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.

By Katie Adams on August 28, 2023

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

Ascertain, a platform launched  last year by Northwell Holdings and Aegis Ventures to spin out healthcare AI companies, named Mark Michalski as its CEO. A radiologist by training, he spent the last decade in the digital health space — he worked as chief medical officer of medical device company Butterfly Network and was the founding executive director of Mass General Brigham and Harvard’s center for clinical data science. In the past, Michalski also led strategic healthcare development at Amazon.

Cleveland Clinic named Albert Marinez as its first chief analytics officer. He comes to the health system from Intermountain Health, where he also served as chief analytics officer. Before that, Marinez held leadership roles at health systems such as MultiCare and AdventHealth Central Florida.

CommonSpirit Health welcomed Lilicia Bailey as its chief people officer. She comes to the system from Emory Healthcare, where she held the same position.

Elevance Health announced that John Kaye will take over its CFO position later this year when John Gallina retires. Kaye has served as CFO for multiple companies, including Moody’s and MassMutual. 

Kaiser Permanente appointed Jacqueline Carberry Baratian as chief compliance and privacy officer for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals. She is coming to Kaiser from Ascension, where she also served as chief compliance officer. Previously in her career, she held C-suite roles at Aetna and Maxim Healthcare Services.

NYU Langone Health named Elizabeth Golden as executive vice president for communications and marketing. She comes to the health system from Pfizer, where she spent the past 17 years, serving most recently as the company’s chief of staff for its biopharmaceutical group.

Virtual care company Pager brought on Rita Sharma as chief product officer. She comes to the company from Salesforce, where she most recently served as vice president of healthcare and life sciences growth.

Signify Health, which was acquired by CVS this year, welcomed Heidi Schwarzwald as its new chief medical officer. She comes to Signify from another CVS company — Aetna, where she most recently served as chief medical officer of its provider network.

UChicago Medicine welcomed Andrew Chang as its chief marketing officer. He comes to the health system from VillageMD, where he served as vice president of marketing. In the past, Chang has held executive positions in marketing at Summit Health and Piedmont Healthcare.

UnitedHealth Group appointed Tammi Morton as chief security officer. She’s held this role before at companies such as Raytheon and HP.

Verily welcomed Andrew Trister as its chief scientific officer. He began his career as a physician in radiation oncology, and he joined Verily from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he served as the deputy director of digital health and AI.

Virtual care platform Wheel named Kristina Omari as its new CFO. She has held executive roles at a variety of well-known companies, including Lyft, Fitbit, Adobe and HP.

Zerigo Health, a platform for home treatment of chronic skin conditions, welcomed Lisa Rometty as its new CEO. She is the former president of CVS Kidney Care, and she also served as a vice president at IBM Watson Health.

Layoffs

Virtual primary care company Babylon Health shuttered its U.S. headquarters and laid off nearly 100 employees. The news came after the company’s rescue merger fell apart.

CVS plans to lay off about 5,000 workers across the country as part of its cost-cutting strategy. The company said that employees most affected by the cuts will primarily work in corporate roles, and it does not expect to eliminate customer-oriented roles in individual pharmacies, clinics or stores.

Medical social networking platform Doximity said it will lay off about 100 employees, which accounts for 10% of its workforce.

Illinois-based health system Memorial Health, is laying off hundreds of workers, including 20% of its leadership positions. The health systems cited “current national and statewide economic trends” as the reason for the job cuts.

Former Optum employees have taken to social media in August to say their jobs were eliminated as part of a round of layoffs. Additionally, one of Optum’s subsidiaries — MedExpress, a chain of urgent care clinics — laid off all registered nursing positions at its nearly 150 facilities.