About the Company/Organization
Novant Health is an integrated network of physician clinics, outpatient facilities and hospitals that delivers a seamless and convenient healthcare experience to communities in Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Named in 2017 by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of the nation’s 150 best places to work in healthcare, the Novant Health network consists of more than 1,500 physicians and over 28,000 employees that provide care at over 580 locations, including 15 medical centers and hundreds of outpatient facilities and physician clinics. Headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the health system serves more than 4 million patients annually and in 2017 provided more than $794 million in community benefit, including financial assistance and services. Diversity MBA has recognized the organization as one of the 5 best places for women and managers of diverse background to work and SK&A; ranks Novant Health among the top 25 integrated health systems in the nation.

Current Responsibilities
Carl S. Armato serves as president and chief executive officer of Novant Health, a not-for-profit healthcare system serving communities in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Armato joined Novant Health in 1998 as vice president of finance and operations for the physician divisions in both Charlotte and Winston-Salem and also served as senior vice president of materials management and logistics for Novant Health. In 2003, Armato was named chief operating officer of Presbyterian Healthcare in Charlotte and in 2004 was appointed to the president and chief executive officer of the Charlotte market operations. In 2008, the health system promoted him to president of Novant Health markets and in 2011 as chief operating officer. The board of trustees appointed him to his current position as president and CEO in January, 2012. Accomplishments include achieving an average operating cash flow of 11.2% and operating income of 2.8% over the past five years; and increasing net assets from $2.2 billion to $2.8 billion. Over the past few years, Armato led Novant Health’s journey to transform healthcare costs, implementing designed initiatives to reduce system costs by $450M. He successfully led Novant Health’s efforts to finalize the implementation of EPIC, the electronic health record (EHR), in all 445-plus physician practices across the Novant Health system. Implementation was completed three years early and under budget, earning Novant Health the prestigious Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Stage 7 Ambulatory Award. In 2016, Novant Health was the first health system worldwide to be revalidated for the HIMSS Stage 7 Ambulatory Award.

Prior Experience
Prior to joining Novant Health, Armato was vice president of operations for First Care Physicians and director of finance for General Health System in Baton Rouge, LA. He was also a senior tax/audit consultant for Ernst & Young in the Baton Rouge office.

Education, Awards & Affiliations
Armato holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration - accounting from the University of Southwestern Louisiana - Layfette and a master’s degree in business administration from Norwich University in Vermont.

He is a certified public accountant licensed in North Carolina and Louisiana. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, NCACPA, and the Healthcare Financial Management Association.

Armato was awarded Father of Year from the American Diabetes Association Charlotte Chapter in 2015 and the Pegasus Award by the Public Relations Society of America, Charlotte Chapter in 2013. Armato was honored in February 2017 by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation for lifetime achievement with type 1 diabetes.

Armato is past chair of the Charlotte Chapter of the American Heart Association. He currently serves on the Vizient Board of Directors, the Mid-Atlantic Affiliate Board of Directors of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, and the Charlotte Executive Leadership Council. He has authored two books, It’s Never Just Another Monday, and A Future With Hope (An Inspiring Guide to Overcoming Diabetes).

I am an internist/hospitalist/palliative care physician. I went to medical school and did my residency at The University of Pennsylvania. I spent a year in Hawaii as one of the first hospitalists at Kaiser Permanente, then spent a couple years as a teaching attending at SUNY Syracuse. In 1998 I moved to Atlanta, Georgia and joined Kaiser Permanente there. I started as a primary care doc and hospitalist and grew into administrative roles including Associate Medical Director for Primary Care, Specialty Care, Acute Care and Resource Stewardship-building and managing programs in Palliative Care, Hospital Medicine, Urgent Care and Population Health. In 2013 I joined WellStar Health System as VP for Population Health and spent 3 years building the pop health program in support of the their MSSP ACO, building a clinically integrated network and launching a comprehensive care clinic to support our patients with severe CHF and COPD. I came to Memorial Hermann in 2016 to be the Chief Medical Officer for the MH Health Plan and in late 2017 I became the CMO for Accountable Care and Population Health for the system. I am responsible for the health plan clinical strategic planning, ambulatory care and case management, wellness and health navigation, clinical cost and quality analytics, ambulatory quality and population health.

Dr. Amy Nguyen Howell is a board-certified family practice physician. She currently oversees all clinical programs at America’s Physician Groups and supports advocacy work in Sacramento, CA and Washington, DC. Dr. Nguyen actively serves on the Measures Application Partnership (MAP) Clinician Workgroup, providing input to the Coordinating Committee at the National Quality Forum (NQF) on matters related to the selection and coordination of measures for clinicians, particularly in the office setting. Additionally, she contributes to the Technical Expert Panel on MACRA Measurement Development; Steering Committee on the Core Quality Measurement Collaborative; Healthcare Payment and Learning Action Network Population-Based Payment Work Group; and Population Health Management, Clinical Programs, and Patient-Centered Specialty Practice Advisory Committees at NCQA; Board of Directors California Healthcare Performance Information System and serves as member of the Steering Committee at the California Quality Collaborative of the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH); Steering Committee at the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC); and Alternative Payment Model Infrastructure (APMI) Taskforce, part of Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

These national committees provide structure for an innovative coordinated delivery model focused on payment reform and integrated, high-quality, patient-centric care. Dr. Nguyen is a faculty member at USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and continues to serve as a family physician at Playa Vista Medical Center.

Anthony (Tony) Keck is the Director of Health and Human Services for South Carolina under Governor Nikki R. Haley. He has more than twenty-four years of experience in health care management, consulting, policy and academics in the United States and Latin America. Prior to his appointment in South Carolina, Mr. Keck served three years in the administration of Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal, as health and social services policy advisor to the governor, and chief of staff and deputy secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals. In the private sector, Mr. Keck managed and consulted for organizations such as Johnson & Johnson, where he was Director of Operations for Latin American Consulting and Services, as Director of Management Engineering at Ochsner Clinic New Orleans and as Administrator of St. Thomas Health Services, a community clinic. He holds both a Bachelor of Industrial and Operations Engineering and Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan, and is completing his doctoral thesis in health systems management at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine focusing on physician workforce issues. He also serves on the Board of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, has an appointment at the Tulane University School of Medicine Department of Family and Community Medicine and was recently appointed to the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Governance and Financing of Graduate Medical Education.

Ruth currently serves as the Senior Vice President, Population Health for Atrium Health. She is responsible for development and implementation of value based care models across the organization. She also leads the care management function system wide, is responsible for HealthWorks and employer based programs, leads Community Health initiatives and the Poison Control Center.

Prior to joining Atrium Health, Ruth served as the Senior Vice President for Population Health at CHRISTUS health. In this role, she manages risk based products offered by CHRISTUS Health, implements requirements resulting from the Affordable Care Act, monitors changes in healthcare environment and works with the leadership to see how they may impact CHRISTUS Health and developments new models to ensure the continued success of the organization. She leads the coordination of initiatives including, but not limited to, value based and alternative payment arrangements (such as bundled payments and potential accountable care organizations) and works together with colleagues on implementation of new delivery models.

Prior to CHRISTUS Health, Ruth served as Executive Vice President of Care Innovation for Sanford Health, President of Sanford Health Plan and prior to joining Sanford, Ruth served as Chief Operating Officer of Glacier Community Health Plan in Kalispell, MT. She has also been involved in network development and plan operations in several health plans in Pennsylvania. She has an undergraduate degree in Health Policy and Administration from Pennsylvania State University and a MBA in Finance from the University of Pittsburgh.

Naveen Raja, DO serves as the Medical Director for Accountable Care and Population Health at UCLA Health. He is board certified in Rheumatology and Clinical Informatics and has over 17 years of clinical practice experience in rheumatology and internal medicine in academic, non-profit, managed care and private practice environments. His focus is on developing and supporting strategies and programs related to population health, including improvement activities, analytics, care management, and relationships with ACO contract partners. Prior to UCLA, he was at City of Hope where he served as the Chief Medical Information Officer. In that role, he had significant impact on practice standardization, integration, and physician engagement. He has experience in managing organizational change through setting of a shared vision, clinician and leadership engagement, clear governance structures, communication and team development.

Dr. Wild received his MD degree from the University of Vermont, College of Medicine. He is board certified in Emergency Medicine by the American Board of Emergency Medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians. His internship and residency training were at Letterman Army Medical Center, San Francisco; San Francisco General Hospital; and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. He served five years as an active duty officer with the US Army Medical Corps and also served as a Department of Defense civilian emergency medicine specialist at Martin Army Hospital, Fort Benning, Georgia. Dr Wild earned his BA in Biology from Dartmouth College, his JD degree from the George Washington University National Law Center in Washington, DC, and his MBA from the Columbia University Graduate Business School, in New York City.

Dr. Wild has 30 years of experience as a practicing emergency physician ranging from small rural Georgia hospitals to large university teaching centers. He has served on the Medical School faculties of Boston University, University of Massachusetts, and Brown University and was Chairman of the department of Emergency Medicine and Chief of Emergency Services at a teaching hospital of Brown University Medical School. He has taught emergency medicine, health policy and legal medicine to resident physicians and medical students and has served as President of the Rhode Island College of Emergency Physicians, and as chairman or member of several American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and American Medical Association (AMA) national committees dealing with government affairs, coding, and physician reimbursement.

Dr. Wild is an active member of the Massachusetts and US Federal bar and has practiced as a health care attorney with a large Boston law firm representing hospitals, physicians, skilled nursing facilities and a major Boston teaching hospital. He was medical director of Medicare’s direct fiscal intermediary in Baltimore and also CMS (then HCFA) Chief Medical Officer for reimbursement policy during the initial implementation the Hospital Prospective Payment (DRG) system. He subsequently served on the Medicare Prospective Payment Assessment Commission staff (now MedPac).