Tell us about your background.

As a healthcare executive and leader with experience in both the public and private healthcare sector, I feel very fortunate to be part of the Remedy Partners family. Prior to joining Remedy Partners, I served at the Department of Veterans Affairs where I held multiple roles including Senior Advisor and more recently the Acting Under Secretary for Health. In that role, I directed a healthcare system with an annual budget of approximately $70 billion, overseeing the delivery of care to more than 9 million enrolled veterans, over 300,000 employees and led the largest transformation at the VA that improved access to care for all veterans. Additionally, I was the co-founder of one of the largest ACOs in the country, the Atlantic Accountable Care Organization, acted as the Commissioner of Health and Senior Services of New Jersey, along with holding executive leadership roles with Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield and GlaxoSmithKline.  

What specifically drives you?

The ability to make an impact in people’s lives is what really drives me. I have always enjoyed being in the forefront of change; I want to lead in improving our healthcare system so everyone is getting the best care possible. That is who I am at the heart—I am a physician, a clinician and I care about people.

What led you to join Remedy Partners?

Remedy Partners has been on my radar since I was with the Atlantic Accountable Care Organization where we were working on improving the delivery of care for our patients.  At that time, I was impressed with the critical work the company was doing with the implementation of bundled payment programs. The results were quite dramatic in the improvement of healthcare and cost outcomes. As an organization, Remedy Partners was leading the way in the industry in creating solutions that enabled payers, employers and at-risk providers to organize and finance healthcare delivery around a patient’s episode of care.  This innovation and commitment to transforming healthcare was, and still is, very appealing to me. I have dedicated my career to driving systemic and sustainable change in our healthcare delivery system so that our patients get the best clinical outcomes. From my personal experience as a caregiver for my aging parents during most of my adult life, I understand importance of caring for the elderly and people living with multi-morbidities. At Remedy Partners, we enable an efficient, effective and streamlined system of care delivery so that our loved ones have the highest quality of life with dignity.

How do you think the healthcare landscape is changing?

The healthcare landscape is rapidly changing, where we are bringing in more accountability, more transparency and more efficiency to the system. We are moving from a transactional model of care, which we call the Fee-for-Service model, to an outcome-or results-based care, which we call the Value-Based Care model.  In true value-based care, physicians are rewarded for the quality of service they provide, not the number of procedures, services or tests they can perform.  Remedy Partners is leading the evolution to value-based care through the implementation of bundled payments that have significantly improved patient care, while at the same time reducing costs.

How do you think Remedy Partners is driving that change?

Remedy Partners is an organization made up of self-starters, innovators and the best of minds that are agile and that understand what is needed to drive organic, systemic change in healthcare and can quickly adapt to the challenges of moving to value-based care. Most healthcare organizations are large, and driving change within them can be likened to turning an ocean liner. However, Remedy Partners can simplify that transition because it easily fits into any healthcare delivery model and can help catalyze and be the engine of change where other large healthcare organizations find change too much to endure. I have been part of some of the largest healthcare organizations. However, I have learned that Remedy Partners’ potential of bringing about change is, in many ways, larger than the largest integrated healthcare systems because of what we provide. If we execute what we have flawlessly, Remedy Partners will make our country’s healthcare the best in the world.

What is your favorite quote?

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou