Don is a value-based care expert with years of success leveraging Population Health, Social Determinants of Health, CINs, MSSPs, ACOs and other health system and medical group opportunities to improve patient care, drive quality results, and increase profitability.
In 2023, Don joined the Strategy Advantage team and XCO community. In this role he brings four decades of senior executive/CEO experience in some of the most hyper-competitive markets, working to partner with payers, integrate hospitals, and engage physicians to drive value-based care growth. For a decade at the combined Ascension Illinois/ AMITA Health/ Alexian Brothers Health System in Chicago, he designed and implemented their physician-driven ACO, leading to incentive distributions of some $100M. He also grew the CIN to nearly 5,000 participants, serving 400,000 patients, and generating $100M in multi-year annual revenues. Previously, Don's physician integration and managed care leadership drove the start-up of the Resurrection Health/Presence Health MSSP ACO, netting $50M in revenue. Earlier, he was President of the Midwest Region for Great-West Healthcare - where he led 140,000 physicians, 1,000 hospitals, and 500,000 covered lives - and before that was Aetna's North Central Region Vice President, covering 800,000 lives in a 13-state area.
As a value-based care builder, Don has been the steady leader and power behind the industry as it has been shifting from FFS to value. His results speak to the proof in his work. While being the largest Medicare and Medicaid providers in the state of Illinois, his groups were successful at bringing physicians together, obtaining top-performing status, and delivering excellent results. A stickler for data as a critical component of the work, Don set-up “Healthcare Economics” teams to ensure physicians and others can explain and prove results with reliable data. According to Don: “If any leader said to me that they have a high percentage of Medicare patients without an ACO, I would say to them, 'what are you waiting for?'”
Don completed his bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois, and later completed select courses in the MBA Program at Loyola University Chicago's Quinlan School of Business. In 2022, Don was named among the Becker's Hospital Review list of “58 Population Health Executives to Know.” Among the many leaders and physicians with whom has worked, Don is known as one “who has had the most success in the value-based care world, and who has been the most thoughtful about it along the way.”