Welcome to this week's Chutes & Ladders, our roundup of hirings, firings and retirings throughout the industry. Please submit the good news—or the bad—from your shop, and we will feature it here at the end of each week.
Boulder Care
Boulder Care, a telehealth addiction treatment company, recently attracted two digital healthcare industry veterans, Mitzi Yue, now head of finance (left), and Meena Narayanan, now head of people.
Yue will join Boulder Care starting today. Yue began her career at J.P. Morgan working in digital health. She continued working at the intersection of finance and digital health at Brightline, Genome Medical and Castlight. Before Boulder Care, she was the chief financial officer and chief strategy officer at Quilted, acquired by not-for-profit health care organization MultiCare in October.
Narayanan was a key player on weight loss platform Livongo’s human resources team. Narayanan helped scale the organization from less than 70 employees when she joined to more than 900. She was with Livongo through its initial public offering, which is widely regarded as the most successful digital health IPO in recent years.
Once Livongo was acquired by Teladoc in 2020 for $18.5 billion, Narayanan served as an HR executive at Teladoc for four years.
To take Boulder Care along the same route as Livongo, Narayanan said her strategy is to invest in people. Read the full story here.
American Medical Informatics Association
The American Medical Informatics Association announced the appointment of Amanda Hanova, AMIA’s chief operating officer and interim CEO, as AMIA’s next CEO. She started in the role Nov. 1.
Hanova brings more than 20 years of healthcare and specialty society leadership with the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation and the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors. She brings rich experience leveraging registries and data insights to identify and close practice gaps as well as a passion for the current and future impact of informatics in improving health, health equity and patient care.
Hanova succeeds Tanya Tolpegin, who left the organization in February.
“It is an honor to be asked to serve AMIA in this capacity and a great responsibility,” Hanova said in a statement. “I am excited to partner with AMIA’s board, volunteers, members, and professional staff to advance AMIA on behalf of the profession and those it serves. My priorities are to position us for the future, continue to advance AMIA’s policy objectives, and to enhance the member experience.”
> Jennifer Close, who was SVP of clinical operations at Teladoc Health, is joining Curai as chief operating officer. She is the second senior executive from Teladoc to join Curai in recent months.
> PocketHealth, a connected care company dedicated to delivering seamless image exchange and intelligent patient engagement solutions, tapped Seetharam (Ram) Chadalavada, M.D., as chief medical officer.
> NeuroIntact, a company pioneering a new modality in targeted temperature management to address stroke and traumatic brain injury, has appointed Robert Kline to its board of directors.
> Global consulting firm Berkeley Research Group announced that Jeff Leibach has joined its Chicago office as a managing director, where he will lead a new team focused on managed care and revenue strategy.
> CareSource, a nonprofit nationally recognized managed care organization with more than 2 million members, announced it has hired Joe Moser as vice president, development.
> Deneen Vojta, M.D., joined Blue Shield of California as executive vice president of health solutions.
> 1upHealth appointed Andrew Boyd as its new CEO.
> Jerry Hinn has been hired as a health and medical career specialist at FCPS Adult and Community Education.
> HCA's Far West Division has named Tom Cronin to the HCA Healthcare Sarah Cannon Cancer Network as regional vice president, where he will work closely with care providers and hospital teams to enhance collaborative care of cancer patients across California and Nevada.
> Sunshine Health, Florida's largest managed care organization and a Centene Corporation company, announced Charlene Zein has been named plan president and CEO, effective Nov. 3.