Malcolm MacEachern Symposium 2020

Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Centene Corporation

Michael F. Neidorff is recognized as a transformative leader and executive with a wealth of experience in starting and managing healthcare enterprises. He has successfully led the development and implementation of programs and services under Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial managed care while remaining committed to the core philosophy that quality healthcare is best delivered locally. Mr. Neidorff became president and chief executive officer of Centene Corporation in 1996. From the time Mr. Neidorff joined Centene, he has led its transformation from a closely held, $40 million corporation to a publicly traded (NYSE: CNC), Fortune 100®, diversified, multi-national healthcare enterprise with annual revenues exceeding $74 billion in 2019. Mr. Neidorff is the longest-tenured CEO among the major managed care companies. Under Mr. Neidorff’s direction, Centene has expanded from operating Medicaid health plans solely in Wisconsin and Indiana, to operations and implementations in all 50 states serving more than 24 million managed care and TRICARE eligible beneficiaries. The company provides cost-effective coverage solutions to the rising number of under-insured and uninsured people. Centene was recognized as one of the FORTUNE 2020 World’s Most Admired Companies and was ranked No. 7 on the 2019 Change the World® list. In 2019, Centene ranked No. 51 on the FORTUNE 500® List.

Dean and Emmett Dedmon Professor, University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy

Katherine Baicker, PhD, is the Dean and the Emmett Dedmon Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Social Insurance, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dean Baicker serves on the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers and as a Director of Eli Lilly and HMS Holdings. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Institute for Health Care Management; a Trustee of NORC; and a Trustee of the Mayo Clinic. She has served as a Commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission; as Chair of the Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission; as Chair of the Board of Directors of AcademyHealth, and as a Senate-confirmed Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Dean Baicker’s research focuses on the effectiveness of public and private health insurance, including the effect of reforms on the distribution and quality of care. She is one of the leaders of the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, a randomized evaluation of the effects of Medicaid coverage. She received her BA in economics from Yale and her PhD in economics from Harvard.

President & CEO, NYC Health + Hospitals

Dr. Katz is the President and Chief Executive Officer of New York City Health + Hospitals, the largest municipal health system in the United States, with 11 acute care hospitals, 5 skilled nursing facilities, and a large array of community health centers.

Previously, Dr. Katz was the Director of the Los Angeles County Health Agency, an agency that combines the Departments of Health Services, Public Health, and Mental Health into a single entity so as to provide more integrated care and programming within Los Angeles. The Agency has a budget of 7 billion dollars, 28,000 employees, and a large number of community partners. Dr. Katz served as the Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (DHS), the second largest public safety net system in the United States. During this time, he created the ambulatory care network and empaneled over 350,000 patients to a primary care home. He eliminated the deficit of DHS through increased revenues and decreased administrative expenses, and used the new ACA funding to pay for an integrated electronic health system,. He moved over 4000 medically complex patients from hospitals and emergency departments into independent housing, thereby eliminating unnecessary expensive hospital care and giving the patients the dignity of their own home. Dr. Katz continued to see patients every week as an outpatient physician at Edward R. Royal Comprehensive Health Center and on the inpatient medicine service at LAC+USC, Harbor-UCLA, and Olive View-UCLA Medical Centers.

Before he came to Los Angeles Dr. Katz was the Director and Health Officer of the San Francisco Department of Health for 13 years. He is well known for funding needle exchange, creating Healthy San Francisco, outlawing the sale of tobacco at pharmacies, and winning ballot measures for rebuilding Laguna Honda Hospital and San Francisco General Hospital. He is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Medical School. He completed an internal medicine residency at UCSF Medical School and was an RWJ Clinical Scholar.

He is the Deputy Editor of JAMA Internal Medicine, an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (previously the Institute of Medicine) and the recipient of the Los Angeles County Medical Association 2015 Healthcare Champion of the year.

Chief Health Officer, Cityblock Health

Dr. Ajayi, board certified in family medicine, is Chief Health Officer of Cityblock Health, the first tech-driven provider for communities with complex health and social needs–bringing better care to neighborhoods where it’s needed most. Cityblock’s care teams meet members where they are, delivering highly personalized primary care, behavioral health care, and social services to every member, including those who access Medicaid, are dually eligible for Medicaid and Medicare, and others living in lower-income neighborhoods.

Prior to Cityblock, Dr. Ajayi served as Chief Medical Officer of Commonwealth Care Alliance, a nationally renowned integrated health plan and care delivery system for individuals eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. In this role, she led clinical operations, spearheaded care delivery innovations, and oversaw multi-disciplinary teams of clinicians, community health workers and administrators serving more than 20,000 beneficiaries across Massachusetts.

She received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and her medical degree, with Distinction in Clinical Practice, from King’s College London School of Medicine. She completed her residency training at Boston Medical Center. She continues to practice primary care focused on patients with chronic, complex and end-of-life needs.

Co-Founder & CMO, Oak Street Health

Dr. Griffin Myers is Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer at Oak Street Health, a growing organization of value-based primary care centers serving adults on Medicare headquartered in Chicago. Prior to Oak Street Health, Dr. Myers did his residency in emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School at the Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals. Dr. Myers has a B.S. from Davidson College, an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and an M.D. from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He is a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians, a Research Associate at Harvard Medical School, an Adjunct Instructor at Northwestern University, a Thought Leader for the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst, a Presidential Leadership Scholar, and an Aspen Health Innovators Fellow. Dr. Myers lives in Jackson, Wyoming.

Senior Vice President, Integrated Health & Social Services, UnitedHealthcare

Jeffrey Brenner, M.D., is the Senior Vice President of Clinical Redesign at UnitedHealthcare Community & State. UnitedHealthcare Community & State proudly serves 6.7 million Medicaid members in 30 states, plus Washington D.C. UnitedHealthcare is a division of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) which is a diversified health and well-being company with a mission to help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone.

The Clinical Redesign business unit develops and implements direct care delivery models and scalable solutions focused on reducing the utilization and cost of care for Community & State’s most complex members. Under Dr. Brenner’s leadership, teams work across UnitedHealth Group to influence and oversee the transformation of care delivery for Community & State through the strategic application of clinical data analytics and insights.

Before joining Community & State, Dr. Brenner served as a family physician working in Camden, NJ, where he owned and operated a solo-practice, urban family medicine office in Camden that provided a full-spectrum of family health services for the local Medicaid population. Recognizing the need for a new way for hospitals, providers and community residents to collaborate, he founded the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers in 2003, where he served as Executive Director until 2017.

Dr. Brenner’s, and the Coalition's, innovative use of data to identify high-need, high-cost patients in a fragmented system and improve their care was profiled in the 2011 New Yorker article “The Hot- spotters” by writer and surgeon Dr. Atul Gawande, and on PBS Frontline. In 2013 Dr. Brenner was honored with the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship for his work, and in 2014 was elected to the Institute of Medicine. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, and graduated from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, NJ. He completed his residency with Swedish Family Medicine in Seattle, WA.