BRG Expands Healthcare Advisory Team to Support Strategic Growth and Quality

BRG today announced the expansion of its Healthcare Advisory team. Co-led by industry leaders and BRG Managing Directors Rick May, MD and Jeff Leibach, the group will support providers’ and health plans’ strategic growth plans and major initiatives through expertise in enterprise strategic planning, revenue growth, population health and clinical quality improvement.

The expanded team will also include BRG Managing Directors Tod Baker, David Brueggeman, Julia Clark, Brian Fisher and Dawn Knight; and Directors Brett Caplan and Kurt Eicher.

The talent joining BRG’s Healthcare Advisory team brings immediate depth and increases industry credibility. Combined, Knight and Baker have more than 50 years of experience working in executive roles and helping improve quality performance at healthcare providers. Clark, Fisher and Brueggeman each bring decades of consulting and industry experience to build and lead solutions around population health and value-based care (VBC); enterprise strategy, partnerships and service-line planning; and managed care and reimbursement teams. Caplan and Eicher provide additional depth and breadth of experience in strategic revenue growth through contracting and payer-provider partnerships for organizations including startups, health plans and large health systems.

“Today’s hospitals and health systems are encountering unprecedented challenges, from diminishing revenue, rising costs and tighter margins to rapid-fire policy shifts and ongoing supply chain disruptions,” said Dr. May. “Traditional levers hospital leaders have used to address these issues are often not effective on their own—and too often providers are stuck with a false choice between financial solvency and clinical quality. Our data-driven processes help hospitals identify the most important areas to work on to rapidly improve clinical quality and drive measurable ROI [return on improvement], empowering organizations to achieve better care for their patients while simultaneously improving their financial performance.”

The Healthcare Advisory team will complement and collaborate with BRG’s Healthcare Performance Improvement and Clinical Economics practices, offering providers and health plans a unique end-to-end solution set. The team will focus its efforts in three critical areas:

• Enterprise Strategy and Population Health. Amid changing payment and care models—as well as significant policy shifts—BRG experts counsel providers and health plans across a range of enterprise planning, growth and performance strategies, such as designing and deploying VBC models, population health strategies, portfolio optimization and new partnerships and ventures.
• Revenue Strategy and Managed Care. Under mounting financial pressure, providers need experts who can navigate and effectively align the financial intricacies of healthcare delivery. The BRG team delivers measurable value through improvements to payer contract negotiations, implementing strategic pricing and leveraging analytics to drive decision-making.
• Clinical Quality Improvement. BRG’s team has developed a data-driven approach to implement evidence-based best practices to reduce costly errors, lengths of stay and readmissions, directly translating improved care into improved financial performance and driving greater operational efficiencies and better patient experiences and outcomes.

 “The substantial problems facing healthcare organizations require collaborative, multifaceted solutions,” said Leibach. “Our team of industry experts will serve as a bridge between BRG’s existing offerings, enabling the firm to not only design high-level strategic roadmaps but also help implement those strategies on the ground. The group’s extensive experience in strategy, finance and clinical quality improvement brings unparalleled depth and breadth to BRG and its healthcare clients. The team’s ability to bring both payer and provider perspectives is unique and valuable, as traditional payers are providing more care than ever and health systems are taking on increasing amounts of risk.”

“This new practice group further builds on BRG’s comprehensive healthcare offerings to better serve our clients and meet the needs of the industry moving forward,” said BRG Chief Executive Officer Tri MacDonald. “The advisory team will complement and expand our capabilities in healthcare performance improvement, clinical economics, analytics, policy, financial consulting and more. I couldn’t be more excited to have Rick and Jeff at the helm.”