This roundup will be published monthly. It is meant to highlight some of healthcare’s recent hiring news and is not intended to be comprehensive. If you have news about an executive appointment, resignation or layoff that you would like to share for this roundup or the MedCity Moves podcast, please reach out to [email protected].
Hires
Medical conversation AI startup Abridge appointed Zachary Lipton as its chief scientific officer. In this role, he will lead the company’s research and machine learning efforts. Lipton joins Abridge from Amazon Web Services, where he was an AI researcher.
Allegheny Health Network appointed a new chief information and digital officer, Dr. Ashis Barad. In his new role, Dr. Barad will oversee the health system’s digital and virtual heath strategy, its IT maintenance and its Epic electronic health record. A pediatric gastroenterologist by training, Dr. Barad has previously been a digital health executive at Baylor White & Scott Health.
CVS recently appointed two new leaders. David Joyner is going to lead CVS’ pharmacy services segment, which includes the company’s PBM, Caremark. He is returning to the company, as he served in sales executive roles at CVS and Caremark for 20 years, from 1999-2020. CVS also named former Cigna executive Amy Bricker as its chief product officer for consumer business.
Troy Tazbaz recently became the Food and Drug Administration’s director of digital health. In this role, he will lead the FDA’s tech and digital therapeutics strategy. His most recent role was as senior vice president at Oracle — he spent over a decade at Oracle working on the company’s cloud transformation efforts.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
GE Healthcare named Dr. Taha Kass-Hout as its chief technology officer. He has previously served as the FDA’s first chief health informatics officer and as the director of information science and informatics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He joins GE Healthcare from Amazon Web Services, where he was the chief medical officer and vice president of machine learning.
Hinge Health, a virtual clinic for joint and muscle care, named Deborah Conrad as the company’s first chief marketing officer. She spent nearly three decades at Intel, where she most recently served as chief marketing officer.
After a 15-month search, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center found its new CEO. Effective April 1, Dr. John J. Warner will take the helm of the hospital. He comes to Ohio State from the University of Texas Southwestern Health System, where he served as CEO and executive vice president for health system affairs.
PopHealthCare, GuideWell’s population health analytics subsidiary, named Kevin Hiler as its CIO. He will also serve as CIO for Emcara Health, PopHealthCare’s value-based medical group. Hiller comes to PopHealthCare from home health company FirstLight Home Care, where he served as vice president of technology solutions.
SCAN Group named Emily Cook as CEO of Welcome Health, the company’s in-home primary care group that serves seniors. Cook was previously the chief operations officer for Alternate Solutions Health Network, and before that, she was the chief clinical operations officer for CareMore and Aspire Health, which are two Elevance Health subsidiaries.
Dame Vivian Hunt is the new chief innovation officer at UnitedHealth Group. She has worked at McKinsey & Company since 1995, serving most recently as senior partner for the UK and Ireland. Previously, she led the company’s life sciences division.
Dr. Sarah Lopez is now the chief medical officer at Zócalo Health, a virtual primary care provider designed for Latino patients that launched in September. She will lead the expansion of Zócalo’s care model, growth of its clinical team, and development of culturally aligned telehealth services.
Promotions
Express Scripts — the PBM owned by Cigna‘s health services arm Evernorth — appointed Adam Kautzner as its new president. He most recently served as Express Scripts’ senior vice president of supply chain.
Intermountain Health appointed Nannette Berensen as its new COO. She first began working at the health system as a phlebotomist during college. She returned in 2006 as director of pharmacy services for Intermountain Medical Center. Since then, she has held several leadership roles, including her most recent position as vice president and chief operating officer of clinical shared services.
NYC Health + Hospitals named Dr. Omar Fattal as its chief for behavioral health and co-deputy chief medical officer. Dr. Fattal has held various behavioral health leadership roles at NYC Health + Hospitals since 2010.
Layoffs
Liquid biopsy company Guardant Health recently laid off about 130 people, which is 7% of its workforce. The job eliminations affected a few departments, including bioinformatics, technology development and account management.
Health data analytics startup Innovaccer — which earned unicorn status in 2021 — recently eliminated 245 jobs. These layoffs affected about 15% of the company’s workforce. The decision marks Innovaccer’s second round of layoffs in just a few months — the company laid off 90 employees in September, which made up 8% of its employee base at the time.
Across 14 sites in New York City, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center laid off a total of 337 employees. This decision was made to reduce costs, and the layoffs equate to about 1.8% of Memorial Sloan’s workforce of about 22,500 people.
Olive AI, a company automating routine administrative tasks for health systems, recently cut 215 jobs to cut costs amid the changing economy. This move follows a larger round of layoffs from the summer — the company eliminated 450 jobs in July.
Virtual care giant Teladoc recently let go of 300 employees, which is about 6% of its nonclinical workforce. The company said it is restructuring its business to cut costs and removing redundant roles that have resulted from mergers.
Departures
Tenet Healthcare has said that its CFO, Daniel Cancelmi, will retire at the end of the year. He’s had a decades-long career at Tenet — he began as the CFO of a former Tenet hospital in Philadelphia before transitioning to Tenet’s corporate office to work in finance in 1999.
