I am writing to announce several exciting organizational changes in the Atrius Health Office of the CMO, effective July 1, 2015.
 

Emily Brower has been promoted to Vice President, Population Health, reporting to me. Emily has been with the organization since 2010, first as a Senior Director, Clinical Improvement Ventures and then in 2012 as Executive Director, Accountable Care Programs. In her latter role for the past three and one half years, she has ably led the Atrius Health effort as a Pioneer ACO. Our ACO programs have steadily advanced our ability to care for our geriatric patients, extending beyond just ACO patients to our Tufts Medicare Preferred, Dual eligible, and commercial 65+ aged patients. Working with a small team that has orchestrated multiple workgroups and harnessed the efforts of many other clinical and administrative leaders, Emily has provided very energetic and steady leadership to the entire ACO process, from our relationship with Medicare to the complex data and financial issues to clinical program development. As result, Atrius Health has gained recognition as one of the Pioneer ACO leaders nationally, ranking second in quality nationally (first in New England), and recently recognized as being one of the top three Pioneer ACO's in saving Medicare costs nationally.

As a result of these efforts and in recognition that the lessons learned in the Pioneer ACO effort in managing populations must be extended more broadly to all of our patients, we are transitioning theACO teamto a newDepartment of Population Healthas part of Moving Forward with the new Atrius Health. Emily will partner with me in leading this department that is envisioned to eventually organize our population care management programs across Atrius Health, in coordination with the regions and sites, to be highly effective, coordinated, and a future model for health care organizations nationally.

Prior to coming to Atrius Health, Emily served for 15 years with Urban Medical Group as Chief Operating Office and Director of Finance and Operations She received her BA from Smith College and MBA from Stern School of Business at New York University.
 

Peggy Chou, MD, who has played an interim role in medical management since Kate Koplan's departure, will become the Medical Director of Medical Management for Atrius Health and continue to report to me. Peggy's work for the past year and half has included coordinating our hospital strategy, working with specialty directors around specialty costs, providing utilization data to groups and regions to help them understand their TME costs, collaborating on a number of projects with the ACO team including those on Osteoporosis and Chronic Kidney Disease, and working closely with Clinical Pharmacy on high cost drugs such as those for hepatitis C. All these initiatives have helped to keep the focus on ways to reduce our TME by providing information and consultation to the sites and regions. In her evolving role, Peggy will be taking on additional responsibilities.Amy VachonandMarianne Lee, Co-Directors of the Clinical Pharmacy program, will now report to Peggy. This partnership of medical leadership and clinical pharmacy is particularly important in the context of extremely expensive specialty drugs as an emerging focus in Clinical Pharmacy. Peggy will also take on responsibility for managing our preferred ambulance program, working withAnna Marinillion this effort. I envision other preferred vendor programs over time (Durable Medical Equipment (DME), etc) also being coordinated by Peggy and her staff. Finally, Peggy will be collaborating withElaine Goddard, Senior Director of Revenue Operations, as the physician lead working with clinical operations to improve our coding of diagnoses for both clinical and payment revenue purposes. As we take on more pay-for-value contracts, coding is a critical key to our success by recognizing the degree of illness of our population and there will be undoubtedly more focus on this in the coming months.

Debbie Nolan, NP will be taking on the responsibility of Interim Chief of Geriatrics for the Skilled Nursing Facilities/Intensive Home Based (IHB)/Palliative Care/Ambulatory Geriatrics programs, reporting to me. Pippa Shulman, MD, the current chief of geriatrics, will completely transition to the Innovation Center effective July 1. Debbie is a seasoned and experienced clinician and administrative leader who has served in various capacities over the past three decades including administrator of West Roxbury/Chestnut Hill, administrator to the geriatric programs, and Associate Nurse Leader of the IHB/SNF program. She played an important role in the creation of the IHB program over a decade ago and is a certified nurse practitioner in adult and geriatric care. She is highly regarded as a skilled clinician in these programs and I am appreciative of her willingness to take on this role while a search for a permanent chief of geriatrics is completed.

Please join me in congratulating Emily, Peggy and Debbie in their new responsibilities! 

Rick Lopez, MD

Chief Medical Officer, Atrius Health

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