commonly used prescription medications in the United States. Methylphenidate, also known as Ritalin, is considered a controlled substance in Singapore. Foreigners with a Ritalin prescription need to apply for prior approval from the Health Products Regulation Group within the Health Sciences Authority in Singapore before arriving.

The places experiencing the most regulatory change also happen to be where many global companies are expanding to right now. Iaia says that expats are adept at handling non-life-threatening health problems on their own, contacting UnitedHealthcare Global’s call center for routine assistance or working directly with local doctors. But if it’s a more serious health condition, there could be complications.

“Not only do you have a potential language barrier or different cultural norm, but the delivery of medical care in foreign countries might also be different from what

BRIAN IAIA Senior VP, General Counsel UnitedHealthcare Global

people might be used to,” he says. “Gone are the days when just paying the claim was enough. Customers and members need assistance from start to finish, and the legal and regulatory framework in these countries dictates how we do what we do.”

UnitedHealthcare Global offers a twenty-four-hour call center and an Emergency Response Center staffed with experienced representatives who not only speak the local languages of whatever country members or clients call from, but who are also trained on local healthcare environments. Together with the company’s expert clinical management group, they can deal with any emergencies that arise and deal directly with the providers to ensure members get the best possible care.

The landscape is constantly changing, and the work is nonstop, Iaia says, but it’s absolutely rewarding because the end product serves customers and members.

Part of the lure for Iaia is that no two days are alike. Iaia and his team are responsible for providing full legal support and guidance for UnitedHealthcare Global’s businesses. This ranges from new market entry and licensing work to contracting. It also includes compliance, privacy, and sometimes litigation.

Iaia has built a strong legal team to help him get the job done, and he deliberately exposes them to as many parts of the business as possible so they can tackle just about any issue that might arise. That versatility is increasingly important as UnitedHealthcare Global’s products and services are offered on an integrated basis. Having the right mind-set is key to performing at a high level, and for Iaia and his team, that means taking a knowledge-first approach to tackle any problems they face.

“I make sure that each member of the team knows the nuts and bolts of our business as well as our businesspeople,” he says.

“Gone are the days when just paying the claim was enough. Customers and members need assistance from start to finish, and the legal and regulatory framework in these countries dictates how we do what we do.”

That means getting deep into the details and understanding how members use the organization’s products and services, how claims and IT systems work, where personnel are, and what the value proposition is.

With that knowledge, Iaia says, aligning with the principles of the business is much quicker and easier. Identifying the risks and grasping how things are trending can move faster as well, which is good because things have been changing faster than usual of late, both in the United States and abroad. “All countries are dealing with rising medical costs, mobility issues, and advancing technology, and it’s only going to continue to change,” he says.

But UnitedHealthcare Global clients shouldn’t worry. With Iaia and his team tracking everything and the organization offering a full suite of products and services, clients and members are covered around the world, no matter what happens.

At Hogan Lovells, our 2,500 lawyers across the globe work together, solving your toughest legal issues across major industries, including the ever-evolving healthcare space. Expanding into new markets, considering capital from new sources, or dealing with increasingly complex regulation or disputes— we help you stay on top of your risks and opportunities globally.

BEYOND

By

By Jeff Silver

Suroor Raheemullah is all about moving to the center. As director, health & wellness and global mobility at Dover Corporation, she is dedicated to making Dover’s healthcare and benefits programs the best that they can be. One of her priorities is establishing centralized control of those programs; the previous decentralized structure was negatively impacting the business, she says. Dover, a diversified global manufacturer of equipment, components, specialty systems, and support services for the energy, engineered systems, fluids and refrigeration, and food equipment industries, has about 17,000 employees in the United States, 11,700 internationally, and 29 different global companies under the Dover corporate umbrella, so centralization of benefits is a tall order. But Raheemullah knew it had to be a priority. When she started, for example, many Dover companies in the United States had different health benefit plans, designs, and costs. That became an employee development and retention issue when individuals moved to a new company and found they had different coverage choices.

“We’re making sure that we are much more consistent, less complex, and more efficient across the board when it comes to employee benefits,” Raheemullah says.

Analytics plays a large role in her efforts to simplify and centralize benefits. Part of this entails comparing

leveraging analytics and engaging face-to-face, Suroor Raheemullah is improving healthcare for Dover Corporation and its employees around the world

Dover offerings to benchmarks established by other companies. But Raheemullah is careful to customize decisions and processes to Dover’s specific needs. “Analytics and benchmarks are great tools, but we have to take a holistic perspective to offer choices that are appropriate to our culture, our people, and the challenges they face,” she says.

The analytic, metrics-based focus is being used to create new programs that eliminate less popular benefits. This allows resources to be used for Dover-specific priorities, such as implementing new work site assessments and ergonomic initiatives to help address musculoskeletal issues, which compose the company’s largest healthcare expenditure.

Until recently, the company offered a coaching program to comply with federal regulations for a reasonable alternative standard for its wellness screening and assessment program. This helped affected participants avoid an additional insurance premium fee but allowed them to choose any goal, regardless of whether it was connected to the condition flagged through screening and assessment. (“Sleeping better,” for example, would not directly improve an issue with body mass index.)

Coaching is still offered as a separate optional activity, but the reasonable alternative standard is now addressed through more action-oriented programs managed by Dover’s wellness provider. By choosing fitness, nutrition, or weight management, targeted solutions are tailored to employee needs with the goal of producing the most appropriate results.

Raheemullah is also looking to make improvements in administrative and management processes. Metrics revealed that over 3,500 man-hours were being spent each year on tobacco certification (tracking whether each employee used tobacco during the previous twelve months). By eliminating certification as a separate process and incorporating it into the company’s annual health assessments and wellness certification, the additional time, costs, and effort have been eliminated. It also helped streamline the employee experience, eliminated unnecessary reporting to operating company leaders, and

“We’re making sure that we are much more consistent, less complex, and more efficient across the board when it comes to employee benefits.”

SUROOR RAHEEMULLAH

Director, Health & Wellness and Global Mobility

Dover Corporation

In many industries, distinct boundaries have existed between corporate executives and shop-floor employees for generations. Suroor Raheemullah experienced them firsthand when she visited Dover’s manufacturing sites to discuss health benefit changes and how they would be administered. “You could tell from people’s expressions and body language that they were hesitating to address the issues directly,” she recalls.

Raheemullah helped diffuse the situation and was able to forge more personal and direct connections through humor. She even prepared material ahead of time. One of her go-to lines became, “You think managing corporate healthcare is tough, try putting three young kids to sleep!”

reduced the number of reports provided to supplier partners on a monthly basis.

Tobacco certification is just one example of how Raheemullah and her department are innovating and streamlining by taking a fresh look at existing programs. “Doing something the way it has always been done doesn’t mean there isn’t room for dramatic improvement. These are all changes that were driven by thinking more analytically and challenging the status quo to make meaningful adjustments to our benefits programs and processes,” she explains.

Much of what Raheemullah has achieved can be attributed to her direct engagement with managers and employees. She says that in-person site visits were critical to making efforts successful because they facilitated face-to-face engagement. They also enabled the health & wellness and global mobility team to be seen as working collaboratively with employees to make improvements, not simply issuing decrees from the corporate office.

“We did more listening than talking on-site and didn’t try to solve or correct anything we heard,” she says. “Even in what can be a unique relationship between corporate executives and manufacturing

sites, being there to take the heat is part of building a strong relationship.”

Several concrete changes came out of those meetings. Coverage for hearing aids and critical illness expenses, in which beneficiaries are immediately provided with funds that can be used at their discretion when an illness occurs, were both added to Dover’s healthcare plans.

It also became apparent that employees did not fully understand their benefits, how to navigate them, or how to leverage them for maximum benefit. To address those issues, the company implemented CastLight, an online transparency tool that helps employees shop for providers, review providers’ historic outcomes, and compare pricing for procedures. It also launched ALEX, a tool that explains health plans using simple questions and plain language to help guide users when they are trying to choose the most appropriate health plan.

Raheemullah expects that the new technology solutions will be valuable in gaining new insights into how employees use their healthcare benefits. Ultimately, they will also help develop even more customized plans targeted to their specific needs.

AWORLDLY APPROACHTO

After years of working throughout Europe, Marcel Overweel brings a global outlook to his position as CFO of Byram Healthcare

By Porcshe N. Moran

t is often said that the world is a classroom . For Marcel Overweel, this adage couldn’t ring more true. The CFO of Byram Healthcare, a leader in disposable medical supply delivery, has received a global education in business while advancing his career in the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, and the United States. The diversity of his professional life has directed him to become a chameleon who can communicate effectively across borders.

“My international experience has taught me how to work in a variety of cultures that are all very different,” Overweel says. “I had to learn to be patient and to learn by doing. It has been easy and natural for me to adapt to the changes. I find it exciting.”

Overweel is a native of Rotterdam, the second-largest city in the Netherlands. He earned his MBA in management and operations at Erasmus University in Rotterdam before serving in the Royal Netherlands Army. He started his career in accountancy at the former Coopers & Lybrand, now PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

“PwC supported me in getting my CPA degree,” Overweel says. “They offered a broad training program, as well as opportunities to work nationally and internationally with many different clients in all kinds of industries. With this foundation, I could switch to any type of business.”

Equipped with the skill set to transition to a new field, Overweel took his next position at Mediq, a global medical devices and care solutions provider. There, he served in different financial management roles. At another Mediq subsidiary, Medeco, he was the CFO for five

I MARCEL OVERWEEL

CFO

Byram Healthcare Kyo Morishima

“We need to make sure we understand exactly how our services are reimbursed in every situation.”

years. The company, which is a market leader in medical supplies for institutional healthcare, acquired companies in Switzerland, Norway, and Hungary. The company also set up a European distributors’ network in twenty countries. Next, Overweel served as the business development manager for Mediq Netherlands and later as CFO for Mediq Germany and Mediq Norway.

“Fueled by my previous international experience, I did mergers and acquisitions for Mediq,” Overweel says. “Among other countries, we acquired three companies in Germany. I worked there for three years, combined with a year working in Norway, and I still kept my old reporting lines with Switzerland and Hungary.”

In 2011, Overweel relocated to the United States to join Byram Healthcare, which Mediq acquired in 2008. Overweel is based out of the company’s headquarters in White Plains, New York. As CFO, he manages the financial risks, planning, record keeping, and reporting for Byram Healthcare. His typical week consists of meetings and conference calls with shareholders and internal teams. He also travels

WORK CULTURES AROUND THE WORLD

A career spent working in different countries has made Marcel Overweel aware of the distinct cultures of work environments around the world. He has learned to tailor his leadership approach to fit his surroundings.

“In Scandinavia, life/work balance leans toward life,” he says. “In Germany, life and work are strictly separated, and work culture is very formal. The Dutch culture is very direct and liberal, in the sense that everyone has an opinion. The United States is kind of a happy mix of both. The most prominent thing is that Americans are very action-driven and focused on success.”

to Byram’s regional billing centers in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Los Angeles and Chicago metropolitan areas.

“My role is somewhat broader than what you usually see in CFO jobs,” Overweel says. “I am involved in the revenue cycle side of our operations, which entails everything from verifying patient eligibility and insurance coverage to releasing the order and collecting the cash.”

With more than two decades of experience in the healthcare arena in both the United States and Europe, Overweel has a unique perspective on the system. He says that the US and European models are similar in that they are both highly regulated, but that’s where the similarities end.

“In Europe, the regulations have led to base insurance, which offers packages defined by the government for standardized care,” Overweel says. “If people want more coverage, they can buy it. The US healthcare model is successful but much more complex. The complexity comes from choice, levels of coverage, standards of care, and regulatory requirements by federal, state, and commercial plans.”

The challenges and constant changes of the healthcare landscape are a daily reality for Overweel and others at Byram. The company is an in-network provider with over 225 million covered lives in the United States. Its service provides a vast portfolio of supplies including wound, ostomy, diabetes, urology, incontinence, enteral nutrition, and breast pumps. Byram works closely with home health agencies, managed care organizations, and healthcare professionals to maximize clinical outcomes while aiming to minimize patient and plan expenses.

“We need to make sure we understand exactly how our services are reimbursed in every situation,” Overweel says. “Many situations are unique. Our colleagues who take the orders and check the eligibility and coverage need to be supported by thorough systems and tools to make the correct decisions and give the right answers to our customers.”

Overweel believes that a blend of smart investments and an attention to teamwork is what keeps Byram on course with its mission to improve outcomes and affordability of care for people living with chronic diseases. He also notes that Byram Healthcare/Mediq is owned by a private equity firm, which forces them to dig deep into the drivers of the business, but also offers opportunities to develop at an accelerated pace.

“I am proud of the successful acquisitions that Byram has done,” he says. “By combining the business models of the different companies, we have created a stronger company going forward. We have also made large investments in new technology. Our team mentality is strong, with a single focus on continuously improving our operations and services to our customers. We collaborate for the same outcome, and we share our successes, irrespective of who scored the goal.”

IS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT

Rick Haynes preserves Permobil’s culture of extraordinary effort at the mobility manufacturer and developer by celebrating how it empowers clients with the freedom of movement

By Connor Shioshita Pickett

Rick Haynes, Permobil’s VP of human resources, understands the universal appeal of the company and its products. “In our business, we realize that disabilities have no geographic or cultural boundaries,” he says. “What connects us across Permobil is that we believe the independence that mobility can bring is a basic right, no matter where you live.”

Based in Sweden, Permobil is a global leader in the mobility industry, with employees in seventeen countries, manufacturing power wheelchairs and developing mobility technologies. Haynes oversees human resources for Canada, Australia, and the Americas. Although coordinating the mission across continents and cultures can be demanding, he says that the fundamental importance of its mission keeps the company focused. From his Tennessee office, Haynes observes a culture of generosity, empathy, and mutual support around the world.

Still, there are cultural differences and logistical inconveniences when teams are coordinating conference calls and travel arrangements. Haynes notes that the Swedes, for instance, like to take a substantial holiday of two or three weeks at the end of each summer, while American

RICK HAYNES VP of Human Resources Permobil

“We believe the independence that mobility can bring is a basic right, no matter where you live.”

Richard Foshee

Rick Haynes imagined that he would serve in the military as a pilot and then transition into commercial flight. But after back surgery, that path was no longer available. He worked in human resources at American Airlines and then continued in HR with other organizations. During "one of those bad days at work,” he says, a Permobil recruiter called to gauge his interest. He had no previous experience with mobility technology but was struck by Permobil’s vision. “Work is hard, no matter what you do,’” Haynes recalls thinking. “And if I’m going to do this, I’d like for it to make a positive difference.”

employees sometimes may even fail to use their allotted vacation days. In Permobil’s case, Haynes ascribes that directly to its serious, user-oriented commitment.

That people focus is exemplified by the fact that Permobil doesn’t maintain an inventory. Rather, the organization builds every chair specifically for an individual, which helps the team keep in touch with the mission. Haynes recalls a time that Permobil delivered an exceptional effort for one military veteran who had returned from overseas to a son born during his deployment. The vet was marooned in a VA hospital until he had his Permobil chair. The weekend of the child’s first birthday, Permobil employees loaded the veteran’s chair into a van and drove it overnight to the VA hospital.

Each chair delivery arrives with a card and a signed photograph of a technician who worked on it. New owners often stop at Permobil’s Tennessee facility to meet those builders, and when they do, the Permobil team drops everything to make time for them. These extraordinary moments keep the calling close to the daily effort, which HR takes care to nurture.

This nurturing quality of the culture extends to seeming informality. When CEO Jon Sintorn visits from Sweden, employees at all levels call him by his first name. The informality—paired with professionalism—is something the organization tries to encourage and foster.

“There’s an organizational hierarchy, but I don’t think that you really sense it when you’re in this building or in any of our other facilities,” Haynes says.

Now, as Permobil grows rapidly—the Tennessee facility that opened in 2000 with twenty-seven employees now employs nearly three hundred—Haynes’s priority is to preserve the cultural elements that he thanks for its success. The company’s market share is growing as it continues to make acquisitions of new technologies and to add complementary products to its portfolio. Although some change is inevitable with that growth, Haynes says that HR must curate and create the pace for that change.

“You go through different growth stages, and sometimes leaders can lose focus on the culture and focus on the business,” Haynes says. He calls it a healthy paranoia, the looming concern that Permobil’s continued

“There's an organizational hierarchy, but I don't think you really sense it when you're in this building.”

growth will erode the culture that makes it such a unique, careoriented company. “The paranoia comes when we start to sense that there’s a difference. What we’ve struggled with recently is whether it's different or if it’s just a feeling that it’s different,” he says. Key to navigating the company’s expansions is the openness of the discourse between organizational levels as well as employee feedback sessions. True to his mission and to his characterization of Permobil’s commitment, Haynes notes that his career advancement is secondary to the organization. “I’ve never been one to chase a title,” Haynes says. “I just want to do the best that I can and be better today than I was yesterday. It’s the little things that make up the big things.”

ADP applauds Rick Haynes, Vice President of Human Resources at Permobil, Inc. Rick is an inspirational leader by treating everyone with the most utmost integrity and respect.

To learn more about ADP and see what our clients are saying about us, visit adp.com.

TAKING THE OUT OF GLOBAL HEALTH EXPANSION

At McKesson, Ariel Lewkowicz’s risk-eliminating strategy ensures that the company's lines of communication are kept open

By Lori Fredrickson

Ariel Lewkowicz’s job is, in part, to avoid surprises. During a time when tax reform and widening global marketplaces for healthcare frequently cause flux and uncertainty, his primary strategy as the VP of tax operations for McKesson revolves around building communication. “Building relationships to understand what’s going on within the company allows us to identify not only potential issues but opportunities,” Lewkowicz says. “It’s all about collaboration and communication.”

In recent years, McKesson has been tapping into global markets. The 2014 acquisition of Celesio, a German healthcare and pharmaceutical company, allowed McKesson to expand its operations across Europe. “While this acquisition created many new strategic opportunities, it also opened up the potential of risk related to tax controversy, with global business models receiving increased scrutiny for cross-border transfer of employees, assets, and profits,” says Lewkowicz, who has specialized in international tax throughout his career.

Governments across the world are requiring more transparency and more information, especially when it’s cross-border. To that end, with the expansion of global markets, countries increasingly structure different sets of rules to ensure that they’re receiving a fair share of taxes. So, it’s vital to have a tax team embedded in potential transactions to evaluate deals for tax implications before they are structured.

ARIEL LEWKOWICZ

VP of Tax Operations McKesson

“We highlight the issues at stake, we plan for the future, and we highlight how we manage risk, so that when that happens there are no surprises.”

McKesson has recently partnered with Change Healthcare Holdings—a provider of healthcare software, analytics, network solutions, and technologyenabled services for the healthcare market—to create Change Healthcare. This new healthcare information company plans to use its complementary capabilities to deliver a range of financial, operational, and clinical benefits to payers, providers, and consumers by leveraging data and analytics to drive new solutions. Announced in March 2017, the company will comprise fifteen thousand team members.

To avoid tax controversy, Lewkowicz also regularly travels to meet business partners and tax advisors abroad, ranging from Germany to Israel to Canada. It’s become his mission to have a high level of collaboration to influence those decisions in a positive way. “We regularly communicate to our business partners that it’s never too early to involve tax, beginning with the planning phase,” he says. “There is a potential tax impact to every end-to-end process and nearly every decision in the finance function.” Building tax into those underlying practices, he adds, gives management more visibility and better information.

Communication about potential risks also helps to reassure McKesson’s various stakeholders. Having detailed information on how existing tax risks are addressed and managed, Lewkowicz says, helps to assuage concerns on how future risks might be handled. With that in mind, he makes sure his team’s work is regularly and explicitly presented. In addition to regularly presenting to the board’s audit committee, his team looks for opportunities outside of formal board meetings to keep tax matters in front of executives. “We highlight the issues at stake, we plan for the future, and we highlight how we manage risk,” Lewkowicz says. “So when that happens, there are no surprises.”

Among its various current initiatives, McKesson recently partnered with Change Healthcare Holdings to create a new healthcare information technology company. It’s also launching a new sourcing partnership with WalMart called ClarusONE, focused on driving efficiencies and adding scale and value for both companies. In these ventures, Lewkowicz explains, it has been crucial to have early, close collaboration with business partners to successfully implement tax-efficient structures.

Lewkowicz takes pride in knowing that his team’s efforts enable the company to move forward in progressive ways, in part because of his respect for McKesson’s principles. In fact, Lewkowicz works to ensure that his team is highly tapped into tax legislative matters, currently those related to US tax reform. “Our global tax department proactively lobbies to protect McKesson’s tax attributes, advocating for legislative proposals that might have a positive impact to the company and the industry,” Lewkowicz says.

Making a positive impact on the industry is something that Lewkowicz has been passionate about for a long time. Lewkowicz grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and his father was a doctor who frequently traveled to smaller communities to provide much-needed care. As his career developed, Lewkowicz found he was motivated to use his expertise to help others in a similarly meaningful way. McKesson happens to be the best place for his passion and skills.

Since McKesson is firmly committed to better health, Lewkowicz has also been impressed with the company’s leadership and its shared principles. To pass on that passion for the company’s priniciples, he is actively involved in company initiatives such as the Leaders Teaching Leaders program and the Professional Association of Latinos at McKesson employee resource group.

“Our work at McKesson is driven by our shared principles,” he says. “Living out these values empowers us to make a positive difference in the world.”

Mayer Brown is a leading law firm with offices across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The firm is known for its ability to address the most demanding legal challenges worldwide.

“Local leaders understand their markets, so they know the most appropriate practices for a given situation. That might mean overriding certain standard guidelines to make sure a customer is being taken care of in the best way possible.”

Afterthe Hire

The chief human resources officer of HealthSouth explains why retention is so important

By Mary Kenney

Human resources is sometimes seen as the “hiring and firing department.”

But for Cheryl Levy, chief human resources officer of HealthSouth, it’s the “retention department.”

The HealthSouth network supports 123 hospitals, as well as a home health division. Human resource directors in each hospital are directed by Levy, who oversees more than thirty thousand HealthSouth employees. And with those thousands of workers, retention is Levy’s primary concern.

HealthSouth is an inpatient rehabilitation and home health organization, and the majority of the company’s employees are nurses and therapists in different disciplines. As demand grows in the marketplace thanks to the retirement of many in the baby boomer generation, the number of nursing graduates has steadily declined. “It’s a tight market,” Levy says. “Looking at hiring the right people, who will enjoy the environment and the patients we have, is crucial. We need to find the right fit, the right skill set, and people who can work well together.” In this tight market, Levy works to ensure HealthSouth avoids high turnover.

To that end, she has studied not only her organization, but similar companies in the industry. The turnover rate at HealthSouth among nurses is comparable to competitors and lower among therapists. Using the exit interview process, Levy has been able to glean why some employees leave the company. She’s also been able to extrapolate the different needs that are unique to workers in different generations. “Millennials need to be in environments in which they’re comfortable,” she says. “They’re looking for a lot of individual development, more flexibility, and more rewards and recognition. That isn’t necessarily financial, such as compensation and benefits. They want to feel valued in their organizations.”

Exit interviews are one method of gleaning this information. Another is the employee satisfaction survey, which HealthSouth began distributing in 2009. “With turnover and company growth, we need to be on top of changes, trends, and concerns faster,” Levy says.

When the survey began, some employees were concerned about confidentiality, but they have since moved past that with reassurance from the human resources department. Since then, the feedback has been invaluable. “We got insight into what programs could be instituted,

employee benefits, how employees were evaluating themselves and their teams, how management perceived them, group dynamics, making the right decisions for patients, and diversity and inclusion,” Levy says. “It has been really well received.” The survey system will be revamped in 2018, she says, and she expects it to be an annual survey, though it will be distributed in different hospitals each year.

Therapists at HealthSouth work in two different environments. They work with patients for two weeks on average, helping them learn to care for themselves again so they can return home and return to doing the things they love. On the home health side, therapists visit patients’ homes and help them continue to live independently. Levy’s team must work to ensure nurses and therapists enjoy visiting and working in both of these environments.

Doing so successfully requires several considerations. The first is work schedules. Different employees want to work different types of shifts—eight- or twelve-hour ones— to give them more flexibility and a better work/life balance.

Levy and her team also focus on development. Especially among millennials, personal and professional development is crucial to feel that their work is worth their time.

“Looking at hiring the right people, who will enjoy the environment and the patients we have, is crucial.”

CHERYL LEVY Chief Human Resources Officer

HealthSouth

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Levy’s team helps them work out many different methods to achieve this. This includes certification in practices such as head injuries, speech problems, or other specialized nursing areas. “We offer many of these in-house because we don’t want these development tracks to take away employees’ time from their homes and families,” Levy adds.

Sometimes, employees don’t need a flexible schedule or certification to feel valued. “Sometimes, it’s just a thankyou,” Levy says. “It’s recognition, asking for employees’ opinions, involving them in task forces. It’s making them stand out and feel valued and giving them the chance to perform team-based work.”

Some human resources officers might feel that retention is often out of their control; Levy disagrees. “People don’t leave an organization because of the money or opportunities,” she says. “They leave because they don’t like their boss.”

In addition to offering development, work, and recognition that draws in new applicants, Levy’s team focuses on every layer of management to ensure the right people are in the right leadership positions. “We need to know that your boss is doing well, giving leadership tips, leading you in your work,” Levy says. “They should be giving you feedback every single day. That environment is a crucial part of your work experience.” Levy never wants a great employee to miss an opportunity because they had a disengaged supervisor. “We do a good job of helping supervisors identify when people want to become better nurses and therapists,” she says. “Then, we help them figure out how to offer those development opportunities.” These offerings are the manager’s job, but human resources can help. Levy calls it “managing the HealthSouth way,” and it focuses on training and constant interaction between managers and human resources.

One aspect of managing the HealthSouth way that Levy believes can be overlooked is succession planning. All managers should focus not only on developing their team, but on developing individuals who could succeed them in their role at the organization. “Get them to be as good as you,” Levy says. “You need to be doing this constantly.” AHL

Think Like a Businessperson, Care Like a Practitioner

Nurse-turned-executive Christi McCarren helps MultiCare move to a retail model

By David Baez

The seeds of Christi McCarren’s business development philosophy at MultiCare Health System, where she is senior VP of retail health and communitybased care, were planted during her time as a cardiac nurse.

“What you need as a good nurse is to be human and understand that being fully present with a patient is what makes a difference,” she says. “It was a privilege to be at the bedside during that moment of their life, when they were at their most vulnerable, and I always remember that.”

Because of that real-world experience, McCarren views business development through the eyes of a nurse, with one thing always in mind: how to improve access for patients. That push is embodied in the hospital’s “firsttouch” policy, which debuted in 2015.

The idea behind the initiative is that the first contact a patient has with a healthcare system—whether it be primary care, specialty care, or the emergency room— influences the second touch and all their care going forward. At MultiCare, those points of initial contact operate with a philosophy of care that continues through all the patients’ experiences in the system. And there is a diversity of approach, as different segments of the population have different needs, McCarren says.

CHRISTI MCCARREN

Senior VP of Retail Health and Community-Based Care

MultiCare Health System

“For someone like myself, it’s about the fact that I don’t have a lot of time,” she says. “For the millennial, it’s about easy access and pricing. As more of us move into highdeductible health plans, price and access becomes more important. That’s the foundation of the retail strategy.”

McCarren says that healthcare systems still tend to see the world through a hospital lens, rather than a retail lens. Getting out of that habit is a challenge; the firsttouch philosophy is a push to make that switch.

“We’ve made great strides, but tradition is stubborn, and sometimes we will fall back into that way of thinking,” McCarren says. “The first-touch experience helps patients get more aligned with how our system works, and that helps create loyalty.”

McCarren, who began her career with MultiCare in 1979, recognized early that though her nursing experience was enriching, she was more inclined toward the business side. After three years at the bedside, she took a series of management positions in critical care. Once she received her MBA, she moved to a system-wide management position.

“I found early on that I was better at the business side,” she says. “Having been a nurse with a passion for the growth and development of the cardiac world gave me an advantage. I spoke the language of the doctors and nurses. I became a translator, but I also could sit in on conversations with the businesspeople. That’s how I discovered what I wanted my career to look like.”

“In the retail world, the patient is king or queen. Everything we do revolves around what they want and how they want it.”

After ten years as administrator of the cardiac service line, she became VP of all care lines, which gave her exposure to women’s services, oncology, orthopedics, neurosciences, and surgery. Working in quality-management medical staffs and infection control to improve their processes expanded her view of how hospitals work.

Her career gathered steam as the hospital added to her portfolio, and she began to develop her retail approach. In her current position, she oversees operations for a quarter of the organization, all ambulatory in focus. And in everything she does, the mantra is access, access, access.

“In the retail world, the patient is king or queen,” she says. “Everything we do revolves around what they want

Christi McCarren, center, celebrates the opening of MultiCare’s Indigo Urgent Care facility in Puyallup, Washington, with the Puyallup Sumner Chamber of Commerce.

and how they want it. The traditional thinking is if you build it they will come, but that doesn’t work in retail. Many people don’t understand healthcare. If a cough is keeping you up all night, you could go to urgent care, a retail clinic, or virtual urgent care. Often they don’t know what channel is best for them. We educate the public.”

Marketing the hospital under this philosophy means that campaigns are continuous and more money is poured into them. Where hospitals are highmargin low-volume, the ratio is flipped in retail. One billboard on the highway isn’t enough, she says. The system uses direct mailing, search engine optimization, Facebook, and Twitter to reach people.

Personally, McCarren says that a journey that began as a cardiac nurse has come to a point where she’s doing exactly what she wants and helping people in the best way she can.

“My experience at the bedside taught me that there are things that we need to do that are outside the normal technical savvy and schooling that we get,” she says. “The business side allows me to provide those services the patients need. This is such a great place to be at this point in my career. The CEO and executive VP are fabulous. There isn’t anything I can’t do if I can make a business case for it.” AHL

“Christi McCarren is a dynamic partner whose commitment to taking healthcare delivery into the future supports the collaborative partnership between Zipnosis and MultiCare—from launching virtual care to engaging in deeper levels of integration between our organizations. The Zipnosis team supports the virtual care services of leading health systems like MultiCare with tailored, integratable technology solutions, designed to meet their needs and those of their patients today and into the future.” –Jon Pearce, CEO, Zipnosis, Inc.

The Risk Caretaker

Visiting Nurse Service of New York’s Kerry Parker finds the power in uncertainty and vows to always provide excellent advice and service to others

By Lior Phillips

Kerry Parker was forced to develop his leadership style early on , when his father passed away suddenly and he found himself helping care for his five younger siblings. At just twenty years old, Parker aided his mother in raising the rest of the children by leading by example. Combine that with a history in team sports and his early career experience in a very open law firm, and he has accumulated a powerfully formed perspective as a leader. “I want to be involved,” he says. “I want to be approachable. I want to help people along who work with me.”

Now the executive VP, general counsel, and chief risk officer for Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY), Parker has a leadership style that has been important in his rise to such a prominent role. He began practicing law in 1982 and spent thirty years between two law firms. The relatively flat organizational nature of law firms provided many valuable lessons, both in the sense that Parker could learn directly from the firm partners and that no individual is too important to roll up their sleeves and get the work done. “If you had to fix the copy machine to make copies, that’s what you did,” he says.

Parker took away a few key insights from this time. Perhaps chief among them was to always provide excellent advice and services to others. Another was a

constant drive to learn and improve. The partners also made sure to stay humble, make work fun, and treat people with respect. Combining all of these facets, they were sure to mentor and collaborate with junior lawyers. “This was really on-the-job mentoring and a lot of oneto-one attention and individualized mentoring,” Parker says. “Those are the things that stick out to me with my first position and what the leaders did.”

Those lessons have proven especially important as Parker moved in-house to VNSNY, his first role in healthcare—a field he joined, he says, by chance. While a partner at Gibbons, P.C. and Epstein Becker & Green, he began to take on more and more work representing healthcare companies, and he eventually transitioned in-house.

“I didn’t study science or medicine, but I really loved what the companies do for people,” he says. Their passion for people aligned with the compassionate, caring leadership style that Parker had been living with from a young age.

The intellectual aspect of working in a highly regulated business—of becoming an expert and then being able to advise clients—was another major draw. Parker’s passion for the field spread as he represented home health agencies, hospitals, physician practices, and life sciences and insurance companies, getting to know

KERRY PARKER Executive VP, General Counsel, Chief Risk Officer Visiting Nurse Service of New York

every corner of the industry. When the opportunity came to leave the law practice, Parker jumped at the opportunity. Rather than act as a trusted advisor to several clients, he relished the idea of focusing on just one.

“I thought about how great it would be to really get involved in the whole business,” he says. And he’s done just that at VNSNY, taking on more varied responsibilities as time has gone on. Parker started as chief risk officer, developing an enterprise risk-management program, as well as creating and overseeing a compliance department and supervising the internal audit function. Once the general counsel resigned, Parker was asked to take on that role, too. After a restructuring not long later, he took on the lead of the human resources function and government affairs, too.

“I didn’t expect all this when I started,” Parker says with a laugh. But considering his vast legal expertise, private practice experience in healthcare and labor and employment law, and passion for developing people, it all seemed to fit naturally.

Throughout these various roles, Parker aimed to put his leadership perspective into practice however possible. Part of that means ensuring he can make a positive impact on as many VNSNY employees as possible. “I have a lot of people that report to me directly, and that’s— to some extent—by choice,” he explains. “I’m used to working in flatter organizations, and I like to be accessible. But I’m not a micromanager. We’ll have regular contact, but I expect people to do their jobs. I find that if I’m able to hire really good people who think like I do, I will place in them the trust to get the work done.” And although he notes that this approach won’t work for everyone, the people who do fit in with Parker’s style will thrive and be able to make their own positive impact on that many more lives.

“I have a lot of people that report to me directly, and that’s—to some extent—by choice. I’m used to working in flatter organizations, and I like to be accessible. But I’m not a micromanager.”

To make sure all fourteen of his direct reports are on track, Parker sets individual goals as benchmarks. These goals aren’t his reports’ full-time job, but rather, they are projects that can improve the way business is done. There might be roadblocks on the way to achieving these goals, which only provides Parker with more opportunity to meet with his team and help work with them. “We collaborate to figure out the best ways to hit the goals,” he says. “What can they do to leverage resources internally? Do we need to go outside and purchase services to get there?”

But providing a positive, available example for others isn’t the only essential part of being a strong healthcare leader—especially one in the general counsel seat. The industry’s highly regulated, often unpredictable, and constantly changing nature brings a lot of challenges to Parker’s desk. He’s learned that having a solid plan is a good start, but being able to think on his feet is a necessity. “Layer on government licensure surveys and audits, regulatory changes, and things that just come out of seemingly nowhere that take you off course, and you’re going to need to redeploy people and resources to address the curveballs,” he says. “It’s definitely a hard balancing act that requires a lot of great communication and people who are comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.”

Being comfortable with unpredictability is something that Parker must embrace. Granted, some things in his work are predictable, such as the routines of preparing for and presenting at board meetings and making sure ongoing projects stay on track. But he views the ad hoc issues that come up as opportunities to see the organization from many different angles. Whether it’s a major deal, a big contract, or an unexpected government audit, Parker makes sure his team is ready to get all of the necessary pieces together. “That kind of throws your schedule off, but we make sure that our responses are appropriate,” he says.

In between those unexpected projects, Parker leaves room to plan ahead for the future of VNSNY. A major part of that is working to make the legal function less of a reactive, on-call organization and more of a partnering and educating organization.

“There’s real value in attorneys becoming both business and legal advisors and also educators,” he says. Now that his team is fully staffed for the first time in almost a year, he’s put together a plan to have each lawyer pick a relevant legal topic and present it to colleagues in other departments, helping to inform them and to improve their understanding of legal aspects of the business. In

“There’s real value in attorneys becoming both business and legal advisors and also educators.”

a sense, Parker is helping all of the lawyers on the team be the educators and leaders that he strives to be, in turn making major strides for VNSNY. “I’m trying to take a small step there, but it’s a really meaningful one toward enhancing our value to the business and not just being someone you call when you have a problem,” he says.

On a recent employee engagement survey, Parker and the HR department included fifteen survey categories essential to working at VNSNY, including communication, leadership, work/life balance, and risk management. Of the fifteen categories, risk management was the highest rated in terms of organizational strengths— proving in part that the legal and risk functions are showing their worth to the rest of the organization.

“I think we’ve come a long way in terms of sensitizing employees to the importance of risk management and to using it as a key management tool in business operations,” Parker says. That comes in no small part by Parker’s leadership as example: making himself available to everyone from the board of directors to junior team members and lending a considerate ear, offering thoughtful advice, and maintaining a positive culture. AHL

The first Wall Street law firm to develop a healthcare practice, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft is proud of our longstanding relationship with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York—a true pioneer in the healthcare industry for nearly 125 years. Cadwalader advises VNSNY and other healthcare clients on a full range of matters, including litigation and investigations, regulatory compliance, access to capital, tax, governance, general corporate, strategic planning, and mergers and acquisitions.

Congratulations to Kerry Parker for being recognized as an industry leader. Precision Discovery, has established itself as an industry leader in Expert Discovery Services and we are proud to Partner with Kerry and his team at Visiting Nurse Service of New York. At Precision Discovery, our mission is to reestablish evidence as the foundation of Discovery. Too often, we find that attorneys are forced to dive into the weeds of Discovery—taking them away from their true mission and passion. We bring clarity to eDiscovery and Managed Review, so our clients, like Kerry and his legal team, can focus on what really matters to them.

Legal Discovery Under Control

Legal disputes are stressful and uncertain. Don’t let Discovery add more complexity. Focus on winning your case, not Discovery pitfalls with Precision Discovery.

EDISCOVERY

COMPUTER FORENSIC INVESTIGATIONS

MANAGED REVIEW

Anand DaHarry adaharry@precisiondiscovery.com 212-292-1163 precisiondiscovery.com

Kerry M. Parker

We congratulate Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Chief Risk Officer, Visiting Nurse Service of New York

Cadwalader is proud to work with such leaders in the provision of care to others as Kerry Parker and Visiting Nurse Service of New York. on his well-deserved recognition by American Healthcare Leader.

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP www.cadwalader.com

After a major merger turned Beaumont Health into Michigan’s largest healthcare system, Dawn Geisert was tasked with melding the organization’s compliance department. Now, she is ready to take her office to the next level.

By Porcshe N. Moran

When Dawn Geisert took on a new role at Beaumont Health, she knew it was an ambitious endeavor. In December 2015, Geisert stepped in as the senior VP and chief compliance officer, just a year after Beaumont merged its operations with Botsford Hospital and Oakwood Healthcare to become Michigan’s largest healthcare system for inpatient admissions and net patient revenue.

“Beaumont Health represented a unique chance for me to learn and grow,” says Geisert, who came from the chief compliance officer position at Health Alliance Plan, a subsidiary of the Henry Ford Health System. “I was excited about the opportunity to take on a number of challenges and be part of the executive leadership team that was forming the largest healthcare system in Michigan.”

Geisert’s first task was to unite the compliance divisions of the original health systems into one standardized operation. She and her team spent more than three months building the framework for the consolidated department. They developed a strategic plan, cohesive policies, and training courses.

“As a leader, my responsibility is to help carry the message of us coming together as one Beaumont Health,” Geisert says. “It can be difficult to change processes and create new policies. We are focused on bringing the best practices—from the founding systems and throughout the industry—into this new organization.”

Geisert also had to establish an enterprise riskmanagement program that would capture and identify vulnerabilities across all areas of Beaumont Health. So, she organized a team of three compliance professionals to create an enterprise risk-assessment survey. The trio gathered more than seven hundred responses. Then, they collaborated with high-level health leaders at Beaumont to develop a register of the top fifty risks to the organization.

“We purposefully started out with a light approach to enterprise risk management so we could get something up and running pretty quickly,” Geisert says. “We were able to gain some insights into what our risks are and how to mitigate them without getting bogged down in details.”

Geisert’s other responsibilities include directing the fraud, waste, and abuse prevention program; collaborating with the board of directors’ audit and Elizabeth DeBeliso

compliance committee; and leading the centralized accreditation team. She deals with issues that range from patient privacy and conflicts of interest to billing, coding, and regulation changes. However, she spends the majority of her time meeting with Beaumont’s business leaders to discuss new programs and procedures from a compliance and risk perspective.

“My job entails several components that come together to help identify, mitigate, and manage risk throughout the organization,” she says. “There is no typical day or week, and that is what makes it exciting to me.”

Although the vastness of her position can be overwhelming, Geisert says taking things one step at a time and asking for help are the keys to her success.

“It is easy to get caught up in putting out the hottest fire,” she says. “I find it helpful to partner with a project manager who has expertise in taking a vision and building out a set of deliverables with due dates. It keeps me and my team accountable.”

The overall compliance team consists of thirty-nine employees, five of whom report directly to Geisert. She describes herself as an encouraging, enthusiastic, and motivating leader who strives to help her staff grow professionally. She builds trust and loyalty with her colleagues by being transparent and consistent in her communication. She uses a consensus management

DAWN GEISERT Senior VP, Chief Compliance Officer

Health

“My job entails several components that come together to help identify, mitigate, and manage risk throughout the organization. There is no typical day or week, and that is what makes it exciting to me.”

Beaumont

“It is important to me to gather input from my team and to consider all relevant positions before making a final call.”

BEAUMONT

HEALTH BY THE NUMBERS 8 hospitals 168 health centers

5,000 physicians

35,000 employees

style, in which group members develop and agree to support decisions in the best interest of the whole.

“It is important to me to gather input from my team and to consider all relevant positions before making the final call,” Geisert says. “Even when we don’t agree, the other leaders that report to me appreciate that they have an opportunity for discussion and to understand my viewpoint.”

With the compliance infrastructure now in place, Geisert is setting out to increase the visibility of her department. Her goal is to cultivate critical relationships with the system’s business leaders. She says compliance professionals have to work against the misconception that they are a roadblock to progress. Geisert and her team prove their value by having regular meetings with Beaumont leaders and making every effort to find creative solutions that meet business objectives and satisfy applicable laws, regulations, and rules.

“The compliance department is here in a supportive capacity,” Geisert says. “We need to be good listeners and have a strong understanding of the work that is being done so that we can be more strategic and helpful when giving advice. My philosophy is to find a way to say yes and enable initiatives as often as possible.” AHL

Congratulations to Dawn Geisert, senior vice president and chief compliance officer at Beaumont Health for this well-deserved recognition.

HCCS, A HealthStream Company, is proud of our longstanding relationship and partnership with Beaumont Health and greatly appreciates Dawn’s ongoing direct support, guidance, and vision.

Rewriting the Rules of Engagement

By Lori Fredrickson

DDriving performance in healthcare hinges as much on work culture as it does on building a strong team and organized management, according to Elaine Page. She has specialized in engagement and talent management throughout her thirty-year career in human resources, and building a company-wide dynamic geared toward professional development has been her primary focus since joining New York-based Northwell Health as its chief people innovations officer in 2012. “I wanted to earn the right to become one of the best places to work and to become a place where people would actually say, ‘I love where I work,’” Page says. “I ensure we’re creating a work environment where people can embody the qualities that we value.”

Since arriving at the company five years ago, Page has helped strengthen Northwell Health’s talent acquisition base. To do this, she has implemented progressive talent management strategies to drive performance and employee engagement while stepping up to the role of VP of human resources in 2015. For the past year, Page has been brainstorming and developing a new program through conversations with more than two thousand employees.

At Northwell Health, Elaine Page’s inclusive HR strategies bridge gaps between leaders and employees

“I ensure we’re creating a work environment where people can embody the qualities that we value.”

The new employee value proposition (EVP), which is coined “Our Promise,” is built around Northwell Health’s five core values. Additionally, Page notes that each value is now preceded by the word truly: truly compassionate, truly innovative, truly ambitious, truly together (teamwork), and truly ourselves (a spirit of diversity). Its mission, Page explains, is to articulate those values and galvanize action around them. “A strong EVP helps with your onboarding strategy and helps orient people to the organization. It gives them a road map of what we value, who we are, and what we expect,” Page says. “It allows you to make the right decisions for the organization, employees, and future employees to make their own decisions and choices.”

This new program is one of a series of improvements Page has instigated to improve engagement strategies, including talent evaluation and employee recognition programs. In the talent assessment program that the company deploys once a year with the HR department, Page focuses on working at the director level to evaluate individual performance along with potential for growth. Then, she creates development plans for each of these employees. This initiative, Page says, has yielded high mobility across the organization and has also allowed Northwell Health to build talent pools for critical positions.

“The feedback has been strong in the value it’s had for team leaders and for employees who have had opportunities open up to them and to get valuable critique,” Page says. “It’s also made team leaders stronger at giving feedback.” Since the results have been positive, she adds, Northwell Health is now expanding the program beyond the director level down to assessment at the management

and supervisory levels, in addition to integrating the process throughout the company. At a performance level, the mobility has also paid off. Of the ten thousand employees that Northwell Health hires each year, Page says, about three thousand have moved into new opportunities throughout the organization.

As the chief people innovation officer, Page has also focused on improving the workplace experience through recognition strategies, including building and customizing a platform that enables leaders to commend employees, whether for a major achievement or to simply let them know that they’ve noticed their work that day. The platform also associates points with different levels of recognition, which can be redeemed to collect lifestyle gifts. It’s also been customized to allow employees to notice peers in the workplace: any member of the company can use the program to praise a colleague for his or her great work.

“Thousands of employees have participated, and it’s driven home the value of engagement and quality assessment,” Page says. “It’s woven into the organization now to the point where people will start meetings with a thankyou or by reading out thoughtful letters from patients.”

The value of using customized programs, she points out, is that recognition comes from the areas that employees

ELAINE PAGE

Chief People Innovation Officer Northwell Health

work in rather than those passed down from on high. In addition to enabling employees to feel valued for their accomplishments, it allows mobility for employees on every level.

Along with launching the new EVP program, Page has several other goals for improvement over the next few years. One is developing a new cloudbased tech platform, which will enable leaders to input information and other insights about their work into a system that other members will then be able to leverage for decisions in their own roles. Another project she’s been working on is Northwell Health’s internal staffing agency, FlexStaff. Page aims to continue building new internship programs and building out talent pipelines in some of the company’s harder-to-fill areas.

From a business standpoint, Page notes, engagement strategies are valuable in pragmatic, notable ways. Getting the right recruit reduces the cost and stress level of the hiring leader and potential employees who receive clear expectations. “When you can develop people internally and get them ready and able to take on more responsibility, that has a much higher impact in managing a diverse workforce,” she says. In healthcare, employees who are prepared to step up can also be useful when a crisis occurs such as with Hurricane Sandy or the Ebola scare in New York.

Prioritizing workforce engagement is also extremely valuable in building a spirit of pride alongside teamwork, and Page enables employees to achieve both success and inspiration within their roles. She is particularly proud of how much the employees have helped shape the new EVP. “I spent this past year with people from all roles, all levels, and all positions, talking about Northwell Health,” she says. “What it really reinforced was the passion and mission of people. What I saw was the amazing resilience that healthcare team members have.” AHL

There’s a New Lawyer in Town

When Bob Seibel landed the first general counsel position at Yuma Regional Medical Center, he came with plenty of experience. But it’s his demeanor that’s his—and the healthcare provider’s—best asset.

By Russ Klettke

BOB SEIBEL General Counsel Yuma Regional Medical Center

uma, Arizona, is a place recognized for its extremes. Located at the far southwest corner of the state, the nearest larger cities are San Diego (172.5 miles to the west) and Phoenix (186 miles to the northeast). Its population of 93,000 almost doubles during winter when retirees from colder climates come in, while triple-digit temperatures— the result of being located in the heart of the Sonoran Desert—are the average for the four months of summer.

Yuma Regional Medical Center (YRMC), the city’s only hospital, is also the only comprehensive healthcare facility within a 50-mile radius. With 406 beds and more than 2,000 employees, the nonprofit facility serves an interesting population: a mixture of those winter visitors—i.e., retirees on Medicare—and thousands of workers in the area’s “winter lettuce capital,” which supplies 90 percent of America’s leafy vegetables from November through March.

The city’s permanent population is growing fast. From 2000 to 2010, the population grew by 20 percent, which is part of why the hospital completed the expansion of its 58,500-square-foot emergency department, with two elevated helipads, in 2016.

The population increase might also have something to do with the hospital’s hiring of Bob Seibel, who came aboard as YRMC’s first in-house general counsel in 2016 at the request of the hospital’s new CEO, Dr. Robert Trenschel. Trenschel had access to specialized in-house counsel in his previous position, and when he arrived at YRMC in 2015, he wanted that same resource in his new position.

But in contrast to the extremes of Yuma, Seibel’s presence brings something distinctly moderate to the organization. He’s a lawyer with bigger-city experience, particularly in medical malpractice. Yet, he seems to handle his smaller-town assignment and the legal and medical environment around him with appropriate reserve. He recognizes that the hospital is the thirdlargest employer in town; only two military installations operated by the US Army and Marines provide more jobs. And he also knows that with that size comes a great deal of responsibility to the community.

“The upside and downside, depending on how you look at it, is that it’s hard to stay anonymous in a place like Yuma,” Seibel says. “We are a big part of the community, and therefore, we have a big obligation.”

That means YRMC cannot treat any legal interaction purely as a one-off transaction. Within a few months of arriving at YRMC, Seibel interacted with a single attorney on five different issues, and it’s likely he’ll be facing down that same attorney in years to come.

“We have to be tough negotiators but remain professional,” Siebel says. “The art is knowing when to compromise, keeping the discussion above board, and not making it personal.”

Luckily, negotiation skills are exactly what Seibel brings to the organization, given his lengthy history in healthcare and, more specifically, medical malpractice. He was previously an associate general counsel at Augusta University Health in Georgia. He took on that role after holding similar in-house positions at a practice management and EMR systems company, a liability insurance brokerage agency, and with a firm that managed high-exposure medical malpractice claims.

From that experience, Seibel maintains a simple philosophy. “To be successful at medical malpractice defense, you need to have a relationship with opposing counsel,” he says. “Be able to negotiate as professionals. Feel a responsibility for injured parties. It’s good for conflict resolution when you can find ways to work through differences. Above all, be a trustworthy professional.”

Yuma, AZ

“The upside and downside, depending on how you look at it, is that it’s hard to stay anonymous in a place like Yuma. We are a big part of the community, and therefore, we have a big obligation.”

Part of that professionalism is to craft a consistent story in building a case. “You have to clearly articulate what your case is about,” Seibel explains. “All witnesses, all evidence leads to that story, with no extraneous information.”

In addition, he doesn’t subscribe to the idea that a strict line is drawn between lawyers who litigate and those who draw up contracts. “In litigation, there are still transactional documents, consents, judgments, and settlement agreements,” he says. “Most litigators find they are transactional lawyers, too.”

The even-keeled Seibel also takes a broader view of the overall community. In a rural setting such as Yuma, he emphasizes that the in-house counsel and organization at large need to think about long-term strategies. “We sometimes have to accept making sacrifices,” he says. “People can only stand so much conflict. It’s better to be a trustworthy advocate.”

But such a soft touch doesn’t mean he’s a pushover. Seibel’s arrival at YRMC coincides with the monumental changes in healthcare regulation. This is in addition to the economic pressures inherent to a senior population from other states—most on Medicare and Medicare Advantage—temporarily residing in Yuma. As such, YRMC is focusing on modernization—something Seibel knows from his previous work in EMRs—and meeting the requirements of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Seibel is also managing the overhaul of both the hospital’s corporate and medical staff bylaws to satisfy CMS mandates and to realign the hospital and medical staff.

“We have to make sure everyone has the proper perspective on their role in the organization,” he says. “We are resetting these relationships and defining how doctors and hospitals can most effectively work with each other. This involves healthy and productive conflict as we find the best way to serve the patients and the community.”

In fact, Seibel’s in-house presence is a good resource to doctors and other caregivers, which is an improvement over the previous regime that called upon lawyers only when necessary. Instead of having to consider the billable hours that a question might impose, YRMC staff can now pop into his office and have a conversation about potential legal issues, which is reducing the number of suits the hospital must face.

“We are seeing a lower frequency of cases, but what we do see is of higher severity,” Seibel says. “Tort reform has successfully limited the number of frivolous cases.” A series of bills in Arizona since 2011 and a Arizona State Supreme Court decision have favored defendants in medical negligence cases.

Seibel strongly supports the current initiative for YRMC to establish its own captive insurance company, a form of self-insurance. “Captives have a proven track record in other places,” he explains.

So although the extreme environment of the Sonoran Desert—as well as the healthcare exigencies in an isolated region with a growing senior population and other population health concerns—might create significant challenges for all aspects of hospital administration, this general counsel seems to take it in stride. A remote location, 110degree days, and lawsuits leave Bob Seibel undaunted. AHL

T 602-322-1600 F 602-252-4431 cycnlaw.com

Taking Pride in Her Work

By Alex Stewart

Associate General Counsel, Corporate Gilead Sciences

When Marissa Song sees a need for the greater good, she doesn’t ask permission to address it. When she received multiple job offers as corporate counsel, she chose the one that had the most significant impact on global health. When her employer was tasked with creating its first sustainability report, she spearheaded the effort. When her colleagues wanted a group to support the company’s LGBT community, she didn’t hesitate to write a charter and organize a calendar of activities.

Song joined Gilead Sciences Inc. nearly twelve years ago, and she now serves as its associate general counsel, corporate. At the company’s headquarters in Foster City, California, Song is responsible for corporate governance, SEC reporting, and all matters related to the board of directors. At least, that’s what her job description says. At Gilead, she’s done so much more for the company culture than negotiate contracts.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in economics at Berkeley and her JD from the University of Southern California, she worked at a couple of law firms. When she began her search for work as an in-house attorney, she had interviews at retail locations like Gap and Williams-Sonoma. What won her over at Gilead was the company’s work with HIV/AIDS therapies and its mission to discover, develop, and commercialize therapeutics in areas of unmet medical need.

Song saw the therapies that Gilead developed used firsthand. Having grown up in Los Angeles and living near West Hollywood, she knew the physical toll HIV/ AIDS and its early treatments took on its patients. In many cases, carriers had it written on their faces. Song remembers being easily able to identify people with the illness due to lipoatrophy, or loss of fat, in their face, caused by the first generation of medicines developed to treat HIV. The result was a gaunt and sickly appearance, which made the disease’s presence rather obvious.

By the late 1990s, many of Song’s friends that were living with HIV showed no symptoms. Innovations in HIV/AIDS therapy by Gilead and other pharmaceutical

MARISSA SONG

Marissa Song promotes diversity at Gilead, where she founded an LGBT Alliance

Lisa DeNeffe

“I really wanted to work somewhere where I believed in the mission.”

companies, particularly the introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy, made the disease more manageable and the prognosis less grim. “They lived fabulous lives because the diseases were being maintained,” she says. She wanted to be a part of the team that made her friends’ lives possible. “I really wanted to work somewhere where I believed in the mission,” she says.

Gilead was founded in 1987, and today, it has more than eight thousand employees and offices on six continents. The research-based biopharmaceuticals giant has revolutionized therapy for liver diseases, cancer, inflammatory and respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular conditions. Its portfolio of therapies includes a cure for Hepatitis C, the first once-daily single pill regimen for treating HIV, and the first oral antiretroviral pill to

reduce the risk of contracting HIV. On the pipeline are treatments for Ebola, some cancers, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, and more.

After conducting the Fortune 500 company’s first sustainability report, Song was surprised to find that while many companies of Gilead’s size had resource groups for its LGBT employees, Gilead did not. Song surveyed her friends and quickly learned that this kind of organized community was needed. Shortly thereafter, she started an informal group to gauge interest and engage with like-minded people. The community response was overwhelmingly positive. So, she forged on in a more formal capacity and officially founded the LGBT Alliance. With more than 250 members in her local Bay Area chapter alone, Song says she is excited to continue with more

Thanks to the work of Marissa Song in founding an LGBT employeee resource group, Gilead Sciences Inc. had a float in the San Francisco Pride Parade for the first time in 2016.

“Many people have come and told me that once they were hired at Gilead, the first thing they did was look for an LGBT resource group.”

programming and help other branches start their own chapters. She is in talks with the Seattle office to share resources and help them found its own alliance.

“Many people have come and told me that once they were hired at Gilead, the first thing they did was look for an LGBT resource group,” Song says. “It was nice to create that community.”

Now, the LGBT Alliance is one of only three employee resource groups approved by Gilead’s human resources department, which means programs and initiatives are fully funded and supported by the company. It’s also Song’s proudest professional accomplishment to date.

The LGBT Alliance has opened her eyes to many of her colleagues’ personal stories. Given her location on the West Coast, Song says she works with many people who immigrated to the United States because they were persecuted for being gay in their homeland. “As a minority, I relate to that,” she says. “It’s helpful to have this community—a home for informal mentoring, where they can ask questions and really be themselves.”

In 2016, the group had its first float in San Francisco’s Pride Parade, participated in a day of community service at local homeless shelters, and began working on creating a speaker series. She also wants to partner with another organization to help outreach to high school students, in which Alliance members visit local schools and discuss their experiences or even have students visit Gilead to explore career possibilities.

Song’s push for increased visibility and diversity was heard company-wide. Last year, Gilead introduced a new tenet of its core values, adding inclusion to integrity, teamwork, accountability, and excellence.

“I love that our company realizes that diversity is important,” Song says. “It’s critical for the company’s success.” AHL

Achieving Her Healthcare Vision

Interim HealthCare’s Barbara McCann brings an idealist’s approach to healthcare

By David Baez

To say that Barbara McCann , chief clinical officer for home care and hospice franchisor Interim HealthCare Inc., began her healthcare journey early is putting it mildly. As a child, her mother and grandmother both had cancer. Helping to care for them and her positive interactions with doctors, who still made home visits at that time, made her realize she wanted to have a career helping sick people. Her fascination was so profound that she spent hours setting up play hospitals as a child.

Responding to patients’ suffering with compassion and a strong desire to help is a quality that has marked her entire career. The ability to envision and design patient care that she demonstrated in playing hospital has been equally characteristic of her work. In an industry where lives are often in peril, McCann is an idealist and a visionary.

She entered college at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s on a nursing scholarship but

switched to social work after attending a lecture on a psychosocial approach to caring for patients—which was novel at the time—that she describes as life-changing.

“What the professor said was that nobody experiences disease in isolation,” she says. “You are part of a family and a community. You have a job. And likely your susceptibility to illness and your ability to recover is impacted by social isolation. It depends on how your community and your family responds. After that lecture, I went into medical social work and never looked back.”

What she loved about the work was that social workers played a key role in building a bridge between a doctor’s diagnosis and the choices that the patient could make.

“A doctor comes in and says you have cancer or it has advanced,” she explains. “The social worker, as part of a team, can complete that message working with the patient and family members by saying, ‘This is what that means for you and your family. You can do this, and you can’t do that.’ These are elements of communication that we still struggle with today.”

“It’s wonderful that looking at how the whole person is doing, mentally and physically, is now expected practice in home-based care.”

As she began her career, hospice care was in its early stages. With funding from multiple sources, including the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Joint Commission, she worked with hospice peers to develop the first standards for the delivery of this end-stage care.

After working as the executive director of accreditation and plan performance at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, she joined Interim HealthCare Inc. in 1998. In her role as chief clinical officer, she worked with lead clinicians from across Interim’s national network to create guidelines for the delivery of care at home, including how shifts are managed for the care of children with special needs in their home, as well as guidelines for the home care of those chronically ill with heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and other illnesses.

“The advantage of being a social worker when creating guidelines for care at home is looking at patient care from the perspective of what I call ‘the kitchen table,’ or the reality of managing disease and any related functional problems within the patient’s family unit and where they live,” McCann says.

“One factor that we observed and then found in clinical studies was the impact of depression and anxiety on patient recovery and cost of care,” McCann says. When patients experience an exacerbation of their illness or face managing multiple chronic illnesses, it can include the onset of depression, she says. Screening for depression is now a standard in the delivery of home healthcare, as it is also in many primary care physician practices.

“It’s wonderful that looking at how the whole person is doing, mentally and physically, is now expected practice in home-based care,” she says.

BARBARA

MCCANN Chief Clinical Officer Interim HealthCare

When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed, McCann read the entire two-thousand-page document to distill the how the legislation could impact healthcare providers. She came away with the sense that it could be a catalyst for major improvements in healthcare delivery. In 2010, she assumed the role of chief clinical officer at Interim to facilitate the translation of the emerging reforms for the those providing care each day.

“The ACA provided a challenge to the clinical community,” she says. “The law asks hospitals, home care, and other providers to think clearly before we discharge a patient about whether a patient and family can handle the situation or if a patient needs some type of continuing care. It was no longer ‘discharge and done,’ but a conversation about what lasting effect our care had on that person’s ability to manage their health. As clinicians, it forces us to step back and work together across care settings and ask how are we going to make this better.”

After thirty-five years in the industry and seeing its problems up close, McCann’s idealism has not only remained intact, it has increased. She says that the development of standards and the improvement of communication between providers and patients points toward a hopeful future.

“As someone enrolling in Medicare myself—and there are ten thousand of us turning sixty-five every day—there have to be standards of quality for people who deliver care,” she says. “We should pay for care that produces positive outcomes, and primary care should be part of a life plan. The nation can’t survive without this becoming a permanent part of healthcare. Maybe I’m an idealist, but I think that it will.” AHL

THE NFL DIET: Protein, Carbs, and Turmeric?

Jamie Meeks, director of sports nutrition for the New Orleans Saints, explains what the team eats and how it helps their performance

By Jeff Link

If you’ve ever wondered how much your average Goliath-sized professional football player eats on a given day, here is your answer: about 3,500–7,000 calories per day—considerably more than the 2,600–3,000 recommended by the USDA for active men in their early adult years.

That estimate comes from Jamie Meeks, director of sports nutrition for the New Orleans Saints, who oversees the protein- and carb-heavy diets of the team’s ninety players. Of those ninety, fifty-three suit up for the regular season. The athletes’ dietary regimens depend on a lot of factors—body type, metabolism, position, practice, and workout schedule—but the reason they eat so much, Meeks says, whether it’s a post-weight room recovery shake or a steaming bowl of shrimp gumbo after practice, is pretty simple. Professional athletes move around a lot more than most mortals.

“They eat more calories and eat more frequently throughout the day because they are active constantly,” Meeks says. “The timing of the meals is important, too. It has to be on point with when they practice—making sure they get enough good energy before practice and enough protein post-practice.”

So what exactly do the Saints eat? In short, just about everything. For protein, there’s lean meat and fish: chicken, beef, salmon, pork loin, steak, jerky, and even the occasional lobster. For carbs, there are big cafeteria-style breakfasts with grits and potatoes and pretzels, popcorn, granola bars, and other snacks throughout the day. Add to that a healthy balance of fruits and vegetables, along with pistachios, walnuts, juices, smoothies, and recovery shakes, and you start to get a sense of why three meals a day falls short for guys like Drew Brees.

For some players, Meeks says, the key to maintaining optimal physical condition is to reduce body fat while building lean muscle mass. Often, though, helping players gain weight is a more difficult challenge. “There are guys who have a tough time gaining weight,” she says. “In addition to being so active, their metabolisms are so high. They say, ‘Jamie, I’m eating so much, but I can’t gain weight.’ So, I work with them on an individual basis to incorporate creative ways to modify their diet and add quality calories throughout their day.”

Meeks’s role is not exactly new, but it’s newish. She is one of fourteen full-time sports dietitians among the National Football League’s thirty-two teams; many of the remaining eighteen work with consultants. For an

Michael C. Hebert

MEEKS Director of Sports

“There are guys who have a tough time gaining weight. In addition to being so active, their metabolisms are so high. . . . So, I work with them on an individual basis to incorporate creative ways to modify their diet.”

owner or head coach, she says, there are several benefits to having a sports dietitian on staff: improving players’ overall health and well-being, working with strength trainers to align dietary and weight lifting goals, helping players streamline their personal diet to reduce risk of injury, and creating recovery plans to help injured players back to the field. All of these factors, she says, play into a team’s success.

Many of these professional goals were first articulated by the Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitians Association (CPSDA), a nonprofit that represents the vast majority of registered dietitians in the United States who work full-time with athletes in colleges, professional sports, and Olympic training centers. As a member of

the organization, Meeks embraces CPSDA’s goals to help enhance athletes’ performance; to aid in recovery after exercise; to direct food and dietary supplement cost-containment programs; and to play an active role in the recruiting process. She credits CPSDA’s advocacy for the NCAA’s decision in April 2014 to lift feeding restrictions on Division I college athletes. “They modified the rules and restrictions to make our jobs easier and allow us to do our jobs better,” she says. “This deregulation has increased the amount of nutrition education at the collegiate level and has transferred into the NFL as rookies enter the league.”

According to a CPSDA news release, limitations were first placed on meals and dietary supplements by the NCAA in 1991 in an attempt to ensure a competitive balance between schools. Since the NCAA lifted food restrictions in 2014, major college athletic programs ramped up their spending for meals, snacks, and dietary supplements from about $534,000 to more than $1.3 million. These spending increases are in line with the CPSDA board of directors’ recommendation for a new standard feeding protocol to “fuel athletes throughout the day with healthy whole foods to ensure adequate energy

JAMIE

Nurtrition New Orleans Saints

availability, speed recovery, restore energy, and repair muscle damage after exercise.”

The decision, Meeks says, also points to the growing recognition among college athletic departments and professional teams that sports dietitians play a vital role in player health and performance.

Although sports nutrition has been a slow-growth proposition dating back to the 1980s when the University of Nebraska’s football team was among the first to work with a dietitian, Meeks has proven herself to be a trailblazer. As a high school student preparing for a cheerleading tryout at Louisiana State University, she visited a sports dietitian to prepare a nutrition plan. It was a winning strategy. She earned a spot on the team and was captain three out of her four years. Later, in graduate school at LSU, she recognized that her alma mater did not have a full-time sports dietitian available to the athletes, and she put together a business plan outlining the reasons why they should. The athletic department liked the plan enough to hire her as the school’s first fulltime sports dietitian in 2011.

One of the things they were taken by was her explanation of the dietitian’s role as an educator, who could encourage a food-first approach while cautioning athletes against the risks of steroids, stimulants, and other performance-enhancing supplements. The Saints, Meeks says, were also eager to adopt such an approach when they hired her in 2015.

According to Bleacher Report, current NFL players project that 10–40 percent of the league is using human

“Before they turn to any supplements, pills, or powders, we make sure their diets are sound, they’re eating the right foods, and the timing is correct.”

growth hormone, a banned substance that increases strength, decreases body fat, and facilitates rapid healing. That’s something that Meeks says she and other sports dietitians can help deter through regular interaction with players. “Before they turn to any supplements, pills, or powders, we make sure their diets are sound, they’re eating the right foods, and the timing is correct,” she says. Saints players do use supplements, but she only recommends those that scientific research has shown to be safe and effective, such as whey protein isolate, fish oil, and multivitamins for muscle strength and recovery and turmeric and ginger for inflammation and pain. “All practices end with a turmeric and ginger shot,” she says. Meeks isn’t ready to chalk up all of the Saints’ on-field success to good nutrition, but she’s not afraid to say it helps. “We’re working our way to another Super Bowl, for sure,” she says. “I’m excited about the new season and a fresh start. We’ll get there.” AHL

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At Stanford Health, chief hospital counsel

Sarah DiBoise is creating initiatives at her alma mater that engage with the work of Silicon Valley’s largest tech organizations

By Lori Fredrickson

Bringing Health lluFerac lcriC e

When Sarah DiBoise was first approached to work for a law firm that represented hospitals in the early 1990s, the then-corporate transactional attorney had reservations that focusing on healthcare law would pigeonhole her into a narrow field. It turns out, DiBoise says, that she was dead wrong. The current chief hospital counsel at Stanford Health says her job offers her a vital way to contribute professionally to health services’ growth and advancement. “Healthcare matters to people greatly,” DiBoise says. “Anything that I can do on the legal front to help Stanford accomplish its mission in the clinical area is really valuable.”

DiBoise is a natural fit for her role at Stanford Health. She studied human biology at the university as an undergrad and had initially been interested in pursuing a degree in medicine before she developed an interest in law. And though she enjoyed her earlier work in transactional law for tech clients, she finds it engaging to work in the medical industry, particularly at Stanford. The organization has a three-part mission of teaching, researching, and providing clinical care, and it is continually involved with partnerships in Silicon Valley.

“We are in a unique position because we’re surrounded by some of the biggest tech companies in the world, many of which were founded by Stanford graduates,” DiBoise says. This connection has led to partnerships on multiple levels, both in providing healthcare plans and services to

employees and through working with companies to test and deliver new products and devices. One of DiBoise’s recent initiatives has been helping to create an accountable care organization—a custom, narrow network plan—for tech workers who live in the area that focuses on delivering high-quality care as efficiently and costeffectively as possible. The new network plan, Stanford Health Care Alliance, lets employees to choose a primary care doctor affiliated with Stanford and allows them to access specialists at both Stanford Health and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Stanford is also working with tech companies to establish on-site employee health clinics, staffed by Stanford Medicine doctors.

In all of these relationships, DiBoise’s work to develop contracts and agreements has been essential. “There’s a lot of internal work behind the scenes to analyze and develop the product from a legal standpoint,” she says. Many companies that Stanford works with are currently involved in innovating new products across healthcare fields, which requires focus on patient privacy, medical information confidentiality, and research issues. DiBoise ensures that if programs fall under the definition of research, they go through the necessary reviews. Stanford has also worked closely with tech companies to mine extensive data sets to develop clinical care pathways. “Throughout the country, there’s a huge focus on capturing medical data in terms of clinical outcome,”

SARAH DIBOISE Chief Hospital Counsel

Health

DiBoise says. “We’re looking at data that shows how the best outcomes from a certain condition occur when care is delivered in a certain way.”

In addition to these partnerships, DiBoise focuses on relationships and affiliations between Stanford, Packard, Stanford Health Care-ValleyCare, and other hospitals in the area. Stanford and Packard each have large physician, nonfaculty networks, known in California as medical foundations. To build these, DiBoise helps forge agreements that enable physicians to be employed through the medical foundations rather than the hospitals.

Outside of these types of partnerships, DiBoise serves as a point person for a number of different legal issues for the hospitals, which range from licensing to billing compliance to other regulatory issues, as well as informed consent issues and involuntary hold procedures for Stanford’s inpatient psychiatric unit. Some of the issues that come up relate to Stanford and Packard’s specific organizational structure. Although both are owned by Stanford and located adjacent to each other, the hospitals are licensed separately.

OFF THE CLOCK

Mastering the steps of complex legal work is exhausting, but Sarah DiBoise keeps herself moving off the clock, too. She and her partner Frank have an avid interest in ballroom dance. In addition to taking classes at a local community center dance class over the past eight years, they regularly participate in a dance club called Mates and Dates, which holds dances for members to come together in a formal setting to practice.

DiBoise notes that dance clubs have been increasingly popular with members of all ages. “When I first started, I thought this was ancient, but even at Stanford, the undergraduate ballroom dancing is a huge thing,” she says. Themes range from ballroom dances to Western, Latin, and nightclub dances. DiBoise is a particular fan of the Texas Ten Step and is planning to teach a class on it with her partner.

Stanford

Pillsbury salutes Sarah DiBoise, Chief Hospital Counsel at Stanford Health Care

. Stanford's commitment to quality and its spirit of discovery have made it an unmatched provider of compassionate, coordinated, and leading edge care.

SARAH DiBOISE

Pillsbury is proud to have collaborated with Sarah and Stanford on innovative business and legal solutions to transform the delivery of health care.

This relationship has been invaluable to Stanford Health’s organizations because it allows them to work together to provide comprehensive care across units and staff, but it hasn’t been without its challenges. Their separate licensing has also led to minor issues, such as the ability to transfer patients, which is heavily regulated by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. Most often, this comes up with labor and delivery. While the obstetrics unit is located at Packard, women going into labor who have not received prenatal care from the hospital will, at times, arrive at Stanford’s emergency department, which then requires additional exams and extensive documentation before the patient can be legally transferred to the Packard labor-and-delivery unit. To streamline that process, DiBoise and others worked with state legislators to pass a statute that allows the hospitals to move women in active labor more quickly and efficiently, under an agreement between the two hospitals.

The most satisfying work she does, DiBoise says, is related to patients. She mentions one example of a child with a complex disorder that Packard didn’t have the resources to treat, so she worked extensively to set up an alternate placement and payment plan for the family at another location. Although processes like that can be frustrating work, knowing that the end result impacts the patient in a positive way is a more than worthy reward.

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

Four Embarcadero Center 22nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94111

+1.415.983.1000

pillsburylaw.com

“I really believe in the mission here,” DiBoise says, adding that she also loves that her work contributes to what she sees as invaluable new innovations at Stanford School of Medicine. “The research that is being done at the Stanford School of Medicine is phenomenal,” DiBoise explains. “I see how those discoveries that they are coming up with year-to-year are transforming the way care is delivered.” AHL

Ropes

Rising

to the Occasion

Dignity Health’s HR strategies have evolved along with healthcare’s demands

By Jeff Silver

Managing human resources in healthcare presents many unique challenges . A 2016 projection by the GW Health Workforce Institute at George Washington University stated that, by 2022, almost one-in-eight US jobs would be in healthcare. This is a significant prediction, when you consider that most of those positions are expected to be in nonhospital settings. That means the shortage of inpatient registered nurses and physicians would continue, but other highly skilled clinicians and staff will be in limited supply as well.

As such, the squeeze on the available talent pool shows no indication that it will be ending any time soon. Respondents to the 2017 Healthcare Recruiting Trends Report from Health eCareers indicated that the time to fill positions has increased nearly 50 percent over the past year. Additionally, 64 percent of respondents said they were also paying more for new hires, while 72 percent were offering signing bonuses and 60 percent were paying relocation expenses along with other perks and benefits.

Dignity Health, which operates more than four hundred hospitals and care centers in twenty-two states, is no stranger to these kinds of HR pressures. In response, its executive VP and chief human resources officer, Darryl Robinson, has adopted what he says is a simple people strategy that emphasizes human kindness. It revolves around personalizing the HR and work experience and making direct, human connections.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about the person, how we treat them, and enhancing our relationships and interactions,” Robinson says. “We have to remember that every applicant and hire is a unique individual. Where we can, we need to customize solutions and develop appropriate options that provide broader boundaries that reflect how dynamic the world is inside and outside of the healthcare environment. We are highly selective in our external hiring process and strongly committed to retaining great people.”

Robinson believes that quality supervisors are essential to a great organization and providing resources and programs that enable staff to develop their own leadership skills creates an enriching work culture. “Management leadership at every level is pivotal to our success,” he says. “We have developed a series of programs and tools that help our already capable managers and supervisors learn about their strengths and areas of development. Whether it’s through survey feedback, learning cohorts, performance evaluations, or coaching interventions, HR is ready to assist.”

DARRYL ROBINSON Executive VP, Chief Human Resources Officer

Dignity Health

To help put that strategy into action, Dignity Health offers a variety of internally developed, instructor-led

learning programs, as well as an annual twelve-month administrative fellowship. The fellowship provides recipients with exposure to a range of strategic issues and specialties through a six-month corporate office rotation, followed by six months working with day-today operations. The organization’s goal is to grow and expand this valuable program.

“If we don’t provide opportunities for our employees to develop and grow here, they’re going to find great opportunities elsewhere,” Robinson says. “Our focus is on attracting, hiring, developing, and retaining great people. Our ultimate goal is to help people find great opportunities inside Dignity Health, but when that does not happen, it can create a lot of new challenges for HR.”

Many HR leaders have joined the growing trend of using data analytics to find patterns in employee engagement and care outcomes. This can include information from sources like the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, the patient satisfaction survey required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and results churned out by the increasing use of internal data-crunching applications.

Robinson sees HR information systems as one of the significant developments in his thirty-five-year career. He readily admits that it has become essential to the overwhelming volume of information and regulatory requirements that have flooded the practice of both modern healthcare and HR.

As a large employer, Dignity Health is required to capture large volumes of employee data throughout the employment life cycle. Robinson assures that when used thoughtfully, the organization is able to learn what is important to Dignity Health employees. “Are we communicating effectively, providing enough career opportunities, or supporting their education and learning needs?” he asks. “These are just a few of the things we’re learning. Our data analytics practice will undoubtedly pave the way for improving the health and attractiveness of our organization.”

With paper files and manual processing, it wouldn’t be possible to capture all the data Dignity Health needs to collect, Robinson says. This information includes approximately sixty-five thousand monthly applicants or compliance requirements for reference checks, background screening, certification, licensing, EEOC issues, and payroll.

Even with the insight and solutions that technology and statistics are able to provide, Robinson is careful to stay focused on the right solutions and statistics for the

“At the end of the day, it’s all about the person, how we treat them, and enhancing our relationships and interactions.”

organization. When faced with industry benchmarks, for example, he doesn’t just look at how the organization’s turnover rate compares to the industry. “It’s about what’s most appropriate for our specific circumstances and if we’re comfortable with that,” he says. “We evaluate what’s relevant for us and then reassess and set the bar for ourselves every single year.”

Robinson, like many other healthcare HR professionals, wrestles with traditional challenges, along with specific challenges unique to healthcare: ongoing transitions to value-based population health, new specialties needed to achieve its goals, the increased demand for highly technical training to address everything from patient satisfaction to patient portals to telemedicine. But no matter the challenges, he feels fortunate to be part of Dignity Health’s mission and the community of caregivers across the organization. “After all, we’re all working together to support patients and their families on the best days and worst days of their lives,” he says. Finding the right people to support Dignity Health’s mission, whether that’s at bedside or behind a desk, is a challenge that he and the organization approach with both patients and employees as people first.

“My background has been primarily in the private sector in enterprises focused on how their products and services impacted profitability,” he says. “Here, I get to be part of helping to serve communities in need. I get to be with an organization and sixty thousand great people that makes decisions based on a real mission and a strong set of values—and that’s pretty cool.” AHL

Willis Towers Watson is proud to congratulate Darryl Robinson whose leadership and vision for the HR team has done so much to help support Dignity Health’s mission and values

Willis Towers Watson’s unique perspective allows us to see the critical intersections between talent, programs and service delivery — the dynamic formula that drives business performance and success in hospitals and health care system

Adapt and Thrive

For more than two decades, Celina Scally has helped Apria Healthcare manage ongoing change in home respiratory products and services

By Jeff SIlver

Over the past twenty-five years, Celina Scally has seen Apria Healthcare go through a world of change

Scally, the senior VP of human resources, has been with the provider of home respiratory services through tremendous changes since 1990. Since then, compliance and regulatory requirements have increased exponentially, competitors have gained access to Medicare contracts by underbidding and driving down reimbursements for some products by 40 percent, and, at one point, companies that used fraudulent business practices tarnished the reputation of the entire industry.

To adapt, Apria has gone through an extensive transformation. The company used to employ fourteen thousand people, but divesting its infusion business moved five thousand jobs. Additional downsizing in its remaining core business eliminated another two thousand positions over the course of several years.

“We had to rethink everything we do to become more efficient,” Scally says. “To stay vital, you explore everything you do from every possible angle to find new ways to operate in this entirely new world.”

Her experience in nearly every operational aspect of the company has been an asset throughout all these adjustments. For example, when Apria implemented new order-processing technology, she had insights into the specific requirements, responsibilities, and institutional knowledge that would be impacted. As a result, the technology was modified to appropriately address those areas.

“Having held many different company positions, I understand the day-to-day challenges and the disruption that even improvements in processing or procedures can cause,” she says. “That helps inform my decision making and, I think, gives me some added credibility.”

Apria used to be what Scally characterizes as a command-and-control organization. Business practices and strategies were all dictated from the executive suite with little or no explanation. That changed in 2012 when Dan Starck rejoined the company as CEO after a six-year absence. He believed in creating a more open culture, which led to the introduction of employee engagement surveys.

The surveys revealed that employees wanted more information about objectives, strategies, decisions,

Kevin Bonny

CELINA SCALLY Senior VP, Human Resources

and company performance. That information is now provided through quarterly updates—videos Starck uses to address employees’ concerns and an annual business alignment model that summarizes current customers, objectives, and implementation strategies.

“We communicate now with much greater frequency and transparency about what we’re trying to accomplish,” Scally says. “It helps people feel more engaged and better understand how their work is connected to the bigger picture.”

The shift away from command and control is also empowering local managers to make decisions that are best suited to their individual markets. For example, based upon decision criteria that are shared throughout the organization, local teams can make decisions that are tailored to the particular characteristics of their patients and customers.

“Local leaders understand their markets, so they know the most appropriate practices for a given situation,” Scally says. “That might mean overriding certain standard guidelines to make sure a customer is being taken care of in the best way possible.”

As the company has shifted away from a command-and-control culture, Scally has helped shift the human resources department toward becoming a business partner.

To help support local field leaders, HR provides training and development specifically targeted at decision making. This covers specific criteria for various levels of

“We had to rethink everything we do to become more efficient. To stay vital, you explore everything you do from every possible angle to find new ways to operate in this entirely new world.”

Apria Healthcare

“In both healthcare and HR, it’s hard to tell what’s coming. We just have to monitor how things are evolving and change along with them. We’ve already proven we know how to do that.”

management and other business and compliance factors that need to be taken into account. “Each situation is unique in terms of the patient’s condition, their coverage, and the terms of reimbursement,” Scally says. “We have to hone field leaders’ decision-making capabilities to ensure that the right decisions are made every time at every level.”

She is aware that, in many companies, HR is viewed as the “no group,” but works hard to prevent that at Apria. The department is positioned to guide, advise, provide insight, and help suggest alternate paths to yes whenever necessary. One example of this mind-set was when the company eliminated a low percentage cap on salary increases that was associated with promotions; the cap was applied to all situations, regardless of employee level, expertise, or change in scope of responsibilities. By educating all departments on the change, HR was able to ensure that the best job candidates would not be lost due to inappropriate compensation.

HR and senior leadership have begun implementing data analytics to address various issues. Their first project is to find explanations for a gap between fast churn (less than six months) and long-tenured sales staff. The technology might be used in the future to address other issues related to demanding positions, such as delivery personnel who interact directly with patients and customer service staff, who handled 9.2 million inbound and outbound calls in 2016 for 1.8 million patients.

From her long-term perspective, Scally predicts that Apria will continue to stay agile and flexible regardless of what new changes the industry faces. “In both healthcare and HR, it’s hard to tell what’s coming,” she says. “We just have to monitor how things are evolving and change along with them. We’ve already proven we know how to do that.” AHL

An Expectation and a Responsibility

As a national and global leader in medical services, Louisiana’s Ochsner Health System is guiding the greater Gulf South region towards a higher level of care. Associate general counsel Christine Guillory develops legal strategy to support that mission.

By Porcshe N. Moran

Christine Guillory says she approaches her job using a process similar to triage in an emergency room. As the associate general counsel at Ochsner Health System—Louisiana’s largest nonprofit, academic healthcare system—Guillory’s clients are the more than 1,100 physicians spread across Ochsner’s thirty owned, managed, and affiliated hospitals. The organization also includes more than sixty health centers.

“I usually navigate which client is in the most urgent scenario,” she says. “Sometimes it is who has been waiting the longest or who has the most immediate need based on priority. I spend most of my time traveling between campuses so I connect with my clients in person and further develop my relationship with them.”

Risk management, litigation, and medical staff issues are the three divisions of Guillory’s work. She mitigates for loss and helps physicians restore trust with their patients after unanticipated events occur. She crafts policies and meets with groups about how to follow regulatory requirements. One of her biggest projects is implementing the Affordable Care Act’s patient safety organization mandate that went into effect January 1, 2017. Hospitals with more than fifty beds must report to a federally listed patient safety organization. The purpose is to improve healthcare quality through the collection,

management, and analysis of patient safety events. Guillory is on several committees that focus on patient safety and healthcare quality.

“Our patients are the guiding force of everything that we do at Ochsner,” she says. “Even if the legal team knows that we are going to have to face a financial settlement or we will be in court, we remain focused on what the patient needs to heal. Our first concern is always patient safety and healthcare. That’s a good feeling.”

Guillory says Ochsner’s 2016 recognition by the Human Rights Campaign as a leader in LGBTQ healthcare equality is an example of the system’s dedication to its patients. The organization also listed Ochsner on its Healthcare Equality Index, a national benchmarking tool that evaluates healthcare facilities’ policies and practices related to the equity and inclusion of their LGBTQ patients, visitors, and employees.

“Treating all patients with dignity, respect, and compassion is at the core of our values,” Guillory says. “The best part of my job is that my clients have a tremendous amount of integrity. They took an oath at the outset of their careers to do no harm, and they take that seriously.”

Growth is another area of focus for Guillory. In February 2016, Ochsner announced a $360 million expansion across three areas at its flagship campus. The project, slated for completion in 2019, will increase Ochsner’s

CHRISTINE GUILLORY

Associate General Counsel Ochsner Health System

capacity to expand specialty services, such as organ transplants and neurologic, pediatric, cardiac, and cancer care.

This growth is also reflected in specialty projects like the Mothers’ Milk Bank of Louisiana at Ochsner Baptist, a developing donor human breast milk bank. A significant number of mothers of premature infants are not able to breastfeed, so donated human milk is an alternative option. Ochsner’s legal department helps support this effort by anticipating and addressing barriers to this new frontier for Ochsner as the team works closely with the Mother’s Milk Bank in Austin until Ochsner’s milk bank is fully developed.

In the same vein, Guillory is working with the sports medicine practice to develop a residency program aimed at preparing staff to address specific orthopedic injuries under the supervision of a physician. Ochnser’s legal department participates in the innovative aspect of healthcare with these programs rather than simply reacting to risk.

“The only way for us to support our clients is to appreciate that growth is the goal,” Guillory says. “It is tricky because with growth comes more liability and more risk. We brace for that impact in a way that is helpful to our

“Treating all patients with dignity, respect, and compassion is at the core of our values. The best part of my job is that my clients have a tremendous amount of integrity.”

clients and doesn’t impede progress. That’s what makes us a department that is viewed as a partner rather than a barrier.”

Guillory says feedback, both positive and negative, helps her to adapt her communication style in a way that makes her clients feel more comfortable. The benefit of that trust is she has found the physicians at Ochsner are willing to be transparent about their mistakes and are quick to call her when they think there is a problem.

Guillory says it’s important to employ emotional intelligence, balancing relationship management and self-awareness. “As litigators, we are trained to communicate in a certain way,” Guillory says. “The trick is to be able to do so while not making your clients and colleagues constantly feel like they are in a deposition. You have to remember that when you are wearing your lawyer hat in a conversation, it can be perceived as a handicap.”

Guillory, a graduate of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, is one of four litigation lawyers in Ochsner’s legal department. Her direct report is the senior paralegal for the team. The attorneys rotate their on-call schedule to provide Ochsner with 24/7 legal support. Guillory and her team encourage clients to reach out when events occur and questions arise so they can be better prepared as a team. The department also has several transactional lawyers. Collaboration among lawyers is key to their success.

“We depend heavily on each other’s expertise,” Guillory says. “I try to use my strengths of networking and communication to benefit the entire department. Our success is predicated on the lawyers we work with. Recognizing and appreciating that teamwork is crucial.”

The spirit of collaboration is also moving Ochsner forward on a large scale. The company launched the Ochsner Health Network in 2015. It is a partnership between Ochsner, thousands of physicians, and many premier healthcare organizations across the Gulf South region. The goal is to enhance healthcare delivery by combining resources.

“We are a leader among health systems,” Guillory says. “We have patients from every state and around the world. There is an expectation and a responsibility for us to take steps toward making healthcare better for the whole region.” AHL

Frilot congratulates Christine Guillory of Ochsner Health System on well-deserved recognition from American Healthcare Leader

Founded in 1995, Frilot offers full-service representation for national and regional multi-hospital systems, physicians, nursing homes, and other healthcare providers in the New Orleans area and throughout Louisiana. www.frilot.com

Leading by

Listening

Omar Reid is improving employee wellness and patient care by asking staff members what they care about

By Lori Fredrickson

For any public health system , managing resources appropriately is vital to ensuring that government funding is going to public service. For an organization like Harris Health, which operates three major hospitals and multiple clinics throughout the Harris County of Texas, it has an added significance. As the third most-populated county in the United States, Harris County is also home to many under- and uninsured constituents, making public health a vital source of care.

Omar Reid, who comes from a long line of family members who work in public service, chose to join the company largely because he believes in that mission. “We are the last resort for people who don’t have the means to go to private hospitals,” Reid says. “By utilizing my skills and talents here, it allows me to do things that are of personal value and also of value to the public at large.”

Since taking on his role of senior VP of human resources at Harris Health in 2016, Reid has made it his goal to maximize efficiency at the organization, something that he has both a talent and long history in doing. Reid joined Harris following a seven-year tenure as the head of HR for the City of Houston, where he had worked in part to improve some of the underfunded and under-resourced functions of its health system.

Prior to working in HR, Reid also spent twenty-six years in operational functions at UPS, which he cites as something that has been an asset in his work now. Although naturally skilled at working with people, understanding the operational side of business allows him to

look at issues from that perspective, as well as enabling him to focus on data analytics. “Someone who came up through a traditional HR background might not focus on this as much as I do, but the numbers should drive the decisions that you make,” Reid points out. “You recognize how to look for opportunities for efficiencies.”

Some of the key work that he’s been doing involves improving employee engagement, as well as talent attraction and retention. “I try to spend some time not on transactional HR, but strategic and transformational HR,” Reid explains. In the past year, employee engagement has had a particular boost, thanks to his efforts. Participation in the annual employee survey jumped to 74 percent, up from 55 percent the previous year, which has enabled Reid to use information from the feedback to find ways to make improvements throughout the company. The feedback has ranged from looking at peerto-peer relationships and ways that employees are relating to supervisors to analyzing whether they have the tools and resources to successfully complete their work.

To address each of these issues, Reid has put together a system-wide action plan from the director level to ensure that changes are set in motion. The campaign—titled This is What You Said, This is What You Did—includes both the large and small action plans that Harris has put in place to respond to areas where it might be lacking. That might mean relocating leadership positions to units away from the central office, where they might be better served, or ensuring that equipment is properly maintained in all of Harris Health’s facilities.

OMAR REID Senior VP, Human Resources Harris Health System

Reid’s goal is to improve employee retention by showing members that the directors are listening, and he has also focused on analyzing areas in the company with a high level of turnover and creating a plan to address those through compensation, job classifications, and leadership training. He additionally worked to create a position for a strategic project manager to take on some of the areas where Harris might need more focus. “Sometimes, it’s major overhauls, and sometimes, it’s just simple resource realignment that you might want to look at,” he says, citing a recent initiative he made to pare mandatory training time down from fifteen to two hours annually. “That many hours for nine thousand employees is a lot of time.” And by removing redundancies and focusing on where employees might only need a refresher, it frees up an enormous amount of time across the organization.

One of Reid’s major projects is building organizational development, something that was previously not in place at Harris. “If we can strengthen our organization in competencies throughout the different tiers of leadership, we’re going to be in a much better position a year from now,” Reid says. To do this, he’s focused on developing a succession-planning model as well as a leadership development program. He has also created a task force around organizational development to identify levels of leadership and find ways to use these in ways that improve the company’s culture. Analyzing employee strengths and putting in systems that draw from those can be invaluable, Reid says, noting that he also uses informal polling and focus groups to ensure that these programs are hitting the mark.

Reid is also focused on employee wellness, something that can also be key at a public health system, where the pay scale might not match private hospitals. Part of this push has been focused on physical health initiatives. After noticing that there was a high level of diabetes among employees, Reid partnered with an organization that uses technology to

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“Sometimes, it’s major overhauls, and sometimes, it’s just simple resource realignment.”

help monitor and improve health among diabetics. Others have focused on finance, building partnerships with financial education providers and programs and also boosting the ability for employees to engage with Harris’s employee assistance program provider. “We know that a major portion of employee stress is finance, so we want to be more visible from that perspective,” Reid says. “It’s an important part of looking at employees from a holistic perspective.”

To tackle each of these initiatives, Reid stresses the importance of building trust and relationships, and communicating with employees to understand their different perspectives. “Engaged employees lead to better outcomes,” he explains. “Their information is invaluable because it gives you areas of opportunity for improvement.”

Reid’s ultimate goal is to ensure that Harris Health is getting the most value out of the taxpayer money it receives, to do their best possible work for the constituents that the organization serves. At the end of the day, he feels proud that his work serves his community. In addition to being an avid cyclist outside work, Reid serves on multiple community boards across the city, including as chair of the career services advisory board at his alma mater Texas Southern University, an executive board member of Communities in Schools, and an executive committee member of the Texas International Personnel Management Association for Human Resources.

“I feel passionate that the people I work for, the taxpayers and the employees of this department, are successful,” Reid says. “I think that will have a great impact on the future of Harris Health.” AHL

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The Sherpa Model

Care

By David Baez

There are a lot of preparations to make to climb the twenty-nine thousand feet to Mount Everest’s summit, but chief among those would be to hire a Sherpa who has made the trip countless times before and whose body is accustomed to the altitude and the cold. When Christine Zack—executive VP and chief strategy officer for Mariner Health Care, a trade name used by a group of twenty skilled nursing facilities in California—describes her job, she likens herself to a Sherpa.

“Like a Sherpa, I, as do the rest of the consultants, offer my expertise, guidance, and tools when the climb gets too tough,” she says.

And like a Sherpa, Zack gets right in the middle of the action of her legal work. The empathy she has for the company’s clients and employees and her understanding of their challenges are the result of a number of professional and personal experiences that brought her noseto-nose with the realities of healthcare.

When she began at Mariner in 2005, Zack’s job almost exclusively involved managing litigation, which required constant travel, mostly mediating lawsuits brought by patients’ family members. And constant is not hyperbole here. During one week that first year, she took eleven separate flights. Over the past thirteen- anda-half years, she has logged more than 1,260 nights in hotels. She would fly into a place like Corpus Christi,

Texas, rent a car, and drive an hour west. This was before rental cars had GPS, so she had to trace her finger along the contours of a map under a dome light and stop to ask for directions. Each of these trips strengthened her empathy both for the affected families and the practitioners accused of negligence.

While Zack can’t disclose details of any particular mediation, she says that one of the difficulties she dealt with most frequently was families who had unrealistic expectations of what healthcare providers could do for a loved one who was more sick and fragile than they understood. She saw this happen in her own family when her grandmother who suffered from dementia was eventually put into hospice care; it was a wrenching process for the family.

“Families who file lawsuits are also the ones who often carry the most guilt,” she says. “I have made it a priority to ensure that mediation relieves a family’s guilt and brings closure.”

Zack also became deeply empathetic toward nurses, who she would see break down in tears during crossexaminations when cases went to trial.

“The nurses lost a beloved patient, and in the adversarial trial system, all the care they provided is being called into question,” she says. “As I moved into more prominent roles, I found myself the target of litigation, and I could tell them I’ve walked in their shoes.”

CHRISTINE ZACK Executive VP, Chief Strategy Officer Mariner Health Care

Christine Zack guides morale to a higher place at Mariner Health

Then Zack became a patient herself. A sudden reoccurring loss of vision in one eye and an early misdiagnosis of a brain tumor led her to seek care at some of the top hospitals in the country, which modeled for her what healthcare could and should be.

“At Johns Hopkins, once I registered, I had direct access to my assigned physician,” she says. “That’s the type of service I would expect from a concierge primary care physician, not from Johns Hopkins. That access to a physician 24/7, with a quick response time, takes access to a different level. It was time-consuming advocating for myself, being persistent enough to get behind screeners and schedulers and registered, but once I was in, all that time and energy paid off.”

The effect of all of these experiences she’s had working in the industry, as well as being a patient herself, has been twofold, she says.

“It’s made me more empathetic to the concerns of patients and families,” she says. “I understand their frustrations and make myself more accessible to them. When they have complaints during the stay at a facility, I make myself available in real time to deal with any issue that comes up. I also make myself more accessible to our employees. I think it’s that accessibility that drives patient satisfaction and equally drives employee satisfaction.”

Today, Zack does much more than just manage litigation. She is tasked with building relationships between Mariner and the community, including its competitors. She serves on multiple committees for the California Association of Health Facilities, including its Strategic Planning and Government Relations Committees, its Legal and Payment Subcommittees, and the Staffing Task Force. Zack also uses her experience, relationships, and knowledge to drive internal strategic initiatives.

Employee morale at skilled nursing facilities is often affected by burnout caused by the national nursing shortage and the frequent loss of elderly patients. Many clinicians who are fresh out of nursing school look at these facilities as a chance to gain experience needed for other positions, and then they jump ship when another opportunity comes up. Knowing this, Zack made a decision to

“I have made it a priority to ensure that mediation relieves a family’s guilt and brings closure.”

supercharge the annual employee recognition dinner by signing up with the Disney Institute and moving the dinner from an airport hotel to Disneyland. The certified nursing assistants who were nominated for CNA of the Year were given free family tickets to the park. Even maintenance personnel were invited. Zack says that what might seem like a slight change has reaped enormous benefits.

“It’s had such a huge impact on morale and retention,” she says. “Nurses tell their friends about it, and the word of mouth has helped us with recruitment as well. Our focus now is to continue to model those values and encourage our client facilities to do the same.”

And as with all of her initiatives, Zack will be the Sherpa, using her experience and endurance to point the way to the top. AHL

Goodell DeVries is a premier trial and litigation law firm, handling a range of complex litigation matters locally, regionally, and nationally. Our sixty attorneys provide high-quality, results-driven, cost-effective representation. With a deep and experienced bench representing individual healthcare providers, group practices, regional hospitals, and long-term care facilities in medical malpractice, credentialing, regulatory, and professional discipline matters, we consistently receive national recognition by organizations such as Chambers USA, U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers, and Super Lawyers. In addition to our healthcare practice, we defend and counsel major pharmaceutical and medical device companies, manufacturers, contractors, property developers, technology companies, and other businesses in a variety of legal matters including intellectual property, employment, and commercial and tort litigation. What sets us apart from many firms is our significant trial experience, and our commitment to arriving not only at the best legal resolution, but a resolution that meets our clients’ business objectives.

Giovanniello Law Group congratulates Christine Zack, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Mariner Health Central, Inc., on this recognition by American Healthcare Leader

Giovanniello Law Group represents Professionals, Corporations and Insurers in Civil Litigation and Administrative Actions throughout California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington and New York in State and Federal Courts. We are regional defense counsel for many of the leading national healthcare corporations and insurance companies for all liability, employment, collections, and administrative issues involving their skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, physicians, nurses, ancillary services and insureds in our practice areas.

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Goodell DeVries Congratulates

Hamilton Insurance is nationally recognized as one of the leading full-service insurance brokerages in the Long Term Care Industry. Hamilton has assisted over 2,000 Long Term Care Facilities with their insurance and risk management needs.

Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer at Mariner Health Central, Inc.

With respect and admiration for your leadership, innovation and dedication, your friends and colleagues at Goodell DeVries

Keith Parnell PO Box 3334

Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067 KParnell@hamiltoninsurance.com 571-228-0321 CA

The Right Fit

Why the senior VP and general counsel position at Luminex Corporation is ideal for Richard Rew and the company

By Chris Gigley

As senior VP and general counsel at Luminex , Richard Rew is involved in nearly every facet of its medical device business. Though he’s developed a skill set that prepares him for a myriad of challenges, the part he enjoys most ties directly to the company’s long-term growth plans.

“I like merger-and-acquisition activity,” says Rew, who joined the Austin, Texas-based company in March 2015. “I think it’s fun to find other businesses that are complementary to what your business is doing and look at where you want your business to go strategically.”

Rew was instrumental in the June 2016 acquisition of molecular diagnostics company Nanosphere Inc. His due diligence helped Luminex leadership confidently push forward on the deal. He was also a key figure in bringing Nanosphere employees into the fold after the deal closed.

“There’s a challenge to show them that they have a brighter future with your company than they would as a stand-alone entity,” Rew says. “It’s not always an intuitive sell, but we create opportunities with a dynamic combined entity and broader product portfolio.”

Rew has been in a leadership role almost from the beginning of his legal career. At age twenty-eight, he rose to the general counsel position at a publicly traded, Austin-based financial services company, where he essentially had to learn the job on the fly.

That experience is serving him well. For one thing, he was suddenly in charge of overseeing the legal implications of every facet of the business. The financial industry is also highly regulated, which gave him exposure to a similar environment to what he deals with now.

“I want people working for me who want my job one day.”

RICHARD REW Senior VP, General Counsel Luminex

But Rew’s path to the healthcare industry wasn’t direct. His experience in financial services earned him the general counsel position at Austin-based software company, Activant Solutions Inc, now known as Epicor Software. Rew was involved in the sale of Activant to a private equity firm in 2006. That led him to join ArthroCare Corporation as its VP of legal affairs.

As soon as he started at ArthroCare, Rew realized his role would be much different.

“In healthcare, you have a lot of different things you have to think through to get your product on the market, and there’s an entirely different sales approach,” he says.

Selling software is a relatively straightforward and relationship-driven process. Prospective clients can be offered various incentives to buy.

“Many of our salespeople were excellent golfers,” Rew says with a laugh.

Antikickback statutes in healthcare, however, strictly govern what healthcare businesses can do.

“In healthcare, there’s a lot more focus on science and getting key opinion leaders to validate what you’re doing,” he says.

In his day-to-day role at Luminex, Rew is responsible for everything from public filings to intellectual property matters, but two things typically dominate his time. One is to make the contracting process as seamless as possible.

This past year, he and his team looked at where Luminex’s sales team had to spend the most time in contract negotiations. To make the sales process quicker, they tweaked the clauses that were routinely negotiated so there wouldn’t have to be as much back-and-forth.

The other area where Rew spends a majority of his time is compliance training. Even veteran members of the Luminex sales team need reminders of what they can and can’t do when dealing with healthcare professionals. Most of the rules, Rew says, sound pretty straightforward.

“But how do you put them into practice with things like discounts on products, particularly when you have salespeople who have come over from other industries?” Rew says. “We spend a lot of time working with them to make sure they understand the rules, and then we’re constantly reinforcing because it’s not as intuitive as it sounds.”

All this is in addition to Rew’s work on acquisitions. Many of these acquisitions are confidential until completed, which makes it diifficult for Rew to communicate to other employees what is occupying his time. Employees often find out a deal is happening only after it’s signed.

“You have to figure out how to do that and not ignore other the things that need to go on in the legal department,” Rew says. “You can’t make it obvious you’re spending time doing the M&A work and the day job has to get done.”

Rew relies on the three internal lawyers, two paralegals, and patent agent on his team to keep everything going at once. He’s relatively hands-off as a manager, particularly with the lawyers.

“My feeling is they got hired to their in-house positions because they’re good lawyers and don’t need a ton of direction,” he says. “I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about how they drafted a particular indemnity clause. They’ve done it before.”

He does, however, make sure his legal team understands the science and technology of the products as much as they know the regulations. The approach has worked for both him and the lawyers he works with. Rew says two of the three lawyers who worked for him at ArthroCare, for instance, went on to top lawyer jobs at other companies.

“I want people working for me who want my job one day,” he says. “Having someone with that ambition is great. I want them to be ready at some point in their careers.”

No one on his team at Luminex has yet to move on to prominent positions at other companies, though. Rew is having too much fun helping the company grow through mergers and acquisitions. AHL

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Assembling a Foolproof Security Team

By David Baez

At Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey (HBCBSNJ), a $12 billion health insurer that has served the state since 1932, security is relentless.

With one hundred full-time employees spread across departments of cybersecurity, business continuity, corporate security, special investigations, and real estate management, as well as more than 130 contracted staff, the team’s collective eye never shuts. Systems, networks, and applications are secured and heavily guarded by the cyberteam. All business initiatives have contingency plans to make sure information continues to flow should a connection fail. On the special investigations side, members’ premium dollars have to be protected from all types of fraud. The network of providers the company works with need to be individually vetted; the department is constantly monitoring to flag suspicious behaviors. In physical security and facilities, providing a safe and secure work environment enables the workforce to be productive and successful.

“We are charged with protecting all assets of the enterprise, from people to data to infrastructure to finances,” explains Doug Falduto, HBCBSNJ’s VP and chief security officer. “The work is critical to our daily operations across the company. A destructive cyberevent that leads to the crippling of our IT environment would be catastrophic. A workplace violence incident would be equally disastrous. Failure to recover from a natural disaster would devastate the company’s viability.”

Special investigations are no less critical; the unit saved the company’s members more than $45 million in 2016. The corporate services team plays an instrumental role in this, too, as it is tied in with government regulations and ensuring Horizon’s members get the information they need in a timely manner. It takes individual excellence and teamwork to make that happen.

“When you look at the caliber of the team we’ve assembled, I’d put us up against anybody out there,” Falduto says. “To me, the success lies in the synergy among the leadership team and how that flows to all employees

How Doug Falduto leads a diverse security department at New Jersey’s largest insurance provider

of the division. Everybody has a common approach to getting work done: the idea that nothing is going to get in our way and we work together. Everybody has the same passion and drive.”

Falduto says that people often think he is ex-military or law enforcement because of the way he manages. In fact, he has drawn from the military to assemble his team; there are retired colonels, one who was part of the NSA’s Cyber Hunt division, another who was a countercyberterrorism analyst, and a smattering of former law enforcement personnel and highly trained investigators.

“Through osmosis, we’ve taken on that same approach to our work,” Falduto says. “We’re a unit. We’re a team. We’re on a mission every day.”

Coming up with this kind of team, with this kind of approach, is something Falduto has had his eye on during his entire career. It’s an architecture that reflects his vision of what an effective security model for a large organization should look like.

For a while, he mulled a move into federal law enforcement, but three years into his career, he took a senior investigation job with the company, looking into fraud. He was on the road investigating, interviewing, collecting evidence, and working closely with federal and state law enforcement agencies.

“I loved that work and thrived there,” he says. “I knew I didn’t have to go anywhere else.”

He held that position for five years before being promoted to manager in the department. In 2001, the financial investigations director, who was a former FBI agent, left for another company, and the general counsel promoted Falduto into the job. Then, the terrorist attacks of September 11 happened. After watching the World Trade Center collapse across the river from the window of his sixteenth floor office, Falduto began to ask, “What’s our plan for this kind of event?” Senior management, recognizing the same need, then gave Falduto the reigns to build a business continuity and emergency response program.

DOUG FALDUTO VP of Adminstration, Chief Security Officer

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey

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“It’s planning, not sitting there waiting for the phone to ring. When it does ring, though, you have a plan.”

When the company’s security guards threatened to walk out shortly thereafter, the CFO asked him if he wanted purview of that area as well. So, Falduto added corporate security to his duties. In 2013, as part of leadership’s decision to make cybersecurity a top priority, Falduto’s position began reporting directly to CEO Bob Marino and also took on the responsibility for real estate and facilities management and corporate services.

Falduto says the dynamics of the team and their ability to step in for each other are the foundation for the department’s success.

“If my head of the corporate security team is on vacation, I have two or three other people who can step in and take point,” he says. “Their role might be over in fraud or cybersecurity, but everyone talks every day and knows what’s going in each other’s organizations.”

All the work the team does often flies under the radar; they’re rarely on the front page, but they play a huge role in what ends up on the front page. There are times of crisis, to be sure, but all the other time is filled with very diverse and challenging work that includes emergency response planning.

“It’s planning, not sitting there waiting for the phone to ring,” Falduto says. “When it does ring, though, you have a plan. We’re always ready to respond should something happen, and we’re positioned to successfully navigate through it, so the business is protected and

continues to operate and the customer gets the service they are expecting.”

Falduto says he stands in awe at the things his team accomplishes every day. As a manager, he is always communicating to them the importance that they have in the success of New Jersey’s largest insurer, with 3.8 million members. Although they are often invisible, they are always invaluable.

“My team knows they are critical to everything that happens in the organization because they touch it in some way,” he says. “They can be proud of the work they do every day, and I am proud to be to be a part of it.” AHL

Allied Universal provides unparalleled service, systems and solutions to the healthcare industry, and is North America’s leading security services provider. With over 150,000 employees, Allied Universal delivers high-quality, tailored solutions, which allows clients to focus on their core business. For more information: 866.825.5433 or www.AUS.com/healthcare.

Strategic Content Imaging recognizes the important role Doug Falduto plays to ensure the integrity of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey’s member data and communications. We share this commitment and are proud to be a key partner in this critically important discipline.

Your security program should improve hospital safety and security while adding value and helping you achieve your goals. Let Allied Universal’s security and technology solutions help provide a better experience for your patients, staff and visitors. Learn more at www.AUS.com/healthcare, or call 866.825.5433.

Marks the Spot

Almost every hospital has an on-site pharmacy—a physical location that patients can visit for their prescription needs. However, managing a health system’s pharmacy services division requires a lot more than just running a brick-and-mortar pharmacy, and these executives shed light on the ins and outs of what drives success for this unique function.

Beyond the Counter

BY JEFF SILVER

According to Cynthia Pigg , pharmacy departments are often misunderstood but essential components of healthcare. Not only do they play a critical role in overall patient care, they operate as what the senior VP and chief pharmacy officer of Gateway Health Plan calls a business within a business in most organizations.

“In addition to the clinical aspects that fall under pharmacy, we also provide the business components required to manage the delivery and quality of pharmaceuticals across all benefits,” she explains.

Pharmacy services include everything from comparative and cost-effectiveness reviews of medications to drug claim processing, vendor management, and software solutions to support prescribers. As a result, managed care pharmacists in today’s environment need a broad range of skills to effectively manage their own departments and relationships

with others and to successfully negotiate the trend toward valuebased operations.

Pigg believes that because medications represent such a large percentage of healthcare expenses, pharmacists need to be key players as the industry moves to focus on value rather than volume. “Pharmacists are taking on new collaborative and strategic roles assisting prescribers in achieving financial and clinical outcomes that are in line with the new value-driven environment,” she says.

Part of the challenge in fulfilling that role is determining exactly what pharmacy data will be most helpful to clinicians in making optimal prescribing decisions. For example, pharmacy departments can offer insights into medication adherence, data that many physicians would not have otherwise. Pharmacy analytics can also dig deeper than simply whether patients are

Cynthia Pigg provides a rare blend of clinical and business expertise at Gateway Health Plan

CYNTHIA PIGG

SENIOR VP, CHIEF PHARMACY OFFICER

GATEWAY HEALTH PLAN

complying with their medication regimen. They can also reveal extenuating circumstances, such as when patients can’t afford the prescription, have no transportation to pick it up, or experience excessive side effects.

“Years ago, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said, ‘The most expensive medicine is the one not taken,’” Pigg says. “So, the greatest value we can deliver is assisting prescribers in helping our members to be able to afford high-value medications and to take them as directed.”

Gateway helps in that pursuit by providing a culture that focuses on collaboration and compassionate care. In fact, CEO Patricia Darnley has implemented a vision that places the pharmacy in an active role on the executive leadership team, especially when it comes to developing the overall strategy. This facilitates frank and open discussions between all key functional departments, including finance, medical, and provider contracting.

“If you’re in a vacuum and your activities don’t fit the systems or priorities in another area, you haven’t accomplished much,” Pigg says. “By working directly with other specialties, we can ensure that we deliver value-based solutions that work for everyone.”

To date, Gateway’s pharmacy department, under Pigg’s direction, has implemented several innovative, practical solutions. Pharmacists are placed directly in some high-volume physician practices to streamline access to information for prescriptions that require prior authorization. They also act as partners in discharge planning—a crucial time when medication mishaps are

most common and likely to result in patient readmissions.

To lead the pharmacy department through these new initiatives, Pigg relies on a unique background and career path.

Before attending pharmacy school, Pigg was a medical technologist. But she found her place in the world while earning her master’s degree in health administration. That training and experience showed her how to apply critical business components to her clinical skills. So now, when assessing problems, she goes beyond clinical concerns, such as what medications are being prescribed and whether they are being used appropriately. She might reach out to work with actuaries to identify trends, assess the impact a design change might have on operations and patients, or consult with finance to consider the pros and cons of various versions of potential changes.

“Pharmacists are taking on new collaborative and strategic roles assisting prescribers in achieving financial and clinical outcomes that are in line with the new value-driven environment.”

SINFONÍARX is an industry leader in

GATEWAY’S AMBASSADOR PHARMACY PROGRAM

By eliminating one-size-fits-all solutions, Gateway’s Ambassador Pharmacy Program (GAP2) maximizes the value of pharmaceutical care. It leverages the power of personalized population health tools and predictive analytics to increase member and provider engagement. For example, a different strategy would be used for contacting a seventy-four-year-old retired male than for the mother of three young children. The program is also expected to make better use of available funds and other resources.

“Clinicians usually aren’t trained to run businesses, and MBAs usually aren’t clinicians,” Pigg says. “Having that combination of expertise gives me a unique perspective and the ability to develop more comprehensive solutions that address both the member and the business objectives.”

This approach will be essential in addressing continually increasing drug costs and pharmacy requirements that often demand expertise in specialties such as behavioral health or oncology. To acknowledge and address such needs, Gateway has created job descriptions that differentiate between clinical, business, and analytics tracks for its pharmacists. However, Pigg admits that even though pharmaceutical management strategies have matured, the struggle to manage an unsustainable cost structure remains an ongoing issue.

Even with such sizable challenges, Pigg is still energized

by contributing to positive outcomes for members. She is also excited about ongoing scientific breakthroughs that are delivering cures for conditions that were once chronic.

“Gateway is a nonprofit organization, and we all share a true passion for looking at members holistically, not simply as their medical conditions or diagnoses,” Pigg says. “We want to serve those who truly need assistance, so we are willing to try different approaches and to develop innovative solutions. That’s how we serve the philosophy that drives our mission: do the right thing for members, and the finances and business will fall into place.”

SinfoníaRx is a

services provider which offers innovative healthcare solutions for health partners, patients, and caregivers. Our dedicated pharmacists provide medication reviews and clinical interventions to improve health, wellness, and the management of chronic conditions. We thank our colleague Cindy for her shared commitment of improving patient care.

Bringing Pharmacy into the Black

BY DAVID PHILLIPS

Pam Nenaber isn’t a pharmacist In fact, she started her career as a dental hygienist while completing her graduate work. However, as the CEO of Banner Health’s pharmacy division, she is a top-notch executive who is trusted with guiding the evolution of Banner’s pharmacy operations.

“Pharma is approaching 20-25 percent of healthcare spend,” Nenaber says. “Banner felt it was important to take a closer look at cost savings and potential revenue opportunities. We needed someone to lead that division who had start-up skills.”

Nenaber earned her own set of start-up skills, so to speak, in 2011, when she was CEO of a Banner hospital in Gilbert, Arizona. At the time, the organization embarked on a partnership with Houstonbased cancer center MD Anderson and developed the Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Today, Nenaber finds herself

at the helm of a new start-up, leading initiatives such as growing a specialty pharmacy— an endeavor that involves a great deal of collaboration.

“Specialty drugs used in oncology or the treatment of other chronic conditions are highly formulated, highly regulated, and very expensive,” Nenaber says.

“The manufacturers of those products are extremely selective about who they work with. They want to be sure the medications are used appropriately, that patients who receive them get the right care, and that proper reporting back to the manufacturer is maintained.”

For that reason, Banner joined the Excelera Specialty Pharmacy Network, which is a consortium of specialty pharma providers that is a part of ExceleraRx Corp in Minneapolis. Specialty pharma is now a fast-growing segment for Banner.

Banner Health’s CEO of Pharmacy, Pam Nenaber, finds no bitter pill in improving pharmacy’s revenue position

PAM NENABER CEO, PHARMACEUTICAL OPERATIONS BANNER HEALTH

THE WILD, WILD SOUTHWEST

Although she has lived in the Phoenix area for more than thirty-five years, Pam Nenaber is originally from Pennsylvania. Her decision to move to Arizona certainly took into account educational and career opportunities, but it was also influenced by youthful enthusiasm.

“I just got in my car and drove here,” she says “It was in the late 1970s, and having grown up in the East Coast, I thought it would be an interesting place to live.”

Nenaber met her husband, Dick, in Arizona. He is an insurance industry CEO and a transplant from the upper Midwest. For a while, they operated a restaurant that was also a country-Western performance venue, while they maintained their careers.

Prescription plans are typically written and managed separately from comprehensive medical plans by tightly focused thirdparties. Banner, however, manages its own in-house pharmacy and sees an opportunity to take that to clients.

“Most integrated delivery systems are saying, ‘How do I do this?’” Nenaber says. “Very few are already involved. But we see an industry-wide movement toward more of this. The way we see it, we don’t need the middleman anymore.”

Expansion of Banner’s retail pharmacies is another important item on Nenaber’s list. These retail locations are in hospital lobbies and medical office

facilities system-wide. They are used by a variety of customers and provide a measurable, positive revenue stream.

“We have a considerable opportunity to serve patients who are being discharged from the hospital, Banner employees, and all members for whom we are part of their delivery system,” Nenaber explains. Efforts such as these have helped Nenaber and her team meet a company goal of bringing Banner’s pharmacy division to the positive side of the ledger. They cleared that hurdle in three years, as planned, Nenaber says.

From a personal perspective, her move to the pharmacy division had an additional attraction, one that speaks as much to helping patients as it does to improving the bottom line. It’s what drew her to healthcare in the first place.

“About 80 percent of us are taking at least one medication, and we need that medication to keep us healthy,” she says.

When Nenaber completed her graduate work, managed care was a new concept that was embraced as a way to ensure near-universal healthcare. That’s still the goal today as the industry continues to adjust to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and braces for further changes, she says.

“The ACA really was part of a movement away from a feefor-service model to more of a risk-management, preventivecare environment,” Nenaber says, adding that the tidal forces that brought about the ACA have not shifted enough to derail its broader initiatives. “The industry will continue to move toward a population-based risk management approach.”

And Nenaber speaks from experience. She has been with Banner and predecessor Samaritan for most of her more than thirty-year

career. During that time, she has held other leadership positions including COO of Banner Medical Group, CEO of Banner Gateway Medical Center, and CEO of Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center. She was also a founding member of Banner’s Care Management division, which is focused on improving clinical care and patient safety system-wide.

A willingness to try new things and an embrace of lateral moves has helped Nenaber in her career.

“The point of a lateral move is to gain experience and exposure,” she says. “You are going to develop different skills that you can bring to the table in other situations, and you are exposed to other people, bringing you new opportunities.”

And there is no place in management for sitting back and seeing what develops. “You’ve got to be willing to raise your hand and volunteer,” Nenaber says.

“Pharma is approaching 20-25 percent of healthcare spend. Banner felt it was important to take a closer look at cost savings and potential revenue opportunities. We needed someone to lead that division who had start-up skills.”

Less Time In Aisle 5

At PruittHealth, Bob Warnock has come a long way from managing a local pharmacy, but he still views his early career as crucial to his outlook toward his current work

BOB WARNOCK SENIOR VP OF PHARMACY SERVICES

PRUITTHEALTH

BY BILLY YOST

Bob Warnock didn’t go to pharmacy school to sell garden hoses. But for a time, that was part of his job description. He chuckles when recalling how, as a fresh-faced twenty-two-year-old graduate, he suddenly found himself managing a pharmacy and overseeing a staff that mostly dwarfed him in age. Retail—though it provided him invaluable experience in leading a team and managing financials— was not Warnock’s initial goal. “I kept thinking that I was trained really well to do a job that I wasn’t getting to do enough of,” he says. In other words, Warnock wanted to spend more time serving patients and less time in aisle five.

Warnock’s commitment to patient care is underscored by a career path that includes virtually every sector of the pharmacy field.

“I’ve seen the business from about every side,” he says. “It gives you a unique perspective on what’s

needed and what’s not needed in the business.” His current position as senior VP of pharmacy services for PruittHealth—a postacute care healthcare provider based in Georgia—is a reflection of a career spent almost entirely in senior care. Pruitt currently services about 150 different nursing facilities spread across four states. His introduction to senior care and nursing home services was the result of an early move to Georgia Geriatrics, a job where Warnock was able to focus specifically on pharmacy. “There was no selling garden hoses,” he says, with a laugh. “It was what you go to school for if you go to school to be a pharmacist.” When the company was absorbed, he was made head of clinical pharmacy services, a role he continued in until deciding to leave the established company with proven clientele for something much riskier.

“I got a call from a guy who said, basically, ‘I’ve got a retail pharmacy and several nursing homes that are willing to work with me, but they want me to bring in someone who knows long-term care pharmacies,’” Warnock says. “That would be me.” The idea of working for himself was something he had thought about often. This seemed like his chance. “We worked together to build a business from nothing,” he recalls.

Warnock and his partner were able to turn a pharmacy run on a shoestring budget with hypothetical clients into a thriving business servicing thirty-six statewide nursing homes. They successfully sold it to Omnicare in 1995. Warnock fondly remembers how, on the last day of the month, he and his partner would assemble the budget for the next thirty days while crunching numbers overnight at a nearby Waffle House. “Our boardroom at that time was a little less ornate,” he says.

Warnock reflects on those times often, as they served as a serious lesson in learning how to operate efficiently. Rather than hire someone to take afterhours calls for the company, the partners took overnight and weekend calls themselves for nearly ten years. “There’s nothing that makes you want to get up and go to work like it being your money,” Warnock explains. “It’s a great motivator.”

Warnock’s duties at PruittHealth are a bit different, primarily including overseeing regional postacute care services at the dozens of nursing care facilities they service. Additionally, he oversees development opportunities, such as managing five pharmacies, a home-infusion pharmacy, and a mail-order pharmacy. These are projects Warnock hopes to grow into larger businesses over time. “Sometimes we’re good at it; other times we learn from it and try something else,” he says. The key is a willingness to experiment to better serve his patients.

“It doesn’t matter where you come from. It’s what you can contribute.”

When looking back on the experiences that have defined his success, Warnock emphasizes the importance of building the right team. He works hard to make sure that the people he hires feel comfortable voicing their opinions, and that those opinions are the result of different styles of thought. “You try to hire people that are smarter than you and people who aren’t the same,” he says. “I don’t care whose answer is the right answer; I just care about the right answer.”

As a leader, Warnock sees his role as a barrier breaker. “My job is to take a lot of smart people with a lot of great ideas and get things out of their way so they can go do them,” he says. He cites his mother and father’s humble upbringing in his career development, as well. “It doesn’t matter where you come from,” he says. “It’s what you can contribute.”

Currently, Warnock is working to help educate his patients before they leave the nursing facility as to how their medication works and how it can best be utilized, especially in conjunction with other drugs they might be taking. “We’re working on how to better transition patients,” he says. “Previously in my career, that is not something that was widely considered. Companies are now

more incentivized to make sure that patients have positive outcomes wherever they are—not just their place of business.”

PruittHealth is aggressively pursuing a culture that follows up with patients, checks to make sure each is in touch with their primary care physician, and at times, even gets employees to talk through the contents of a patient’s medicine cabinet to make sure they aren’t mixing conflicting medications.

Although a bulk of Warnock’s time is devoted to senior care, he’s only recently earned the title of grandpa with the birth of his first grandson at the end of 2016. He cites many years of watching his sons play soccer as critical points of both growth and relaxation. He and his wife are avid hikers and have braved many of the country’s national parks and just about anywhere else where “phones won’t work.”

All of this is an indicator that, in both his personal and professional life, Warnock prefers to stay connected to his humble roots. Although the scale and responsibilities of his work have grown, he still treats his job with the same determination as when he was selling garden hoses.

“I see it as a leader's obligation to help cultivate disruptive innovation.”

TECHNOLOGY MATH SCIENCE

It’s in Her DNA

Myra Davis has helped transform technology at one of the nation’s most wired hospitals

By Jonas Weir

hen Myra Davis started at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston nearly fifteen years ago , the medical landscape was much different than it is today. Digital technology was in its infancy for medical applications, and EMRs were just becoming commonplace. At the same time, Texas Children’s Hospital was entering an era of unprecedented growth.

Shortly after Davis joined the hospital, it began enacting its Vision 2010 expansion plan. In her first decade with the organization, it added another full-service hospital in West Houston, as well as the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, the Texas Children’s West Campus outpatient clinic building, and the Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women. Still today, that growth does not appear to be slowing, as the organization looks to add a new pediatric tower in 2018, a new community hospital in North Houston, and expanded services moving forward.

Throughout this continued period of growth, Davis’s role within the organization has evolved accordingly. She has held three positions over the years: director of information services for customer support, VP of information services, and now senior VP and chief information officer. With each new role and challenge, Davis has been the right person to grow with the technology and needs of the organization, while simultaneously bringing the organization up to speed.

“I like math. I’m very analytic,” Davis says. “My mother taught advanced math for forty years, and I really didn’t have a choice but to like math, so I think that drew the analytical and logical side out of me. I think it’s just in my DNA, and I believe in translation of sciences to help others understand how it works.”

MYRA DAVIS Senior VP, Chief Information Officer

Texas Children’s Hospital

Inspired by her mother’s passion for numbers, Davis went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Loyola–New Orleans and then a master’s degree in software engineering from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Davis followed this by working as a consultant for years, before eventually joining Texas Children’s Hospital. What attracted Davis to the organization was the prospect of getting off the road as a consultant and the better work/life balance the company offered as her children were growing older. Additionally, the organization’s mission to create a healthier future for children and women throughout the global community was what truly inspired her.

“The mission of Texas Children’s is one that is infectious. Who doesn’t want to create a healthy environment for kids and women?” she says. “When you think about that mission, that will get you up every day. It’ll get you to work, and then you get to think about what you do to fulfill that mission, which is to ensure that the technology this organization is using advances medicine for children and women.”

From the outset of her career with Texas Children’s Hospital, Davis faced a number of challenges. Moving the hospital to an EMR system—a major undertaking—was one of her first projects. And as with any big change, there were a number of people resistant to it and those who simply had trouble adapting.

“You can’t assume that just because you build it, everyone’s going to come and use it,” Davis says. “That’s one thing you don’t take for granted. When you really think about how it’s changed the dynamic for caregivers who had to go from paper and pen to a keyboard, a mouse, and a screen, that’s a pretty big switch.”

The process of this adoption took years. By the spring of 2012, the hospital’s EMR system, Epic, was fully implemented. Since then, Texas Children’s Hospital has seen a number of meaningful benefits. The biggest

FROM IDEA TO IMPLEMENTATION

Whether it’s a new medication bar code system or consolidating data centers, all new tech projects that Myra Davis and the information services department execute go through one centralized project management office (PMO). At the PMO, each new initiative is evaluated through a rigorous process.

“We have a methodology that’s tried and true,” Davis says. “It allows us to deliver projects according to our goals if we follow it.”

The first step is determining the type of project it is. If it’s a project that does not need to be managed in-house and will have outside providers, the PMO submits a request for information first. Once the hospital has evaluated the project as something that it wants to pursue and has funding for, the PMO submits a request for proposal.

“This really shows how we are putting out an opportunity for our vendors to partner with us to solve a problem that we have,” Davis says. “We work closely with our supply chain contract group that has a formal process in how we select vendors.”

The project must then meet the hospital’s functional and technical requirements. First, Davis’s team makes sure it can integrate into their existing environment. Next, they ensure it will create a safe environment from an information security perspective. Then, they weigh the priority of the project.

Finally, there’s a scoring process facilitated by the hospital’s contracts group. This includes interviews, calling for references, site visits, and more.

of these, Davis says, was the fact that throughout the expanding healthcare organization all caregivers had one true source of information.

“We’re able to see our patients from anywhere we’re located,” she says. “If you’re in the main campus, you log in and you can see the patient. If you go to our west campus community hospital, you can see that patient. Just the fact that we have that enterprise view is really efficient for our providers and our caregivers.”

Following the full EMR implementation, Davis was promoted to chief information officer, and she spearheaded a number of new initiatives designed to create better quality patient care. Rather than simply keeping the organization’s IT up to date, Davis has turned the information services department into a leading resource for the hospital. In fact, during her tenure as CIO, Texas Children’s Hospital has won the Most Wired hospital designation from the American Hospital Association’s flagship publication, Hospitals & Health Networks magazine, three times—most recently in 2016. The hospital also won the Most Wired Innovator Award in 2013 for its Rapid Communication System—an app that consolidated and improved communications by enabling group and individual exchanges and providing detailed information on colleague availability and work status. Since then, Davis continues to take pride in the projects that she oversees.

One such project is the hospital’s new medication bar code solution, Epic Rover. Davis says this system will increase safety, a significant improvement across the system. “We’re making sure we’re giving the five rights: the right medicine to the right patient at the right time for the right care and the right reason,” she says.

“The mission of Texas Children’s is one that is infectious. Who doesn’t want to create a healthy environment for kids and women?”

Another is the Texas Children’s Hospital’s use of GetWellNetwork’s patient-facing technology solutions. Now, in each room across Texas Children’s Hospital’s campus, patients have a smart TV with an interactive interface that serves a number of functions.

“In our women’s hospital, you can order food and watch movies; it’s almost like a hotel-type solution. Kids can play games,” Davis says. “In other parts of the hospital, some functionality is being used for education upon discharge to ensure that families are getting the right education prior to leaving the organization, which has been fulfilling to watch as well.”

Looking toward the future, Davis is working to further modernize Texas Children’s Hospital to ensure everimproving care and service. Right now, Davis and her team are consolidating ten data centers across the organization into two. This, she says, will improve the organization in a number of ways. First, it reduces the amount of maintenance the information services department needs to do. More proactively, though, it will mitigate the hospital’s data vulnerability.

“It’s a three-year journey,” Davis says. “We’re in the first leg of it, and that’s really exciting.”

Davis is also excited to be working closely with the hospital’s CMIO. Together, they are putting a process in place to capture inventive ideas from people throughout the organization. Davis says they are going to put a rigid, agile process in place to determine if there are solutions they can provide, if they need to leverage existing technologies, and how fast they can invest in technologies to provide those solutions.

To do this, Davis makes sure to return to her instinc-

tive knack for math and science, as well as her ability to share her enthusiasm for technology to others.

“I’m innately a coach and teacher,” Davis explains. “I think that over the years, being so passionate has indirectly transformed and given me the opportunity to do what I do now. When you enjoy what you’re doing, you don’t really have a destiny for it. You just love it, and you end up in places that you never thought you would end up before.” AHL

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Care Solutions Through Procurement

As complex as it can be, Avalon Healthcare—a multistate, post-acute care provider— has flourished while serving Medicare and Medicaid patients

By Russ Klettke

The pressure to cut costs under the terms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is exceptional, especially for postacute care providers that primarily serve Medicare and Medicaid populations. Nationwide, facility managers have faced dwindling reimbursements even while equipment, supply, and personnel costs continue to rise.

Hyrum Kirton understands this perhaps as well as anyone. As VP of alliance services and procurement at Avalon Health Care, based in Salt Lake City, he has, for the past decade, assumed an increasing number of responsibilities in supply sourcing and creating alliances by working with allied service providers such as physical therapy, home healthcare, and pharmacy companies.

Avalon offers skilled nursing, assisted living/senior housing, and hospice facilities, in addition to care coordination and managed care services. Patients can access these services through one of Avalon’s thirty-nine communities in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Utah, and Washington.

Kirton has implemented several critical strategic initiatives to make Avalon’s care as accessible and

HYRUM KIRTON VP of Alliance Services and Procurement Avalon Health Care

comprehensive as possible. Overall, his approach has been to be adaptive and nimble.

“Revenues are growing slower than inflation,” Kirton says, speaking to one of the unique challenges a company faces when the majority of its patients are on Medicare or Medicaid. And Avalon is hardly alone in facing this challenge. The number of people on these federal programs has increased the amount of spending of these programs. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Medicaid spending has grown by 9.7 percent and Medicare by 4.5 percent in 2015. The same agency projects healthcare spending will grow 1.3 percentage points higher than the GDP by 2025.

This reality is not lost on Kirton. The strategy has been to rein in costs, wherever and however possible, while still providing the kind of care that improves patient outcomes, he says.

Kirton began working at Avalon in 2007 and says a cost-management mentality persisted at the company long before the ACA. “Our first hard task in procurement was to look for creative ways to buy,” he says. “We looked for ways to become vertically integrated.” This initially meant forming a joint venture with a pharmacy company

Jessica Eckford

that met the objective: Avalon cut costs even while learn ing ways to improve service quality. The venture was suc cessful enough that it attracted a buyer—a large national pharmacy—in 2016. So, Avalon is once again a customer but with the lowest-possible prices.

The company also entered into a partnership with a therapy company, Brighton Rehabilitation, which pro vides rehabilitation services to patients. “This is one of our largest spend categories,” Kirton says. The partner ship began in 2006, and by 2014, Avalon owned it outright.

Additionally, Avalon began providing hospice care a decade ago; it now has an average daily census of one thousand patients. The company intends to diversify with investments in several private senior-living facil ities that are not dependent on Medicare or Medicaid reimbursements, and it has management contracts in two other facilities.

In addition to finding partnerships, Avalon was nimble enough to exit some of these businesses when it was rational to do so. That meant divesting of a home-health business and a decision not to pursue the durable rental equipment market.

But as five hundred facility managers and professional staff make purchases in their facilities in six states every day, procurement procedures are just as critical to the cost-containment strategy as deciding which business ventures to pass up. This is important from both a cost-management standpoint and from the perspective of caregiving. A uniform approach, with preapproved vendors and negotiated pricing, will enable better service to Medicare and Medicaid patients.

To ensure a balance between cost reduction and patient care quality, the Avalon team continually looks at its approach to cost reduction. “Every two to three years our standards are revisited by our clinical experts,” Kirton says. “We consider what new options are on the market, pull information from all sources together, and discuss it in a nonsales atmosphere.”

Kirton has also been tasked with negotiating agreements’ terms with managed Medicaid and Medicare for HMOs, such as Aetna and Humana, which face a fairly uncertain future. “Most of the industry expects that government entitlement cuts will continue to drive down healthcare spending,” he says.

With that in mind, the company is exploring management contracts in China, a country where elder care outside of families is only in a nascent stage. “We want to take our expertise to China,” Kirton says. “But cultural acceptance is new, and the specific product to be accepted is unknown.” The country’s one-child policy will likely prompt that acceptance in about twenty years, he says.

That means Avalon is in it for the long term, despite the acute challenges of US government-funded healthcare services. AHL

is to provide the best clinical care possible for our patients, create positive working environments for our employees, and develop successful partnerships with our customers.

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The adoption of EHRs is spreading throughout the nation’s hospitals. But Bill Lovell, and other healthcare executives, wrestle with an even greater challenge: how to achieve health data interoperability in a secure environment?

By Russ Klettke

lthough the uncertain status of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2017 obscures the future of American healthcare , it has already fostered many technological advances. And throughout that time, Bill Lovell has been in an enviable position, where he has been able to both observe and promote technology supporting the ACA.

As a VP at DXC Technology, he is in charge of the company’s Federal Health Segment. It’s a robust $700 million business that addresses the ways in which beneficiaries access and pay for life-saving and lifeenhancing healthcare. That includes technology to support “the three Ps,” as Lovell describes them: providers, payers, and promoters, which include government agencies such as the Department of Veteran Affairs, the Defense Health Agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Healthcare constitutes about one-fifth of the nation’s gross domestic product. By comparison, the nation’s financial sector constituted about half of that, 10 percent, as of 2016. Both are rapidly growing sections of the country’s twenty-first-century economy, but healthcare lags behind banking and investing in achieving data interoperability.

“The financial community has standards that work worldwide,” Lovell says. “They have safeguards, with a set of interoperable standards that allow stakeholders to share data and interact with each other. We don’t have that in healthcare. Healthcare remains community-based.”

By community, he is referring to the silos of healthcare as administered by states—by agencies such as the Veterans Health Administration, Medicaid, and Medicare and by private insurers and private healthcare provider systems.

Anyone who has used these systems in recent years, which is just about everyone, has seen at least one technological advance: EHRs, for example, are a technology that Lovell notes was in place in only 7 percent of hospitals in 2008. By 2014, 75 percent had a basic EHR system with nearly all—97 percent—possessing certified, soonto-deploy EHR technologies.

Lovell explains that a combination of penalties and incentives, driven by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 (HITECH, created by the 2009 economic stimulus bill), was largely responsible for this improvement. But although EHRs are exceptionally important and a good first step, it doesn’t

“We now have this wealth of new data being collected electronically. But we don’t have the same standards of interoperability.”

BILL LOVELL VP, Federal Health Segment DXC Technology

complete the task. There are many great things to come for DXC Technology, as well as other industry players.

“We now have this wealth of new data being collected electronically,” Lovell says. “But we don’t have the same standards of interoperability.” In other words, though a person can use an ATM or credit card almost everywhere in the world, sharing records between two hospitals a mile apart from each other might still require phone calls, faxes, e-mails, and even paper documents.

Lovell says that interoperability is the next and probably most important step toward creating a twentyfirst-century healthcare system. An April 2015 report called “Adoption of Electronic Health Record Systems among U.S. Non-Federal Acute Care Hospitals” from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, an agency under the US Department of Health and Human Services, concluded there are reasons to expect it to happen. “The increase in the rate of adoption for certified EHR technology sheds a positive light on hospitals’ progress toward the interoperable exchange of health information,” it says.

That information goes beyond what’s in an individual patient’s health records. DXC Technology is a proponent of the evolution of big data—specifically EHRs in combination with data from wearable devices, environmental and behavioral health determinants, and genomic and individual microbiota—to achieve predictive and prescriptive analytics. All of this requires the data to come together in one place and be accessed by duly authorized clinicians involved in a patient’s care.

Lovell adds that, along with interoperability, security also needs to be in place for the sharing of all those records. The Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requires that patient information be kept confidential. The penalties for HIPAA violations

Cedric Harris

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EMERGING TECHNOLOGY

According to Bill Lovell, the Department of Veteran Affairs initiative to develop a Digital Health Platform (DHP) will bridge the gaps in episodic clinical data in the EHR with other untapped data sources. These sources include clinical data collected through mobile apps, patient portals, third-party repositories, consumer health, and tracking devices. DXC Technology is a leading innovator supporting the DHP.

Elsewhere, the Million Veteran Program (MVP), a longitudinal study that serves as a megabiobank and has been underway since 2011, is designed to develop precision medicine based on DNA. “By analyzing and documenting a veteran’s genetic code and then correlating the data found in VistA (the VA’s EHR), researchers can examine diseases and indicators that lead to a wealth of population health information,” Lovell says. DXC Technology, according to Lovell, is pleased to be a leading innovator for secured data analytics tools supporting initiatives, such as the MVP.

Mike Fravell, President/CEO Mike@technologywerks.com

Jeffery Rimmer, General Manager Jeffery@technologywerks.com

rose precipitously by way of HITECH and forced providers to simultaneously protect and share patient data. It’s a technological problem calling for a technological solution. Lovell says there is no single solution but more of an overlay of security on products and programs.

But, in Lovell’s opinion, newer technologies can’t succeed by themselves. “The actual models for how we access and deliver healthcare are undergoing a paradigm shift from the traditional paternalistic health system focused on the healthcare provider to a more enlightened and informed system focused on the beneficiary, the healthcare patient,” he says.

Added to the mix is the debate on healthcare access and affordability. “We have to look at advancing healthcare technologies and the age demographics in the nation and figure out a way to pay for it,” he says, pointing out that the current rate of increase for healthcare costs is about 5.6 percent per year and that any compromise to the quality of healthcare delivery is unacceptable.

The societal acceptance issue is a related and familiar debate. Much of the country wants affordable healthcare access for all, while others rebel against the idea of mandatory participation in insurance pools. It's a huge task to reconcile these philosophies, but a better aggregation of data can at least inform the debate.

Ultimately, Lovell says the digitization of all personal health information will empower the patient, removing the mystique of the provider and diminishing the control of payers. These results might not fully actualize in 2017 while national healthcare remains a political football. Regardless, the advances of propatient technologies are a near certainty. AHL

Innovative

Failure

In a field where success often comes after many years and failures, Nouhad Husseini and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals believe that it’s worth waiting for true innovation

By Jeff Silver

mong larger pharmaceutical companies, there has been a significant industry trend of abandoning internal investment in earlystage research and development. This is in large part due to the perception from company boards of directors that preliminary R&D is too risky or, perhaps, that it’s better-suited to academic institutions or smaller, venture-backed biotechnology companies. As a result, these larger enterprises have increasingly opted to access early-stage science through business deals that, despite significant fees, are often still considered more attractive than the risk and expense associated with early-stage, in-house R&D efforts.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, however, has taken a different approach. Throughout its nearly thirty-year history, the company has remained dedicated to rigorous scientific research and developing meaningful innovations at its in-house labs. According to Nouhad Husseini, VP, business development, this philosophy has enabled the company to leverage knowledge gained from its past in-house efforts as building blocks that have led to its current discoveries and successes.

This includes failures that did not turn out as planned. For example, Husseini points to Regeneron’s initial focus on neurotrophic factors to address diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Although this endeavor was ultimately unsuccessful, the basic science it generated led to the company’s Trap technology and EYLEA, its treatment for agerelated macular degeneration and other retinal diseases that threaten sight. Additional early-stage research at Regeneron resulted in VelocImmune, the company’s antibody discovery platform, and VelociGene, its pioneering mouse-genetics platform.

“It’s unusual for a company of our size to continue investing as much as we do in early-stage platform technologies,” Husseini says. “But so much of our success is rooted in the kinds of skunkworks projects that most large companies have moved away from. Instead, we decided to maintain the direction we started in.”

The latest example of this strategy is Dupixent, an Interleukin-4 and -13 (IL4/13) blocker currently awaiting FDA approval. The drug has shown great promise in clinical studies as a possible treatment for a variety of allergic diseases. Its power and potential, however, are based on what Regeneron learned in the early days of its IL4/13 cytokine Trap technology, a molecule that did not live up to expectations.

In the same way that Regeneron has stayed true to its innovative roots, Husseini has been instrumental

in helping the company pioneer a groundbreaking approach to business development. Rather than putting effort into identifying traditional deals to purchase external innovation, he and his team look for collaborative relationships with companies that have developed complementary science and technologies. For example, Regeneron recently reached an agreement with Intellia Therapeutics through which the companies will work together to develop therapeutics based on CRISPR/Cas (geneediting) technology. This arrangement leverages an area where Regeneron has already developed significant in-house expertise from internal research.

Aside from the financial aspects of the agreement, Husseini is quick to point out that Intellia benefits by gaining access to Regeneron’s science and technology. This includes the Regeneron Genetics Center (RGC), which is vying to be the largest human geneticssequencing effort in the world. RGC has established dozens of collaborations with medical centers and academic institutions around the globe, and it is on track to sequence DNA from more than five hundred thousand people over the next five years.

“By bringing together the RGC and CRISPR, Regeneron and Intellia have a unique opportunity to accelerate efforts to make CRISPR-based therapeutics a reality,” Husseini says. “At the same time, we make new discoveries about what genes to target and how to fix them. That’s the cornerstone of our business development strategy: identifying companies with complementary technologies and cultures and then leveraging our own discoveries to create relationships where one plus one equals three.”

The Intellia agreement is also notable in that it marks the first time Regeneron has made a significant investment in an outside entity. That change required a shift in the company’s culture, which Husseini describes as having moved from continuing processes that have been successful to looking for partnerships. “Our technologies are great, but they can be even better with the help of a like-minded partner,” Husseini says.

The shift was made easier by the fact that Regeneron staff recognized the complementary nature of Intellia’s capabilities and culture almost immediately. As a result, they have embraced the combination of

NOUHAD HUSSEINI VP, Business Development Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

“As much positive attention as these technologies are getting, they are still very early in their development. It might not be until version 4.0 that we see the full impact of what they can deliver.”

new philosophy and collaborative partnership as an important and strategic way to maintain Regeneron’s position of scientific leadership.

When asked about the future of innovative technologies such as CRISPR and chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-T), Husseini says he believes that a majority of the markets and the public are overly focused on their near-term applications. As such, they are ignoring the long road ahead before they reach their full potential.

“As much positive attention as these technologies are getting, they are still very early in their development,” Husseini says. “It might not be until version 4.0 that we see the full impact of what they can deliver, which we hope will be offering cures for a broad set of diseases. That’s why we stay committed to a science-based approach that focuses on perfecting innovative technologies and therapies over the long-term.”

With decades of scientific rigor, institutional knowledge, and a core scientific team that has been with the company since its earliest days, Regeneron is wellpositioned to continue delivering that kind of meaningful innovation. AHL

Clarivate Analytics accelerates the pace of innovation by providing trusted insights and analytics to customers around the world, enabling them to discover, protect, and commercialize new ideas, faster. Our tool Drug Research Advisor—Target Druggability—aims to remove the pain from target selection by empowering you to reach beyond the data. With Target Druggability, scientists can explore, rank, and validate individual targets or target families using interactive visuals and a scoring algorithm, all in one research tool: clarivate.com/drug-research-advisor/

IT Solutions with a Smile

Yogish Suvarna takes on the unique challenges that come with managing IT supporting one of the largest and fastest-growing networks of independent dental care providers in the United States

By Jonas Weir

Over the past several years, the number of Aspen Dental locations has grown by at least 10–15 percent each year, expanding from twenty dental offices to six hundred. The organization now spreads across thirty-six states, and it achieved this major growth in a relatively short period of time. In 2016 alone, Aspen Dental offices saw more than 3.5 million patients, making it one of the largest and fastest-growing networks of independent dental care providers in the United States. But like any blossoming company, Aspen Dental’s success story has not been without its growing pains.

When Yogish Suvarna joined ADMI, the company that provides business support services to Aspen Dental practices, in April 2015 as its chief information officer, he was tasked with the herculean challenge of bringing its information systems into the twenty-first century—an age markedly more connected than when the company was founded in 1998. In fact, a fifteen-year-old legacy system was still in place when he joined the business. So, Suvarna set out for a complete overhaul of the company’s information systems.

“One of the biggest challenges is to keep the growing business running with the old legacy system while replacing portions of the system with a new technology

platform and making old and new systems talk to each other until the transformation is complete,” Suvarna says. “We refer to it here as changing the parts of your car while the engine is still running.”

While Suvarna and his IT team work to replace the legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, they are also rolling out brand new technology tools for the continually growing dental company. This includes getting tablets into the hands of Aspen Dental practice employees and introducing online scheduling and payment portals for Aspen Dental patients. In fact, even first-time patients can currently visit Aspen Dental’s website, find a nearby dental professional who can provide the right type of care, and schedule an appointment—without ever having to pick up the phone. Suvarna says this type of service is especially appealing to millennials who are more wired in than previous generations. He also adds that introducing tablets and other digital technologies to Aspen Dental’s offices helps the practices provide better service.

YOGISH SUVARNA Chief Information Officer, Senior VP Aspen Dental Management Inc.

Laine Anderson

“In my opinion, it’s all about getting the right mind-set, skill set, and tool set to take care of the vision, mission, and strategy of the organization.”

“Any and every cutting-edge and digital technology that we adopt helps Aspen Dental’s clinicians and office staffs, who are totally committed and dedicated to providing the best care to our patients,” he says.

Currently, Suvarna is helping to shape the business support’s strategic plan for 2020. Nearly 150 million Americans didn’t visit a dentist in the past year, due to barriers like access, fears, and lack of insurance. Aspen Dental practices’ goal is to offer patients a safe, welcoming, and judgment-free environment to help make dentistry easier. When helping to shape plans that allow Aspen Dental practices to do this, Suvarna is not only focused on care, but he is also bringing his own business philosophy with him.

Before joining the company, Suvarna earned a master’s degree in engineering management from the Manipal Institute of Technology. He then worked in various technology leadership roles at companies such as Volvo, supermarket chain Winn-Dixie, and restaurant chain company Bloomin’ Brands. During this time, Suvarna honed his leadership skills and discovered many business philosophies that he would carry with him to his current role.

For one, Suvarna says he prefers a flat company, as opposed to a tall company. This means a company with few levels of hierarchy and more of a team approach to business. He says this makes for less bureaucracy and red tape that can bog down an organization and allows for easier and more effective communication within the organization. He also believes that a flat company structure helps control costs by empowering employees and holding them more accountable.

When managing his own teams, Suvarna draws a lot of inspiration from the book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t by business consultant Jim Collins. The best-selling management book outlines how many companies have achieved success. One idea Suvarna is most drawn to is the idea that an organization needs the right people in the right seats.

Dental is a cutting-edge cloud based practice management system designed for large multi-location dental organizations. We offer a unique approach for sophisticated dental groups with more than 150 locations who are seeking centralized reporting and customized dental software designed to fit the way your organization runs.

“Any and every cutting-edge and digital technology that we adopt helps Aspen Dental’s clinicians and office staffs.”

“In my opinion, it’s all about getting the right mind-set, skill set, and tool set to take care of the vision, mission, and strategy of the organization,” he says. In turn, Suvarna wants his team to not only have the technical skills to get the job done, but they must also have the right attitude to fit in with Aspen Dental practice’s commitment to providing exceptional care.

Moving forward, Suvarna sees patient data following the same trends as the broader medical community. And because the information in dental records, he says, is just as sensitive as medical records, he wants to ensure the records are as secure as possible and held to the same standards and regulations as EMRs. “As part of the technology transformation, we will be partnering with software vendors to implement an electronic dental recording system in the coming months,” he says.

With electronic dental records on the horizon and new locations continually opening, the future of Aspen Dental practices appears to be as bright as the smiles it takes care of. AHL

Total Dental applauds Yogish Suvarna, Aspen Dental’s CIO, as an industry leader. Yogish’s approach to empowering business through technology is revolutionary. Total Dental is proud to partner with Aspen Dental in developing a custom, state of the art dental practice management system to serve it’s 600-plus locations across the country.

Good Privacy Means Good Security

QuintilesIMS CPO Kimberly Gray on privacy, cybersecurity, and the power of empathy

By Billy Yost

WWhen she joined QuintilesIMS as chief privacy officer, Kimberly Gray found herself at a new job seeking a new challenge, one on a global scale. As a pioneering chief privacy officer (CPO), a healthcare law attorney, and even a clinical assistant, Gray’s extensive résumé has provided her with the opportunity to approach both privacy and cybersecurity from a number of different vantage points. “Privacy is very subjective sometimes,” she says. “The ability to put yourself in the shoes of the individual is important.”

Gray credits working directly with patients as a clinical assistant early in her career as invaluable experience. “I think my perspective has always been a little bit different than a normal person who goes into healthcare law,” she says. After passing the bar and practicing law privately as a healthcare attorney, Gray went to work at Pennsylvania insurance company Highmark, where she literally defined her position as a privacy professional. The CPO position was created for her, and it came at just the right time. Shortly after settling in, HIPAA was enacted.

“There’s a little bit of peer pressure, sitting on the board of an information security company with a bunch of CISOs, to be able to walk the walk.”

The landmark law changed Gray’s job overnight. “Suddenly, it was my job to get a big organization compliant with HIPAA,” she says. “I learned a whole different discipline that had nothing to do with law and just happened to be in the healthcare world.” Gray says it was a crash course in project management, a role she had not previously played. “I had seen things from the patient’s viewpoint, from the clinical side, from the provider’s view, from a legal perspective, and now at Highmark, I was seeing things from the insurance side of things,” she says. After creating a team to manage and adapt to the new law, Gray says the department worked so efficiently that she found herself looking for a new challenge.

Gray’s continued education and interest in information security landed her a role on the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST), an advisory board made up of healthcare leaders working to develop a common security framework for the storage and sending of sensitive data. “I was the lone privacy officer in a sea of chief information security officers (CISOs),” Gray says. At HITRUST, Gray helped oversee a team that created deidentification standards sections for the framework and says that the alliance’s focus on cybersecurity, cyber-risk management, threat preparedness, and threat response have all provided her great perspective in her role at QuintilesIMS. “There’s a little bit of peer pressure, sitting on the board of an information security company with a bunch of CISOs, to be able to walk the walk,” Gray says. “And I think it makes me a much better privacy professional.” Gray has even begun presenting at cyberconferences on good cyberhygiene. This includes routine security scans, virus definition updating, and password protection, among other behavior, to maintain a healthy online presence.

GRAY Chief Privacy Officer

KIMBERLY

QuintilesIMS

Robert Brodie

Gray’s role on HITRUST’s advisory board has also helped her communicate more constructively with her CISO colleagues. “While CPOs often come from legal or regulatory backgrounds, CISOs often come from more technical backgrounds,” Gray says. “Therefore, their way of looking at things often differs, and their language also differs.” This can sometimes create tension, and Gray says the interdependence between the two positions mandates good communication because good privacy requires good security.

Another contributor to that tension, Gray says, stems from CISOs scrambling to find funding for privacy protection that CPOs deem essential. “It sometimes seemed more like the CPO was telling the CISO what to do rather than asking,” she says.

The rise in high-level cybersecurity attacks and a developing awareness of cybersecurity have helped ease this strain, Gray says. Corporations are more readily realizing they need to invest in cybersecurity. “This means that the CISO doesn’t have as much trouble getting security budget dollars as he or she did just a few years ago,” Gray says.

The remainder of 2017 and the bulk of 2018 provides a number of interesting developments for Gray and her colleagues, a year she believes will be wildly busy and intellectually stimulating. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) takes effect in May 2018. “Any time there is a new data protection law that organizations have to comply with, there’s a lot of work to be done,” Gray says. QuintilesIMS is also working to become certified to the European Union’s Binding Corporate Rules. Add a new American administration dealing with healthcare legislation and ever-changing international privacy laws (Japan and Latin America are changing their regulations at the moment), and Gray and her team seem to have a demanding year ahead.

As CPO, Gray says that overcoming some of the challenges of a global leadership position can be tricky. Practical considerations and the geographical constraints often mean she doesn’t ever actually physically meet the people she works with. “It’s difficult to develop those important personal relationships,” she says. But that is where her empathetic nature seems to thrive—in navigating problems with more than herself in mind. AHL EY Advisory believes a better working world means helping clients solve big, complex industry issues and capitalize on opportunities to grow, optimize, and protect their businesses. A global mindset, diversity, and collaborative culture inspires EY consultants to ask better questions, create innovative answers, and realize long-lasting results. The better the question. The better the answer. The better the world works.

a future where data is everywhere, who’ll keep it out of the wrong hands?

Texas Health Resources: Presbyterian Dallas's chief nursing officer helps drive transformative change through the innovative Clinical Nurse Leader Program

By Peter Fabris

Healthcare needs a major transformation, according to Dr. Cole Edmonson, chief nursing officer for Texas Health Resources: Presbyterian Dallas.

He believes that steady evolution isn’t enough. What US healthcare needs, Edmonson says, is no less than sweeping disruptive innovation, and he intends to be a change agent to further that end.

“We all know that the healthcare system is plagued with waste,” Edmonson says. “We are getting poorer outcomes than other developed countries and spending more. I see it as a leader’s obligation to help cultivate disruptive innovation.”

Edmonson points to three recent programs as examples of disruptive innovation within Texas Health Resources, which operates hospitals in sixteen counties in North Central Texas. All three have radically changed entrenched operations and furthered efforts to advance the triple aim of cost savings, improved patient outcomes, and better patient experience—and Edmonson has had a hand in all of them.

Of the three initiatives, the one impacting patients most directly is the Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) Program, which trains and empowers nurses to coordinate patient care and educate patients on preventive measures. The two-year, master’s-level CNL program

at Texas Health Resources is a partnership with Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Participants work at a Texas Health Resources hospital as patient-care facilitators—a precursor role of certified CNLs—while taking classes at TCU. Once assigned a CNL mentor, each participant receives in-depth, on-the-job education at patients’ bedsides along with classroom courses that bolster their knowledge.

Most nurses in the program have at least three years of work experience before they enroll in the CNL program. They focus on matters related to coordinating care as advanced pathology and radiology and how to apply the latest research concerning patient recovery. When they become full-fledged CNLs, they step into a role that Edmonson says is the basis for Texas Health Resources’ radical new approach to patient care.

“They are the quarterback of the care team—the one clinician that understands the patient’s entire case history and shepherds the patient through the healthcare system,” Edmonson says. “CNLs are advanced generalists that look to make sure that tests, medications, and treatment plans make sense. They are experts in closing gaps and finding opportunities to improve care.”

CNLs serve between twelve and sixteen patients at a time and participate in daily meetings with caregivers to gather updates on each patient’s case. If a specialist

is unable to attend the meeting, the CNL can request that they check in when they are available. These daily checkpoints assure that each patient has an advocate that keeps up to date on their progress. CNLs also function as backstops that can avert oversights. They might find delayed test results and identify medication gaps. If, for example, a patient is taking medications before admission, they can ensure that the patient continues to receive those drugs while in the hospital. If there is an instance of poor communication among caregivers, CNLs are well-poised to step in and correct misunderstandings.

As patient advocates, CNLs can translate medical jargon for the patient to layman’s terms. Their duties include ensuring that discharge planning is underway from the beginning of the patient’s stay. They also coordinate among caregivers to make sure the discharge happens in a timely manner, and they help patients clearly understand postdischarge medication and recovery plans. These efforts help to prevent readmissions and have paid measurable dividends.

“We have been able to improve all-cause readmissions to well below the national benchmark and make significant improvement in patient satisfaction scores,” Edmonson says. There has also been a reduction of length of stay where there are CNLs, he adds. The program has been so successful that Texas Health Resources has rolled it out across all of its hospitals.

Another initiative with a transformative impact is the triad model of organizational leadership. In 2013, Texas Health Resources elevated the status of the chief medical officer and chief nursing officer to the same level as the president. The trio now has equal levels of decision-making responsibility and

Texas Health Resources expanded its Clinical Nurse Leader Program to all of its hospitals after its positive impact on patient care.

accountability. They work as a team on strategic planning, business planning, quality of care, and employee engagement, Edmonson says.

The president, as is the case with most hospital groups, brings a business background and perspective to the table. The two clinicians offer an MD and nursing perspective. Formally looping in the two clinicians to the highest level of decision making has had significant benefits. “This allows for more emphasis on clinical input,” Edmonson says. “It puts quality patient experience and safety on equal par with finance.” The result, Edmonson says, has been continued improvement in quality metrics and employee engagement scores.

Adopting a drastically new approach to CPR training— the American Heart Association’s Resuscitation Quality Improvement (RQI) methodology—is an additional disruptive change that has borne fruit. First piloted on a small scale in 2012, RQI raises the quality of CPR training and cuts costs. Instead of taking off-site, classroom-based courses every year to certify their skills, clinicians use a hospital-based lab equipped with high-tech mannequins that measure compression and frequency. Clinicians refresh their skills at least every six months, using this technology that acts like a coach and provides real-time feedback. The results are better-trained clinicians that do not need to take a half-day or more away from the hospital to take a class.

“If you take a class and don’t revisit training for a full year, your skills degrade,” Edmonson says. More frequent training is better. Since the organization adopted

“If you take a class and don’t revisit the training for a full year, your skills degrade.”

the RQI program in 2013, there has been a measurable jump in quality of care across the organization. “We’ve essentially doubled the survival rates of patients on postresuscitation events,” he says.

Edmonson will continue to seek ways to beneficially disrupt old hidebound operations that no longer serve healthcare institutions well. It’s a mission he relishes, and as someone with a nursing background, he brings valuable insight to the effort. AHL

Research has shown that psychomotor skills decay rapidly over time, and the current two-year certification model does not lend itself to the maintenance of high-quality CPR skills that can lead to improved patient outcomes. The American Heart Association’s Resuscitation Quality Improvement Program (AHA RQI Program) offers an innovative approach for sustaining highquality CPR skills. Students complete cognitive components online, then perform CPR at mobile RQI Simulation Stations equipped with adult and infant manikins. Through ongoing participation in the RQI Program, students achieve a perpetually valid CPR card, and the focus is shifted from course completion to mastery of CPR skills.

Redefining

Senior Care

LEVY Executive VP, General Counsel Senior Lifestyle Corporation

By Galen Beebe

By 2050, the number of senior citizens in the United States is projected to nearly double, and the number of centenarians will grow tenfold. “With the aging demographic, we have more people needing more care,” says Steve Levy, executive VP and general counsel for Senior Lifestyle Corporation, which operates more than two hundred senior housing communities in twenty-six states. To address this need, Senior Lifestyle uses data analytics to create proactive solutions for advancing resident care.

Senior Lifestyle incorporates five aspects of health into its care model: physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and mental. “When people move into independent living or assisted living, we want them to feel that they’re living at home,” Levy explains. By addressing residents’ needs holistically and expanding choices based on data-driven evidence, Senior Lifestyle strives to enhance residents’ lives and provide better care.

One way that Senior Lifestyle determines residents’ needs is through in-residence technology. In some communities, a smart tracking system learns a resident’s typical pattern of activity and reports exceptions, which can indicate health issues. For example, if a resident who typically uses the bathroom once during the night begins to go more frequently, the system will alert the care team, who can assess the situation and determine if there is a problem. “Activity that’s out of the ordinary can be an early indicator of something else—for example, in that case, a urinary tract infection,” Levy says. “The earlier

STEVE

How Steve Levy of Senior Lifestyle Corporation uses data analytics to advance resident care

Benjamin Jenkins

that we can use data and technology to find out what’s going on with our residents, the more able we are to respond to their needs.”

In addition to tracking certain behaviors of individual residents, Senior Lifestyle analyzes data from across its portfolio to create new initiatives that have a broad effect. By looking portfolio-wide, management can determine which initiatives are producing positive results and replicate them elsewhere to improve resident care outcomes on a larger scale.

For example, care providers in dementia communities track exit-seeking behaviors, which could result in a resident leaving a safe environment. An increase in exit-seeking behaviors signals an issue that care providers can specifically address. “It lets us really zero in on what issues there might be,” Levy says.

The solution might be a change in physical space, resident programming, or staff education. By analyzing realtime data, staff members can quickly implement changes to keep residents safe. “The care we provide with respect to residents is customized individually,” Levy says. “Initiatives are meant for a broader population, but we ultimately have the intent of having them drive individual resident care.”

Resident activity isn’t the only indication of a potential issue. Worker compensation claims, which pose a risk to the business, also indicate a potential issue for resident care. “If you have an improper resident transfer, there’s the possibility that the team member engaging in the transfer is going to hurt themselves, leading to a workers’ comp claim,” Levy says. “At the same time, they could injure the resident.”

To reduce these risks, Senior Lifestyle works with partners in the insurance industry to track claims and offer on-site and web-based education. Varied issues— such as compliance, legal, and resident care concerns— are entwined, as are their solutions. By expanding employee training, Senior Lifestyle can lower risks across the board and improve individual resident outcomes, Levy says.

But still more education is necessary, both for team members and for the public, Levy says. He wants people to understand more clearly what seniors housing providers can offer—and what they can and cannot do. For example, certain state regulations specify that residents can stay in assisted living communities until they need a

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GIVE HIM A HAND.

DLA Piper is pleased to recognize the accomplishments of Steve Levy, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Senior Lifestyle Corporation.

DLA Piper is positioned to help companies with their legal needs around the world. We are proud to partner with our clients, such as Senior Lifestyle Corporation, offering practical and innovative legal solutions to help them succeed.

“The earlier that we can use data and technology to find out what’s going on with our individual residents, the more able we are to respond to their needs.”

certain level of care, at which point they likely transition to a skilled nursing facility. Although skilled nursing has certain clinical care benefits, it removes residents from their homes. “Assisted living is really a social model,” Levy says. “Having residents who socialize with each other, dine together, and otherwise engage in their community is a vital part of resident well-being.”

As the landscape of healthcare continues to evolve, Senior Lifestyle will look for opportunities to integrate further ancillary services, such as home health and rehabilitation. Levy says that the company will work to make sure that its residents are receiving a seamless continuum of care. He wants to continue refining the initial assessment process so residents can receive the highest quality care available as soon as they move into a Senior Lifestyle facility.

“One of the huge things that has changed in our industry is our ability to effectively assess residents’ needs,” Levy says. “The more accurate an assessment can be when a resident moves into our community, the better able we are to provide the care that’s necessary for that particular resident from a physical perspective and from a cognitive perspective.”

Technological advances, Levy says, will continue to improve experiences for residents, family, and team members. Individualized technology, such as assessment software and wearable tech, will continue to advance and allow for more personalized care. “Bigger data has arrived in our industry,” Levy says. “It was not as datadriven as it is now, and that data-driven nature will lead to better resident care and outcomes.”

Senior Lifestyle is working with industry associations and partners to produce more metrics that can be shared among providers. By partnering with others in the industry, Senior Lifestyle will be able to improve overall resident experience, Levy says, which will enable its residents to maintain better health for a longer period of time. AHL

US HealthCenter brings better technology to healthcare via PredictiMed

By Kelli Lawrence

P“People have been trained to wait, and doctors have been paid to treat,” says Gavin Quinnies, cofounder and president of health risk management corporation US HealthCenter Inc (USHC). But he offers a caveat to that understanding: “That’s got to change.”

Quinnies speaks from a place of experience. He’s been involved in wellness programs as far back as 1992, and he’s worked with engineering and management systems his entire career. In that time, Quinnies became an employer with a self-described love for quality, safety, and prevention. In 2003, he partnered with Dr. G. Raymond Gavery—a medical pioneer and practitioner with a deep background in scientific research. “It was the perfect combination of commercial and medical,” Quinnies says.

“There is no medical or mathematical reason why catastrophic illnesses such as heart disease and stage four cancer cannot be prevented if we focus our energy on managing the process.”

Together, they developed what would eventually be known as PredictiMed, a predictive modeling analytics engine designed to help manage a given population’s health services in a variety of intricate ways. PredictiMed has the unique ability to find what Quinnies calls “asymptomatic, predisease risk participants”— those whose lifestyle, genetics, and related factors put them at risk for certain health situations—and aggregate remarkable amounts of information to those who need it most, including employers, insurers, hospitals, and healthcare institutions.

The technology is detailed in Gavery’s abstract, “Compound Theory of Morbidity Progression,” in which he states that said theory and PredictiMed analytics are “based on discovering the phase of disease morbidity where preventive and preemptive intervention can be most effective in lowering the incidence of chronic disease, as well as prevalence of its debilitating phase.”

That information includes the all-important matter of paying for one’s healthcare needs. Quinnies notes that PredictiMed also allows employers and insurers to understand what problems are going to drive their medical spend, and it allows healthcare providers to look up patients’ risk for a better understanding of what lies ahead. “One of the most fascinating discoveries is our ability to be close to the expected amount of potential spend within a group,” he says.

GAVIN

QUINNIES President, CEO US HealthCenter Inc.

With third-party validation for predictive accuracy from the Intel-based Care Innovations Validation Institute, PredictiMed delivers one-of-a-kind integration of components, which results in a road map for any organization that’s taking on the risk of a particular population. Then, with the help of US HealthCenter’s Wholeistic coaching program and HealthCounts engagement platform—other resources in USHC’s toolbox—those organizations are better equipped to manage and engage whole people, not just their diseases.

All these things factor into changing a healthcare landscape that Quinnies says is almost 100 percent reactive right now: people waiting until something

US HEALTHCENTER

1,500+ clients

5,000+ locations

15% average risk-burden reduction

200+ groups on the health plan

70% average engagement

91% of participants would recommend their coach to a friend

20,000+ healthcare professionals using PredictiMed as members or providers

drastic happens to seek medical help, and doctors focusing the majority of their time and resources on treatment of those drastic happenings. “There is no medical or mathematical reason why catastrophic illnesses such as heart disease and stage four cancer cannot be prevented if we focus our energy on managing the process,” Quinnies says.

Gavery’s abstract adds that while his compound theory of morbidity “supports the concept that chronic disease management would prolong life; it stipulates that the primary focus of morbidity reduction can be achieved only through prevention and preemptive intervention in the early phase of morbidity process before symptoms occur.”

In fact, health management programs have begun to turn the tide toward a more preventive approach. But Quinnies finds it to be highly segmented thus far, with some programs focusing on genetic health management, while others hone in on biometric or pharmaceutical health management. By contrast, he says, PredictiMed generates a complete ecosystem in a coordinated effort that takes the full breadth of a particular population and customizes to fit its needs.

“While we cannot predict injuries, accidents, or acute diseases, we can project a fairly accurate model to predict the onset of a chronic disease,” Gavery’s abstract explains. “In the majority of cases, chronic disease morbidity progression follows a fairly predictable pattern depending on the identifiable risk factors.”

Quinnies sees that the numbers are at the core of their advancements for individual care. “What makes our mathematics sing is that we gather all

the data necessary to understand what condition the individual’s at risk for,” he says. “Making it personal is an intrinsic motivator. Our system helps people find the way to their why, and that’s the whole point of it.”

Although things such as activity trackers and biometric screening are additional evidence of technology’s mark on healthcare, Quinnies cautions their individual merit. “All those things have their place, but in singularity, they’re doomed to fail,” he says. “When people ask why our predictive modeling is so accurate, it’s because we synthesize what the scientific community determines what causes the disease. When you combine all the experts into a smart system, it becomes very accurate.”

PredictiMed, Quinnies says, serves wellness programs, the healthcare market, and the insurance market, to name a few beneficiaries. In fact, one of its hallmarks is an insurance model that allows employers and insurers to reduce their costs for catastrophic diseases by 15 percent, according to Quinnies. The model also affects claims by either reducing the severity of existing claims or eliminating certain claims altogether. “If we can treat earlier in more routine practices, then like every other industry, we ought to be able to increase the efficiency,” Quinnies says. “In doing so, we increase the repeatability, therefore improving the margin and utilizing our precious healthcare resources more intelligently.”

Over the past several years, USHC has been able to help reduce medical costs by an average of more than 10 percent while reducing risk burden by an average of more than 15 percent for hundreds of clients. AHL

Bringing Doctors Back Home

Group use technology to bring patient care into the future

By David Baez

In 2010, DuPage Medical Group (DMG) began its “MyChart journey,” as Karen Adamson puts it. This entailed the largest independent physician group in the greater Chicago area adopting an Epic patient portal that gives patients access to physicians, and vice versa, online.

“Our patients realized the advantages of communicating this way rather than on the phone, and our physicians and staff appreciated the efficiencies of communicating electronically with patients for test results, refills, and general medical questions,” says Adamson, DMG's chief information officer. “It’s just a lot more convenient.”

Today, about 60 percent of DMG’s active patient population—more than four hundred thousand—are active on MyChart. It has been more popular in established practices, Adamson says; newer practices take a while to ramp up and get comfortable with the system.

MyChart has served as the foundation for several of the organization’s telemedicine initiatives, including e-visits and video visits. Video visits took a while to catch hold but have gone from being used once or twice a week to a current average of twenty-five. Most of the visits are for primary care conditions, but the organi-

CIO

DuPage Medical Group

zation has begun offering them for dietitians and other specialty services.

“The initial goal was to get the technology working and get patients to use the mobile app rather than home devices,” Adamson says. “My team has partnered with clinical operations management and physicians to make sure we have the appropriate buy-in. We’ve also worked closely with marketing, which has really done an incredible job of promotion using our website, Facebook, and radio.” Drivers on local expressways might also see a huge billboard touting the MyChart portal and video visits.

Adamson and her team have also expanded patients’ self-scheduling options. Now, patients can schedule appointments on the DMG website or through MyChart 24/7. They can even self-schedule tests such as mammograms and heart scans. In early 2017, DMG was scheduling around 3,500 appointments a week through the platform, including an average of two hundred new patients. Adamson says that this has taken some pressure off the call center and allowed them to maintain the growth.

All of this innovation is being led by a combination of patient demand and by the organization’s push. “We have some patients looking for it, but in a lot of ways, we are

KAREN ADAMSON

Karen Adamson and DuPage Medical

Johnny Knight

“When we started video visits, we assumed a younger demographic would be interested, but our latest data tells us that about half the video visits came from patients older than forty.”

ahead of the curve and patients are learning about these technologies from us,” Adamson says. “But there have been some surprises. When we started video visits, we assumed a younger demographic would be interested, but our latest data tells us that about half the video visits came from patients older than forty, and our most senior patient was eighty-four years old. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by that.”

The technology has been important in helping to harness the rapid growth DMG has seen of late, as the organization has acquired new practices and taken on more physicians. That’s placed a demand on IT infrastructure, including networks, phones, and application teams. To better manage the growth, Adamson has a project management office within the department to handle the entire acquisition process, from initial discovery all the way to classroom training for physicians and staff.

“We go through a lessons-learned process after each acquisition that allows us to improve the process of subsequent practices,” she says. “What we’ve heard from the new practices is that they feel the process was smooth and well-supported and that they’ve felt welcomed.”

On top of all that activity, Adamson’s department has completed ten data conversions in the past year. It’s a time-intensive process, involving mapping, validation, and testing. As a parallel, the team has an ongoing project to extract information needed from the legacy system to ensure retention of medical records. And there’s no end in sight to the telemedicine innovations, Adamson says, though there are longer-term goals.

“We see this becoming more of a standard deliveryof-care option,” she says. “The current challenge is that most of the payers don’t reimburse for it, so currently, we offer it as a retail service with a nominal fee the patient pays. Over time, I think this will become a covered benefit in plans. We want to get ahead of the curve, get tech in place, and create patient awareness and excitement.” AHL

Solving

ThatMatter Problems

Marc Berger and Flatiron Health bring a new approach to cancer research and treatment

By Jeff Silver

It is nearly impossible to find anyone in the United States whose life has not been touched in some way by cancer. Flatiron Health wants to change that.

The healthcare technology company’s OncoCloud software—an EMR management system— helps doctors manage patients and their practices. But the company also structures and standardizes anonymized information from the EMRs (in compliance with HIPAA) to give researchers and clinicians access to a broader spectrum of clinical data to help accelerate research and improve treatment options.

To date, approximately 2,600 clinicians and administrators are using the technology at about 260 cancer centers. Flatiron also provides data sets and insights to three academic centers and about fifteen life science companies.

Flatiron’s general counsel, Marc Berger, joined operations in early 2016. He was drawn to the company’s primary core value—to solve problems that matter—and its mission to improve cancer treatments and research. But he was also compelled by his own fascination with how technology affects all aspects of everyday life.

“Technology has changed how we shop, communicate, and access entertainment,” Berger says. “Besides having a mission that I wanted to be part of, Flatiron offers the potential to disrupt the healthcare industry in tremendously beneficial ways.”

When he arrived, the company was doubling its headcount annually. Raising awareness of the types of issues that the legal function could assist with was among his first objectives. To accomplish this, he developed a formal onboarding process that provides documented policies and procedures regarding codes of conduct, compliance obligations, how to execute contracts, how to work with vendors, and other essential guidelines.

Because he was the company’s only in-house lawyer at the time, Berger was also negotiating contracts and partnerships and collaborating on business development initiatives. As timing would have it, he had to close the company’s largest contract to date in his first few weeks on the job. The contract had been a year in the making and would create an even larger footprint for the company in the oncology space.

“We work collaboratively, but there was tremendous pressure for me to establish trust and credibility internally and with the client, all while explaining the nuances of data rights regarding patient information, service-level commitments, and how we stay compliant with all the applicable regulations,” he says. “I was definitely facing trial by fire.”

Since then, the legal department has grown to include Allison Canton, who specializes in healthcare transactions and regulatory issues; a chief privacy officer; and David Lindemeyer, a specialist who assists with contract negotiations. The company has already received

MARC BERGER General Counsel Flatiron Health

Clare Mullins

Marc Berger meets with other members of Flatiron Health’s legal team.

HIGH-LEVEL PARTNERSHIPS

Adding the clout of Google Ventures as an investor in 2012 was just the beginning for Flatiron Health. In the spring of 2016, it signed a research collaboration agreement with the Food and Drug Administration to determine how deidentified, HIPPA-compliant patient data captured outside of clinical trials can provide new insights into the safety and effectiveness of emerging anticancer therapies. Part of this initiative will investigate using immunotherapies in patients with advanced nonsmall-cell lung cancer.

HITRUST’s CSF certification for protecting and ensuring the quality of its technology.

When it was founded in 2012, one of Flatiron’s first backers was Google Ventures, which also led the company’s Series B funding round in 2014. In addition to the importance of that name recognition and financial backing, Google Ventures has provided critical support in areas such as branding, design, and business strategy.

Flatiron also stays in close contact with the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, which enables the company to stay current with all existing and evolving compliance requirements and to educate the agencies on the reliability, safety, and efficacy of its processes. This includes, for example, spotlight projects in which Flatiron provides clients with data tailored to specific types of patients, cancers, and drugs. Those data sets can then be used to help identify treatments or combinations of treatments that are producing better outcomes. These relationships have even led to Flatiron partnering with the FDA to investigate certain types of therapies.

As the company grows, one of Berger’s priorities is to preserve the start-up culture that attracted him and many others to work there. He’s quick to point out that that means much more than open work spaces, casual dress codes, and free daily catered lunches.

Clare Mullins

“As general counsel, I’m largely responsible for ensuring we adhere to all the necessary rules and regulations of our industry,” he says. “But I also want to be sure not to create an envi ronment that is too bureaucratic and stifles the culture that makes this such a great place to work. We’re not working on self-driving cars or a hotel-booking system. Everyone here is dedicated to making a real difference in the lives of people with cancer.”

We Salute

To illustrate, he recounts a group of cancer survivors who came to a companywide meeting to share their stories. Their points of view helped further clarify the impact that Flatiron’s contributions to immunotherapy, genomic research, and other emerging treatments can have.

Berger says the personal nature of that experience made them want to work even harder and gave even more meaning to one of the company’s other priorities: “put the interests of patients first in everything you do.” AHL

LEADING TOMORROW MARC BERGER

Vice President of Legal, Flatiron Health

The Tech Group has provided the market connectivity and strategic guidance to launch hundreds of new ventures. Recognized for our entrepreneurial spirit and high standard of client service, we are committed to the interests of our clients, colleagues, and communities. For more information about our Tech Group visit venturecrush.com.

Congratulations to our friend and client, Marc Berger of Flatiron Health, on being recognized for his industry-leading work in helping Flatiron Health harness big data to battle cancer. Lowenstein Sandler LLP is proud to serve as outside legal counsel to Flatiron and Marc.

lowenstein.com |

Ed Zimmerman, Peter Ehrenberg, Eric Weiner, Nick Mehler & Julie Werner THE TECH GROUP OF LOWENSTEIN SANDLER LLP

Ed Zimmerman, Peter Ehrenberg, Eric Weiner, Nick Mehler, Julie Werner, and the Tech Group at Lowenstein Sandler LLP congratulate our friend and client, Marc Berger.

How Education Empowers Sales

By David Levine

Many companies have had their challenges keeping product sales growing in the changing healthcare landscape—something of which B. Braun Medical Inc. is keenly aware. In 2007, the organization saw sales of its flagship product, a peripheral IV catheter (PIVC), drop to an average growth rate of only 1.5 percent annually. In addition, only 25 percent of customers who evaluated the product decided to convert to it, and only 40 percent of those customers kept using the product after six months.

That all changed after Kevin Glover—corporate VP of clinical education, training, and outcomes research for the Pennsylvania-based company—developed a plan to turn sales around. Glover and his team are in charge of finding educational solutions that can provide added value to customers. “Evidence-based training for both our customer-facing employees and our clinical customers has the potential to improve clinical practice and patient care,” he says. “By adding value to the product line, it can also help generate more revenue for B. Braun.” The new evidence-based training methodology includes a hands-on procedural practice with various simulation technologies. Improved sales and utilization numbers bear the theory out. “With the introduction of the new

training program, along with other factors, annual sales growth of our PIVC product jumped from 1.5 percent a year to 6 percent,” Glover says. “In addition, customers’ trial to commitment/conversion improved from 25 percent to 95 percent, and product retention by customers beyond six months jumped from 40 percent to 85 percent.”

Glover, a native Philadelphian, earned a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from Temple University. After graduation, he found it difficult to find a job, so he decided to try pharmaceutical sales for McNeil Pharmaceutical, a Johnson & Johnson Company. Three years later, Glover moved to the medical device industry, holding various positions in sales, sales management, and marketing. He joined B. Braun in 2003 as director of sales training.

One of Glover’s first priorities at the organization was to reduce the high turnover rate of new sales hires. “It was partly related to insufficient training and development,” he says. Between 2003 and 2010, he and his sales

KEVIN GLOVER Corporate VP of Clinical Education, Training, and Outcomes Research

B. Braun Medical Inc.

Kevin R. Glover—corporate VP of clinical education, training, and outcomes research at B. Braun Medical—helped improve growth six-fold with better training

Bob Buss

training team created a comprehensive new hire training curriculum. “We increased the first year onboarding process from three days to fifty-two days, which played a key role in increased revenue, increased profitability, and decreased turnover,” he says. “Our team also helped develop and launch a management development and succession process that helped increase internal promotions from zero between 2000 and 2005 to more than thirty since 2005.”

Over the years, Glover’s role has grown. He still oversees the sales training department, but he is now also responsible for customer education, the implementation-services clinical team, and the health economics outcomes research team. “I believe that my having accountability for both the internal and external education and training function has positioned our department to become a profitable business unit in the future,” he says.

When he arrived, he says, salespeople basically were trained in the classroom with PowerPoint presentations. Now, both the sales staff and the implementation-services clinical team are immersed in a blended, simulation-based educational curriculum, which includes interactive e-learning programs and classroom-based facilitated medical device simulation practice labs. “This model has increased the knowledge, confidence, and skills of our customer-facing staff, which has resulted in sustainable business results,” Glover says.

His current focus is on building B. Braun’s health and economics research team. “Public health agencies worldwide are searching for ways to improve the quality, safety, and efficacy of patient care while reducing expenditures,” Glover says. “Hospitals are struggling to stay financially viable. Due to these financial pressures, our customers are increasingly demanding that medical device suppliers provide evidence that products and educational services provide higher-quality patient care to justify product purchases. In this new era of healthcare, pure medical device product innovation will no longer be enough.”

Research is the key to future success, he believes. For example, Glover’s team recently tested the impact of its PIVC insertion education program on staff nurses’ knowledge, confidence, and skills at a 504-bed, nonuniversity-affiliated teaching hospital. The training program required bedside nurses to take a two-hour online course, followed by an eight-hour live training course using a mix of three simulation tools. The simulated study results showed statistically significant improvements in nurses’ knowledge, confidence, and skills as a result of the continuing education program, Glover says. “This research collaboration with one of our customers has resulted in four peer-reviewed scholarly manuscripts, four peer-reviewed scientific abstract/ poster presentations, and one textbook chapter,” he says.

“This model has increased the knowledge, confidence, and skills of our customer-facing staff, which has resulted in sustainable business results.”

“In addition, the results have validated the value of the educational programs we tested, which are now being marketed and sold as part of B. Braun’s broader PIVC product portfolio.”

Given the success of this first initiative, Glover’s role at B. Braun evolved yet again. As of June 2016, Glover began work as corporate VP, clinical program development, research, and innovation, and he will be focused solely on developing and testing clinical education programs to enhance the value of various product portfolios.

Even outside of work, his abiding interests center, as you might expect, on education. In fact, he has obtained a master’s degree in education and a master’s degree in science in instructional technology. He is currently pursuing a PhD in teaching, learning, and technology at Lehigh University. “Earning a doctorate is another way of learning more, networking more, and developing other value-added educational programs that will help us move the needle,” he says. AHL

Beyond Fitness Club Memberships

Lesley Billow helps Teva Pharmaceuticals’ employees with their overall wellness, which ranges from financial to physical health

By Russ Klettke

hen Teva Pharmaceuticals’ senior VP of human resources, Americas , Lesley Billow, talks about employee well-being, she describes a work environment that keeps employees healthier through programs designed to support different areas of their lives—whether it’s their physical health, future financial security, or career goals.

In 2014, Billow and Teva’s Total Rewards team introduced a new and more robust well-being program, which factors financial security, job satisfaction, and social connectedness as complements to physical and emotional health in the overall composition of well-being.

“Our holistic approach to well-being is based on the abiding belief that when our employees feel more energized, appreciated, focused, and purposeful, they perform better,” Billow says. “We recently held a financial health fair—timed to coincide with annual bonus award distribution—as a way to advise people to look at different ways to allocate that money.” As for social connectedness, the company makes contributions to community causes and encourages employees to actually be involved in organizations. Community fundraising walks, runs, and bicycle races are among the sponsored events.

After three years of monitoring employee healthcare costs and launching the health and well-being initiative,

the company’s medical spend has seen only a minimal increase, compared to the national 6 percent average year-over-year increase. Those are the real numbers to back up accolades Teva has received from the National Business Group on Health, which named the firm among the best employers for healthy lifestyles.

Recently, the team incorporated a telemedicine component to its health and well-being initiative. On paper, it makes sense: someone with a potentially infectious disease or someone who is too sick or busy to visit a doctor connects instead with a physician through an electronic device, such as a smartphone or tablet. At Teva’s offices, private rooms are dedicated to these patient-physician connections using a platform that includes phones, screen technology, and physician services. The platform is packaged and provided by telehealth company Amwell. These on-site kiosks allow employees the convenience of a doctor visit without ever leaving the workplace. Appointments are not needed, and there is no charge for employees.

Telemedicine—as used elsewhere by hospitals, providers, and employers—has had mixed results. But Teva employees appear to be embracing the technology, based on early reports on usage rates and satisfaction. In its first few months of operation, more than seven

LESLEY BILLOW Senior VP, Human ResourcesAmericas Teva Pharmaceuticals

As a part of the new employee wellness program, Teva has installed AmWell telemedicine kiosks at many of its offices.

“People can access a doctor in the middle of the night if they need. We really think this is the future of modern medicine.”

hundred people took advantage of the telemedicine option either from work or from home; family members can use it, too, if they are on the Teva plan.

“People can access a doctor in the middle of the night if they need to,” Billow says. “We really think this is the future of modern medicine.”

People who used Teva’s telemedicine system scored it a 4.6 on a 5 scale for satisfaction with providers and 4.5 for satisfaction with the system.

Exercise is also an important component to the company’s well-being program. In most company offices with more than one hundred employees, there are TevaFit Gyms, which are staffed by fitness professionals who offer support to employees who need help using equipment and offer private and group fitness training

and exercise classes. Corporate fitness company HealthEase Inc. manages these gyms. Billow explains that Teva also provides discounts on commercial gym memberships to all employees, especially those who work at smaller locations that lack their own gym.

In addition to offering on-site gyms and telemedicine kiosks, Teva is uniquely able to provide one large benefit. Because Teva is one of the world’s largest generic drug manufacturers, the company’s products are available to employees at little to no cost.

As an additional benefit, Teva has partnered with care coordinators from Quantum Health to provide a concierge service to employees. The service helps employees navigate what Billow terms the labyrinth of approvals and appeals that patients sometimes encounter in seeking and receiving care. Quantum’s method is to use predictive modeling to analyze information about a course of treatment as it is occurring, rather than in the postcare phase. The results are better patient outcomes and lower overall costs, which are the goals of Teva’s and virtually every employee well-being program.

“The goal is to have a healthy, productive workforce,” Billow says. “A positive effect of this happens to be improved cost control.”

By looking at comparative general population data, the financial savings during the first three years of the program amount to $27 million, which is another benefit of a happier, healthier workforce.

“Health just naturally is top of mind here,” Billow says. “It’s embedded in Teva’s purpose statement: improving health, making people feel better. We work very closely with Conduent, our

Tomorrow’s Results Require Commitment Today

Aon applauds Lesley Billow, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Teva Pharmaceuticals North America for her commitment to driving business outcomes that deliver success for her organization and its employees.

aon.com

“The goal is to have a healthy, productive workforce. A positive effect of this happens to be improved cost control.”

communications consultants, to develop messages that resonate with and reach the homes of every employee. And our employee surveys indicate that more than 80 percent of our workforce understands their benefits program and also believes that these programs meet their needs.”

The company also uses incentives that include paying employees in the form of health reimbursement account and health savings account contributions to undergo health screenings. Data is collected throughout, but to honor patient and employee privacy interests, it’s blind metadata; no names are attached to specific health conditions.

With so many Teva employees engaged in the hard sciences, it’s useful to ponder how these components—a sense of belonging, financial security, and a sense of purpose—aren’t typically considered in the healthcare and preventive health mix. Yet, a good body of research supports the assertion that the adverse states of all three can foster illness.

So, while the debate on national healthcare policy remains unsettled, the message from this pharmaceutical company is clear: it’s about so much more than medicine. AHL

Advance Medical is proud to be a partner with Teva Pharmaceuticals. Advance Medical is a world-leading health services provider of innovative, physiciandriven programs to people in medical crisis. Its Expertise-on-Demand programs are available to thirty-five million people through relationships with thought-leading employers whose members receive this life-changing benefit.

At Meritain Health, an independent subsidiary of Aetna, we’re your Advocates for Healthier Living. By listening closely to understand our clients’ needs, we offer flexible plans that are also cost-effective. It’s our mission to provide easy-to-use healthcare and guidance that helps our members live in their best health.

The Vitals

JOHN NORENBERG, P. 54

VP of Clinical Systems

Advocate Health Care

With an engineering and business background and experience at software, manufacturing, and financial services firms, John Norenberg’s ability to master multiple industries has served him well in his role as VP of clinical systems for Advocate Health Care.

MIN WANG, P. 68

Senior VP, General Counsel

Agios Pharmaceutical

After immigrating to the United States as a child, Min Wang earned a JD from Fordham University and a PhD in philosophy from Brown University She has practiced law in the healthcare sphere for more than a decade.

CELINA SCALLY, P. 144

Senior VP of Human Resources

Apria Healthcare

Celina Scally has been with Apria Healthcare for more than twenty-five years. As the head of human resources, she has been recognized with the Patriotic Employer award by the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve for her efforts in hiring veterans and military spouses

YOGISH SUVARNA, P. 192

Chief Information Officer

Aspen Dental

Yogish Suvarna has more than a decade of IT experience. At Aspen Dental, he is looking to create patient-facing portals to make the dental experience better.

HYRUM KIRTON, P. 184

VP of Alliance Services and Procurement

Avalon Health Care

Hyrum Kirton has been with Avalon Health Care for more than a decade. He holds an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in business information technology management from Western Governor’s University.

KEVIN R. GLOVER, P. 214

Corporate VP of Clinical Education, Training, and Outcomes Research

B. Braun Medical Inc.

Kevin Glover has been with B. Braun for more than a decade. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Lehigh University. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the Tyler School of Art, a master’s in education from Temple University, and a master’s degree in instructional technology from Lehigh University

PAM NENABER, P. 169

CEO, Pharmaceutical Operations

Banner Health

Pam Nenaber earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a master’s degree in health services administration from Arizona State University. Today, Banner Health operates twenty-eight hospitals in six western states, has nearly fifty thousand employees, and is the largest private employer in Arizona. Before Banner, Nenaber was with Samaritan health for the majority of her thirty-year career.

DAWN GEISERT, P. 118

Senior VP, Chief Compliance Officer

Beaumont Health

During her eighteen-year career with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Geisert served on the insurance company’s implementation team for HIPAA. She enjoyed working with different business areas to come up with effective strategies for executing regulations.

JEFF SOFKA, P. 18

Principal Bendigo

Jeff Sofka holds a degree from the University of New Hampshire. In his role at Bendigo, he partners with sports organizations and healthcare companies to help them reach the right audiences.

HOPE SCOTT, P. 10

VP, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer

Blue Shield of California

Hope Scott earned a JD from Boston University School of Law in 1989. She entered the healthcare industry in 1994 as a senior counsel at Independence Blue Cross.

DIONNE E. WONG, P. 60

Senior VP, Chief Human Resources Officer

Broward Health

Dionne Wong credits the success she has enjoyed in her career to mentors she’s had along the way. Now, she is finding ways to weave mentorship into the culture of Broward Health at a time when it needs it most.

MARCEL OVERWEEL, P. 93

CFO

Byram Healthcare

Marcel Overweel has more than two decades of experience in managing finances and business development at healthcare firms in Europe and the United States. He has been the CFO of Byram Healthcare since 2011.

MARIA E. PASQUALE, P. 65

Senior VP, Legal, Deputy General Counsel

Celgene

Outside of her work at Celgene, Maria Pasquale is the chair of the in-house Law Section Executive Committee of the PhRMA trade organization and is also involved in the BIO trade organization. For many years, she has been on the board of SAGE Eldercare, a nonprofit that works to keep the elderly living independently in their homes, and has participated in charitable events for breast cancer research

PJ MAINVILLE, P. 40

Head Athletic Trainer

Chicago Cubs

With a bachelor’s degree from East Carolina University and a master’s degree in performance enhancement from California University of Pennsylvania, PJ Mainville has been an athletic trainer in Major League Baseball for more than fifteen years and has been the head athletic trainer for the Chicago Cubs since 2012.

THI PHAN, P. 48

VP, Chief Corporate Counsel

Cigna

Thi Phan veered away from the family tradition of becoming a doctor to forge a successful law career. As VP and chief counsel for corporate law at Cigna, she ensures the healthcare company is responsive to customers’ needs around the globe.

RICK WAGNER, P. 35

VP, Corporate Controller

Dentsply Sirona

Rick Wagner holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Penn State University. He has been in corporate accounting roles for more than twenty-five years and in healthcare since he joined Dentsply Sirona in 2011.

DARRYL ROBINSON, P. 141

Executive VP, Chief Human Resources Officer

Dignity Health

As Dignity Health’s executive VP and chief human resources officer, Darryl Robinson leads a progressive-thinking leadership team. His previous HR work in manufacturing, paper and forest products, finance, and engineering provides great insight into attracting, developing, and retaining highly skilled, dedicated staff across Dignity Health’s network.

SUROOR RAHEEMULLAH, P. 90

Director, Health & Wellness and Global Mobility

Dover Corporation

Suroor Raheemullah holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has been with Dover Corporation for more than five years and previously worked for Deloitte Tax LLP.

BILL LOVELL, P. 186

VP, Federal Health Segment

DXC Technology

For the past four years, Bill Lovell has been working with the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide electronic health solutions. He has also worked directly for the government in roles with the US Department of Defense. Lovell has earned an MBA, a master’s degree in organizational behavior, and a bachelor’s degree in general sciences.

KAREN ADAMSON, P. 208

Chief Information Officer

DuPage Medical Group

Karen Adamson has held various IT leadership roles over two decades in healthcare and has been with DuPage Medical Group for ten years. She previously was a training manager with DuPage Medical Group before taking on a director role and then moving into her current position as chief information officer.

DEBBIE PALMER, P. 20

Chief Human Resources Officer, Corporate Compliance Officer

Fairfield Medical Center

Debbie Palmer holds a nursing degree from the University of Cincinnati. She has been on the human resources side of healthcare for more

than forty years and holds a master’s degree in administration and human resources Central Michigan University.

MARC BERGER, P. 210

General Counsel

Flatiron Health

Marc Berger brings privacy, security, and regulatory compliance expertise to Flatiron Health. From his roles to at Avaya and Medidata Solution, he has experience in in-house, start-up counseling.

CYNTHIA PIGG, P. 166

Senior VP, Chief Pharmacy Officer

Gateway Health Plan

Cynthia Pigg has been on the pharmacy side of healthcare for more than twenty-five years. She is currently a member of the American Diabetes Association’s Pittsburgh Community Leadership Board

MARISSA SONG, P. 128

Associate General Counsel, Corporate Gilead Sciences

With a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California-Berkley and a JD from the University of Southern California Law School, Marissa Song has been practicing law for more than fifteen years. She has been in healthcare since she joined Gilead in 2005.

JIM BLAZAR, P. 13

Executive VP, Chief Strategy Officer

Hackensack Meridian Health

Before joining Hackensack Meridian Health in 2016, Jim Blazar served as president and CEO of Cleveland Clinic Canada and chief marketing officer of Cleveland Clinic. He was also the president for primary care and clinical services at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit before his decade-plus tenure at Cleveland Clinic.

OMAR REID, P. 150

VP of Human Resources

Harris Health

After more than three decades in human resources, Omar Reid joined Harris Health to address high turnover rates and focus on retention. Outside of work, he serves on multiple community boards, including the career services advisory board at Texas Southern University and the Communities in Schools board. He is also an executive committee member of the Texas International Personnel Management Association for HR board

CHERYL LEVY, P. 108

Chief Human Resources Officer

HealthSouth

Before joining HealthSouth, Cheryl Levy served as the national director for KPMG from 1999 to 2007. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Alabama.

DOUGLAS FALDUTO, P. 160

VP of Administration, Chief Security Officer

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey

Douglas Falduto has been at Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey for more than thirty years. In his current role, he has found that his department encompasses more than those of many of his peers.

CHARLES DADSWELL, P. 76

Senior VP, General Counsel Illumina

Charles Dadswell originally thought he would be a pharmacist. In fact, he holds a pharmacy degree from Ferris State University. However, he went on to earn his JD from Western Michigan University Cooley Law School and has been practicing law for more than twenty-five years.

BARBARA MCCANN, P. 132

Chief Clinical Officer

Interim HealthCare Inc.

Barbara McCann has been in healthcare for more than thirty-five years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in social welfare from the University of California-Berkeley and a master’s degree from the University of New MexicoAlbuquerque.

MARTIN LITTMANN, P. 29

Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer

Kelsey-Seybold

Outside of his role at Kelsey-Seybold, Martin Littmann is a member of the Houston chapter of InfraGard, an FBI-private sector alliance. He has found this work to be exciting and fascinating.

TIM DUTTON, P. 74

VP of Human Resources

Kettering Health Network

Tim Dutton has been on the human resources side of healthcare for more than ten years. Outside of work, he volunteers as a teacher for the Kettering Seventh-day Adventist Church and as a board member for Homefull, which aims to alleviate hunger

RICHARD REW, P. 158

Senior VP, Legal, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary

Luminex

After graduating from the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1993, Richard Rew served as the general counsel for EZCORP Inc. from 1996 to 2000. Following some time as the general counsel at Activant Solutions, he made the transition to healthcare by joining ArthoCare. He joined Luminex after ArthoCare was acquired in 2014 by Smith & Nephew.

CHRISTINE ZACK, P. 154

Executive VP, Chief Strategy Officer

Mariner Health Care

Outside of her legal work at Mariner Health Care, Christine Zack volunteers for the Great Pyrenees Association of Southern California Rescue. She holds a JD from Tulane University in New Orleans and has passed the bar in Nevada and Maryland. She is also a certified litigation management professional and has been in the healthcare industry for more than a decade.

PETER WESTMEYER, P. 71

Founder, President, Managing Director

MBRE Healthcare

Before joining MBRE, Peter Westmeyer worked as an associate for the Corporate Investment Group in Bank of America’s Investment Banking Division. Prior to banking, he worked in real estate investment sales and specialized in land properties in Colorado

ARIEL LEWKOWICZ, P. 102

VP of Tax Operations

McKesson

With an MBA from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, Ariel Lewkowicz has been a tax executive since he started out as a manager at Ernst & Young in 2002. He has been in healthcare since he joined McKesson in 2013.

ANN FORD, P. 82

Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, Deputy General Counsel

Medline Industries

Ann Ford was originally on the path to become a direct caregiver, as she attended nursing school at Marquette University. However, she returned to school a few years after graduating to pursue a JD at DePaul University College of Law. She has now been practicing in the healthcare space for more than twenty years.

SCOT ELDER, P. 32

VP, Chief Legal Counsel for Restorative Therapies Group

Medtronic

Scot Elder studied history and Japanese at the University of Utah and received a JD from UCLA. He speaks Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, and worked as a missionary during the 1990s In addition to his role at Medtronic, he serves on the board of the Atlantic Legal Foundation.

CHRISTI MCCARREN, P. 111

Senior VP of Retail Health and CommunityBased Care

MultiCare Health System

A graduate of Washington University, Christi McCarren has been with MultiCare for thirtyseven years. Away from work, she studies Italian cooking and teaches Sunday school

MARY BAKKEN, P. 26

Executive VP, President, Chief Operating Officer

New Lenox Silver Cross Hospital

For more than thirty-five years, Mary Bakken has been on the front lines of healthcare. She has worked as a phlebotomist and medical technologist, and she holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

JAMIE MEEKS, P. 134

Director of Sports Nutrition

New Orleans Saints

Jamie Meeks is a New Orleans native and a Louisiana State University gradute. During her time at LSU, she was a cheerleader for the 2007 football national championship team, the 2006 SEC Championship team, and the NCAA Men’s Final Four tournament

The Vitals

CARL WALLER, P. 22

VP of Supply Chain Management

Northside Hospital

Carl Waller has developed a background filled with consulting experience in manufacturing, consumer products, retail, and other industries. He now applies that to his supply chain responsibilities at Northside Hospital.

ELAINE PAGE, P. 121

VP of Human Resources, Chief People

Innovation Officer

Northwell Health

A graduate of the University of Bristol, Elaine Page previously worked at Allegis Group; DaVita, Dun & Bradstreet; and The Dow Group. She currently resides in New York.

CHRISTINE GUILLORY, P. 147

Associate General Counsel

Ochsner Health System

Christine Guillory has been at Ochsner Health System since 2013. Previously, she was an associate at Frilot LLC. She holds a JD from the University of Southern California Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Emory University.

BRENT HENRY, P. 57

VP, General Counsel

Partners HealthCare

A New Jersey native, Brent Henry has been in healthcare for more than forty years. He credits his wife of twenty-six years, Minnie BaylorHenry, with some of his success. He says she has been a terrific partner and they have a lot to talk about because she is on the life sciences side of healthcare. Henry enjoys what he calls active vacations. He has traveled the world, and with a newly replaced knee, he is looking forward to playing golf in retirement

DOUG ZARKIN, P. 38

VP, Chief Marketing Officer

Pearle Vision

Since joining Pearle Vision in 2012, Doug Zarkin has made it his mission to help the brand reconnect to its roots of personalized care and build strong relationships between the company’s providers and its customers.

RICK HAYNES, P. 98

VP of Human Resources

Permobil

Rick Haynes thought his background as a military pilot would lead to a career in commercial flight, but back surgery grounded those dreams. He worked in HR for various organizations including American Airlines until a Permobil recruiter called, and the company’s user-focused mission drew him away.

BOB WARNOCK, P. 172

Senior VP of Pharmacy Services

PruittHealth

With a pharmacy degree from the University of Georgia, Bob Warnock has held many pharmacy-related positions over the course of his more than thirty-year career. Outside of his role at PruittHealth, he is a member of the Georgia State Board of Pharmacy

KIMBERLY GRAY, P. 195

Chief Privacy Officer

QuintilesIMS

Kimberly Gray has been on the legal side of healthcare for more than twenty years. She worked at a private practice before joining Highmark and is now the chief privacy officer at QuintilesIMS.

NOUHAD HUSSEINI, P. 189

VP, Business Development

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

Nouhad Husseini holds a degree in molecular biology from Princeton University but worked in investment banking before moving into healthcare in 2006 when he joined Genetech. In 2011, he joined Regeneron.

STEVE LEVY, P. 202

Executive VP, General Counsel

Senior Lifestyle Corporation

Before he joined Senior Lifestyle Corporation, Steve Levy worked as a real estate lawyer for Chicago-based firm Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan and his JD at the University of Pennsylvania.

SARAH DIBOISE, P. 138

Chief Hospital Counsel

Stanford Health

Sarah DiBoise didn’t realize she’d come back to Stanford after graduating. But now, she’s helping bring Stanford Health’s care to the next level by partnering with tech companies to deliver innovative care solutions.

KAREN HALL, P. 62

VP, Chief Legal Officer, Bay Area

Sutter Health

Before moving into healthcare law, Karen Hall earned her law degree from Yale Law School and worked for the US Department of Justice. She has now been in law for more than twenty years, first with a private firm and now with California nonprofit Sutter Health.

DIANE YEATES, P. 80

Chief Operating Officer

Terrebonne General Medical Center

Throughout her twenty-seven-year career, Diane Yeates has faced shrinking budgets, adapted to changes in technology, and formed new partnerships. Through it all, she has kept patients at heart of every decision she makes.

LESLEY BILLOW, P. 216

Senior VP, Human Resources - Americas Teva Pharmaceuticals

Lesley Billow has close to three decades of human resources experience, starting her career in HR in the late 1980s before taking a role with Volvo Group in the early 1990s. She first entered the healthcare space in 2013 with Teva Pharmaceuticals. She and her team are now focused on expanding employee well-being through telemedicine and other innovative health initiatives.

MYRA DAVIS, P. 178

Senior VP, Chief Information Officer

Texas Children’s Hospital

Myra Davis entered the healthcare field in 2002 when she joined Texas Children’s Hospital in customer support. She has since been promoted to chief information officer. In 2016, the hospital won the Most Wired designation from Hospitals Health Network Magazine—the flagship publication of the American Hospital Association. In its award, the hospital was recognized for implementing Epic Rover, a barcode app used to prevent medical errors and improve quality.

DR. COLE EDMONSON, P. 198

Chief Nursing Officer

Texas Health Resources: Presbyterian Dallas

Dr. Cole Edmonson has served in healthcare at various levels of care for more than two decades. He is a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and an adjunct faculty instructor at the University of Texas at Arlington and at Texas Woman’s University

BRIAN IAIA, P. 86

Senior VP, General Counsel

UnitedHealthcare Global

The last thing a traveler wants to do is deal with messy health insurance claims while abroad. Brian Iaia makes sure that UnitedHealthcare Global’s customers don’t have to, thanks to his knowledge-first approach to global healthcare.

GAVIN QUINNIES, P. 205

President, CEO

US HealthCenter Inc.

Gavin Quinnies founded US HealthCenter in 2009. He has been in healthcare technology for more than fifteen years and holds a degree in engineering from the University of WisconsinStout.

KERRY PARKER, P. 114

Executive VP, General Counsel, Chief Risk Officer

Visiting Nurse Service of New York

Kerry Parker was drawn to healthcare because of its people-centered mission. After more than thirty years in law, he made the switch from private practice to in-house counsel in 2012 when he joined the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

BOB SEIBEL, P. 124

General Counsel

Yuma Regional Medical Center

Bob Seibel has been practicing law for more than thirty years. He earned his law degree from the University of Akron Law School in 1982 and first entered healthcare as the associate general counsel for Augusta University Health in Augusta, Georgia.

AAdamson, Karen, p. 208

Advocate Health Care, p. 54

Agios Pharmaceutical, p. 68

Apria Healthcare, p. 144

Aspen Dental, p. 192

Avalon Health Care, p. 184

BB. Braun Medical Inc., p. 214

Bakken, Mary, p. 26 Banner Health, p. 169 Beaumont Health, p. 118 Bendigo, p. 18 Berger, Marc, p. 210

Billow, Lesley, p. 216 Blazar, Jim, p. 13

Blue Shield of California, p. 10 Broward Health, p. 60

Byram Healthcare, p. 93

CCelgene, p. 65

Chicago Cubs, p. 40 Cigna, p. 48

DDadswell, Charles, p. 76 Davis, Myra, p. 178

Dentsply Sirona, p. 35

DiBoise, Sarah, p. 138 Dignity Health , p. 141

Dover Corporation, p. 90

DXC Technology, p. 186

DuPage Medical Group, p. 208 Dutton, Tim, p. 74

EEdmonson, Cole, p. 198 Elder, Scot, p. 32

F

Fairfield Medical Center, p. 20

Falduto, Douglas, p. 160 Flatiron Health, p. 210 Ford, Ann, p. 82

G

Gateway Health Plan, p. 166

Geisert, Dawn, p. 118 Gilead Sciences, p. 128 Glover, Kevin, p. 214 Gray, Kimberly, p. 195 Guillory, Christine, p. 147 H

Hackensack Meridian Health, p. 13 Hall, Karen, p. 62

Harris Health, p. 150 Haynes, Rick, p. 98 HealthSouth, p. 108 Henry, Brent, p. 57

Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey, p. 160

Husseini, Nouhad, p. 189

IIaia, Brian, p. 86 Illumina, p. 76

Interim HealthCare Inc., p. 132

JJulie, Staci, p. 124

Kelsey-Seybold, p. 29

Kettering Health Network, p. 74

Kirton, Hyrum, p. 184 L

Levy, Cheryl, p. 108

Levy, Steve, p. 202

Lewkowicz, Ariel, p. 102

Littmann, Martin, p. 29

Lovell, Bill, p. 186

Luminex, p. 158

MMainville, PJ, p. 40

Mariner Health Care, p. 154

MBRE Healthcare, p. 71

McCann, Barbara, p. 132

McCarren, Christi, p. 111

McKesson, p. 102

Medline Industries, p. 82

Medtronic, p. 32

Meeks, Jamie, p. 134

MultiCare Health System, p. 111

NNenaber, Pam, p.169

New Lenox Silver Cross Hospital, p. 26

New Orleans Saints, p. 134

Norenberg, John, p. 54

Northside Hospital, p. 22

Northwell Health, p. 121 O

Ochsner Health System, p. 147

Overweel, Marcel, p. 93

PPage, Elaine, p. 121

Palmer, Debbie, p. 20

Parker, Kerry, p. 114

Partners HealthCare, p. 57

Pasquale, Maria E., p. 65

Pearle Vision, p. 38

Permobil, p. 98

Phan, Thi, p. 48

Pigg, Cynthia, p. 166

PruittHealth, p. 172

People & Companies

QQuinnies, Gavin, p. 205

QuintilesIMS, p. 195 R

Raheemullah, Suroor, p. 90

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, p. 189

Reid, Omar, p. 150

Rew, Richard, p. 158

Robinson, Darryl, p. 141

S

Seibel, Bob, p. 124

Senior Lifestyle Corporation, p. 202

Scally, Celina, p. 144

Scott, Hope, p. 10

Sofka, Jeff, p. 18

Song, Marissa, p. 128

Stanford Health, p. 138

Suvarna, Yogish, p. 192

Sutter Health, p. 62

Terrebonne General Medical Center, p. 80

Teva Pharmaceuticals, p. 216

Texas Children’s Hospital, p. 178

Texas Health Resources: Presbyterian Dallas, p. 198

U

UnitedHealthcare Global, p. 86

US HealthCenter Inc., p. 205

V

Visiting Nurse Service of New York, p. 114

W

Wagner, Rick, p. 35

Waller, Carl, p. 22

Wang, Min, p. 68

Warnock, Bob, p. 172

Westmeyer, Peter, p. 71

Wong, Dionne E., p. 60

Y

Yeates, Diane, p. 80

Yuma Regional Medical Center, p. 124

Z

Zack, Christine, p. 154

Zarkin, Doug, p. 38

1.3

Healthcare spending will grow 1.3 percentage points higher than the GDP by 2025.

AVALON HEALTH CARE, P. 184

1 in 8

A 2016 projection by the GW Health Workforce Institute at George Washington University stated that by 2022, almost one in eight US jobs would be in healthcare.

DIGNITY HEALTH, P. 141

$4M

In a little more than a year, the Tackle Kids Cancer partnership between Children’s Cancer Institute at Hackensack UMC and the New York Giants generated $4 million for pediatric cancer research.

HACKENSACK MERIDIAN HEALTH, P. 13

3.5-

7.5K

NFL players eat 3,500–7,000 calories per day.

NEW ORLEANS SAINTS, P. 134

97%

Bill Lovell notes that EHRs are a technology that was in place in only 7 percent of hospitals in 2008. By 2014, 75 percent had a basic EHR system with 97 percent possessing certified, soon-to-deploy EHR technologies.

DXC TECHNOLOGY, P. 186

Poor-quality CPR is a Preventable Harm

565,500 cardiac arrests occur every year *

These numbers aren’t just statistics and metrics. These numbers represent people’s lives.

2 out of 10 survive

Providing high-quality patient care and saving lives is more than just important to you. It is likely your calling. It’s the same for the American Heart Association. Our singular focus is on improving outcomes and saving lives. That’s why we have set an impact goal to double the survival rate from cardiac arrest by 2020. To do that, we must improve the quality of resuscitation care.

AHA can help you reduce the preventable harm of poor-quality CPR. To learn how our programs can help your organization drive skills mastery and improve resuscitation quality, visit Heart.org/RQI.

It’s not about the numbers. It’s about the people.

*Includes both in- and out-of-hospital cardiac arrests †2 out of 10 adults (~20%) survive from an in-hospital cardiac arrest

Read the scientific statement to learn more about the preventable harm of poor-quality CPR and other important metrics to improve the quality of resuscitation. Learn more at Heart.org/RQI

American Healthcare Leader unites the visionaries and experts for whom healthcare is more than just a business. It’s your source for innovation and advocacy from those who are shaping what’s next. We’re with you every step of the way.