Health Tech

Healthcare Moves: A Monthly Summary of Hires and Layoffs

Here is a selection of recent executive hires, promotions and layoffs occurring across the healthcare industry.

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

Massachusetts-based Beth Israel Lahey Health appointed Dr. Rob Fields as its chief clinical officer. He comes to the role after serving as Mount Sinai’s chief population health officer. 

Bryn Pharma, which makes treatments for anaphylaxis, named Jim Borneman as its new chief operating officer. He spent more than 20 years at Sanofi, where he held several executive roles.

Washington D.C.-based Children’s National Hospital appointed Michelle Riley-Brown as its new CEO. Brown is currently an executive vice president at Texas Children’s Hospital. She will take over at Children’s National on July 1st. 

Health IT vendor Greenway Health welcomed Don Kleoppel as its new chief information and security officer. He previously served as chief security officer at Cerner.

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Oscar Health named Mark Bertolini as its new CEO. Bertolini had previously served as CEO for Aetna, where he spent more than 15 years in leadership roles. Before that, he held executive positions at Cigna

Fertility benefits company Progyny welcomed Dr. Janet Choi as its new chief medical officer. She has more than 20 years of experience as a clinical reproductive health specialist, spending the last seven years as medical director of CCRM New York, a reproductive health clinic. Before that, Dr. Choi was a professor at Columbia University Medical Center.

Tia, a hybrid healthcare provider tailored to women, recently announced two new hires. The startup hired Stacey Irving as chief operating officer, and it also welcomed Jess Tomlinson as general counsel. Before becoming Tia’s first ever COO, Irving spent five years at DaVita, where she was responsible for leading more than 70 dialysis clinics. Tomlinson joins Tia from Nurx, a telemedicine company focusing on women’s reproductive health.

Nurse staffing startup Trusted Health named Sue Nallapeta as chief technology officer. She is an engineering leader with more than 15 years of experience leading teams across several consumer-facing businesses, such as Apartment List, Zoosk (acquired by Spark Networks) and Kodak Gallery (acquired by Shutterfly). 

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston welcomed Dr. Kerin Adelson as chief quality and value officer. She most recently served as chief quality officer and deputy chief medical officer at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital in Connecticut.

Connecticut-based Yale Health named Jason Fish as its new CEO. He currently serves as chief medical officer at Southwestern Health Services, an integrated population-based healthcare network. He will take over at Yale on July 1.

Healthcare finance company Zelis hired Sue Schick as its new chief revenue officer. She recently served as Humana’s president of group and military. Before that, she spent more than 16 years at UnitedHealth Group and nearly four years at Cigna.

Promotions

Centene named Tanya McNally as its chief people officer. She has been serving in human resources leadership roles at Centene since joining in 2020 when the company acquired WellCare.

Lara Khouri became Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ new chief operating officer. She joined CHLA in 2015 and has held several leadership positions at the organization, including executive vice president and chief strategy and transformation officer.

Oscar Health appointed Dr. Sean Martin as its new chief medical officer. He joined Oscar in 2016 and has served in various clinical leadership roles at the company. Before Oscar, he was chief medical officer of health tech startup Seremidi and CEO of Medifr, a patient referral software company.

Washington-based health system Providence named Dr. Brian Chesebro as its first medical director of environmental stewardship. In this role, the anesthesiologist will help adapt care delivery models to make them less harmful to the natural environment. The creation of this role is in line with Providence’s goal to be carbon negative by 2030.

Departures

Privia Health, a company that provides technology and services to physician practices, said that CEO Shawn Morris is stepping down. Parth Mehrotra, the company’s president and chief operating officer, will take over as CEO on July 1.

Layoffs

Novant Health, a health system based in North Carolina, recently eliminated 50 jobs. This round of layoffs included multiple executive roles, such as chief consumer officer, chief transformation and digital officer, and vice president of innovation enablement.

After recently filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, digital therapeutics company Pear Therapeutics laid off 170 of its employees, which represents 92% of its workforce. Pear will keep 15 employees as part of a transition team as it starts the process of selling off its assets.

Workit Health is planning to cut about 100 jobs in preparation for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s proposed rules, which are cracking down on the prescription of controlled substances via telemedicine. Workit is a virtual provider of treatments for substance use disorder, and the DEA’s proposed rules could go into effect when the public health emergency ends on May 11.