Board Members’ Perspective About Huntzinger’s Contribution to Healthcare
Boards of directors typically hold considerable sway over the direction of the companies they guide. Oftentimes, they offer an overarching vision that provides a valuable perspective on future directions.
Directors on Huntzinger’s board also bring other qualities to their role. They are passionate about the company’s opportunities and dedicated to bringing innovation to healthcare.
That’s particularly true as the healthcare industry grapples with rapid changes made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic. Radical shifts in patient interactions and workflows have been layered on top of new interoperability rules and changing reimbursement incentives.
It is a prime time for the industry to reinvent itself, and for Huntzinger to help our clients on their new journeys.
Dan Garrett
“Everyone knows that the healthcare industry has been in a major transformational shift, especially in the last 10 years,” said Dan Garrett, one of the newest members of the board. “Huntzinger’s team has been part of the first and second iterations of the transformation of the provider world, and there’s an opportunity now to participate in the next evolution of the provider world – the digitization of the relationship between providers and patients, virtual health, and marrying analytics and digital technology to the core electronic health records systems that they just spent years implementing.”
Garrett’s 40-year career has been steeped in technology, particularly how IT intersects healthcare. He recently retired from PwC, serving as its technology consulting leader across all sectors, but he simultaneously retained his role in leading its HIT practice, which he had directed since 2006. Before that, he was a vice president and managing partner at CSC. He’s also been involved in starting and building the eHealth Initiative, an independent organization that engages doctors and patients to standardize and reform the use of health information technology to improve patient care.
Formerly siloed sectors of the healthcare industry now are working together, and information technology needs to facilitate that by improving information exchange, he said. “Huntzinger has a great opportunity to drive that level of integration to enhance the value that providers offer and give the consumer/patient a much more impactful digital experience,” he said. “There are a lot of advanced technology solutions out there that are not integrated, not convenient to the consumer, and not delivered in providers’ workflow.”
Rich Sorensen
Many healthcare organizations are facing financial stress because of the COVID-19 crisis, said Richard Sorensen, a board member on Huntzinger since 2011. Providers have not been able to offer patients elective procedures or non-essential surgeries that have higher margins than most other cases; in addition, financial reimbursement for treating coronavirus patients may be insufficient for covering care costs.
Telemedicine will be increasingly used, but that’s just one of the care delivery changes that provider organizations will face in the years ahead, said Sorensen, who’s currently the chief financial officer at Wolverine Plating Corp. He also served in executive positions at U.S. Health Holdings, the parent company of US Health and Life Insurance Company, Automated Benefit Services Inc., a third-party administrator, and ABS Managed Care Administrators. He also was CFO at Superior Consultant before it was acquired by ACS and an audit partner at Plante Moran.
Huntzinger has a wide range of experts that have deep experience, and that will provide critical support to organizations that will be attempting to cope with COVID-19 and rebound to serve the healthcare world after the crisis.
“2020 will be challenging, no matter what happens” with the pandemic, Sorensen said. “The industry is trying to react, but it’s going to be a very tough year. Beyond this crisis, we’ll have additional opportunities to take advantage of our experience in serving our clients. The adaptability, perceptiveness, and vision that our leaders have will be important. There are significant opportunities in the pipeline; I do see managed services as something that could be a big opportunity for us.”