This program has been approved for 1.5 ACHE Face-to-Face credits.

Our Presenters:

Tamara Perry, BA-SLP, MA-IOC
Sr. Director Operations
Virtual Health and Innovation
Children’s Medical Center

Andrew Thorby
Chief Executive Officer
Care Continuity

Paula Turicchi, MHA,FACHE (Moderator)
Chief Strategy Officer
Parkland Community Health Plan

Dr. Leslie Wainwright
Chief Funding and Innovation Officer
Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation

Dr. Hubert Zajicek, MD, MBA
Co-Founder, Partner and CEO
Health Wildcatters

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Speakers’ Bios:

Tamara Perry is the Senior Director of Virtual Health and Innovation at Children’s Health System of Texas. Tamara has over 20 years’ experience in communication, corporate training and organization strategy. Currently she serves as a national and international expert in the field of telemedicine; sharing her knowledge of telemedicine implementation, expansion and sustainability as a speaker at the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) international conferences, Becker’s Hospital Review, American Pediatric Association and other virtual health technology and innovation conferences yearly. She is currently the Chair of the American Telemedicine Association Pediatric Special Interest Group. Her work has been featured in the Hospitals & Health Networks’ Most Wired issues, NRHA Rural Roads magazine, D Magazine Excellence in Healthcare and other national publications. Her recent work includes leading the deployment of virtual health care solutions including countries largest school-based telehealth program, the Children’s Health Virtual Visit direct to consumer app and virtual visit kiosks in locations across the DFW area. She has a bachelor’s degree in Speech Language Pathology and Master’s in Interpersonal and Organization Communication.

Andrew Thorby has over thirty years of experience in technology-driven business disruption. A native of Australia, his early career was spent in the systems integration industry applying value chain re-engineering principles to Fortune 1000 firms in the telecommunications, financial services, and energy sectors. He first entered the healthcare industry in 2004 with the application of zero-defect manufacturing principles to the revenue cycle. It was here that he began to understand and address the “islands of information” dilemma that plagued healthcare and resulted in an overall lack of process integrity along the patient journey.

Andrew founded Care Continuity with the goal of improving the disconnected and confusing care delivery experience that patients and their families too often encounter during a serious illness or injury. Andrew’s prior experience in technology driven business disruption helped him realize that the disconnect lay with an incentive model which only paid for services rendered at the point of care and the patient journey which often spanned multiple providers and multiple places of service. Too often it was left to the patients and to individual providers to try and connect the dots. In other words, healthcare delivery networks were networks in name only.

As founder and CEO, Andrew has led Care Continuity’s evolution through three software platforms (with over 200 releases on the current platform), from a focus on technology to a focus on results and the patient experience, and from impacting the experience of a handful of patients each month to impacting thousands. During this time, healthcare has gone through a sea change in the core incentive model with value-based care and population risk raising the stakes to the point that operational integrity within care delivery networks has gone from a nice to have to a must have.

As CEO, Andrew is primarily responsible for setting the firms vision, supporting the Care Continuity team, and partnering with clients to ensure that the firm is accelerating its go-to-market strategies and providing its patients and clinicians with the proactive support they need.

Paula Turicchi is the Chief Strategy Officer at Parkland Community Health Plan in Dallas, Texas. The health plan serves more than 185,000 members in Medicaid’s STAR, CHIP, and CHIP Perinatal programs through a network of more than 3,000 providers and 25 facilities located in 7 counties in the Dallas service delivery area.

Previously, Paula served as the Vice President of Hospital Operations and Administrator of Women and Infant’s Specialty Health (WISH) at Parkland Health & Hospital System. She was instrumental in the design and construction of the New Parkland Hospital facility and the Moody Center for Breast Health. Paula played a key role in completing the System Improvement Agreement (SIA) and Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) from 2013 to 2018. In addition, she chaired the Women’s Health Advisory Committee of Texas which was created by Texas’ 84th Legislature to advise the Health & Human Services Commission on consolidation of women’s health programs.

Paula was a 2018 Texas Hospital Association Leadership Fellow. She is board certified in Healthcare Administration and holds a Master’s degree in Healthcare Administration from Trinity University and Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Dr. Leslie Wainwright joined the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation [PCCI], as their Chief Funding and Innovation Officer in March 2019. Prior to this role, she oversaw RTI International’s Innovation Advisors health practice where she worked with health systems and technology developers to guide the development and adoption of impactful healthcare innovations. She has also served in executive roles at Sg2, AVIA and Business Models Inc., a Dutch-based innovation consultancy.

She is passionate about entrepreneurship and innovation, and has experience that spans academic research, pharma/biotechnology and healthcare delivery. Leslie has worked with executive teams from multi-national organizations and startups alike to design growth strategies, create alternative business models and evaluate emerging clinical and care delivery technologies. Additionally, she has spent several years addressing innovation and how healthcare organizations build their own sustainable innovation competencies. Leslie is a frequent speaker and facilitator on the future of healthcare, enabling technologies, disruptive innovation and emerging business models, both domestically and abroad.

Leslie received her PhD in microbiology at Northwestern University, completed postdoctoral research training at the University of Maryland’s Center for Vaccine Development and received a B.A. in Biology from DePauw University. She serves as a clinical advisor on the Board of Start-up tech companies and has served as faculty teaching strategy and innovation at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. Additionally, Leslie is passionate about STEM education and is in the Women’s Board of the Field Museum in Chicago, working with the museum to expand opportunities for girls in science.

Hubert Zajicek is co-founder, partner and CEO of Health Wildcatters, a top-ranked seed stage healthcare fund and accelerator in Dallas, TX. Health Wildcatters provides mentorship, capital and guidance to up to 12 healthcare related startups during an intensive 3 month program, annually. The fund has invested in 77 healthcare startups, which have attracted over $200M in capital in about 7 years. Over the past 10 years he has reviewed, evaluated, mentored and advised thousands of startup companies.

In March of 2020, Dr. Zajicek started the Health Hacking Crisis Network (HHCN), a non-profit organization that engages in bringing together a rapid reaction force to deal with acute problems arising in healthcare due to COVID-19. The organization has over 500 volunteer members and has supported the creation of a variety of initiatives that had a big impact on the North Texas region and beyond.

Prior to forming Health Wildcatters and HHCN he was managing director of medical technology at NTEC (North Texas Enterprise Center for Medical Technology – www.ntec-inc.org). He oversaw the construction of NTEC’s state-of-the-art 50,000 SF building and managed the facility including its roughly 10,000 SF lab space. During his tenure he created MedVentures, the Southwest’s largest medical technology investment conference, whose presenting companies raised a combined $274M in funding.

Hubert has over ten years of experience in the life sciences. Before joining NTEC, Hubert was on faculty at UT Southwestern Medical Center where he was an NIH-funded Principal Investigator and co-investigator of research grants totaling more than $1M from various grant agencies. His areas of research included Nephrology and Cell Biology with a focus on membrane transport and membrane composition. His interests extend into biophysics, fluorescence and imaging techniques. He authored and co-authored over 15 scientific articles, more than 30 presentations at national and international meetings and 2 book-chapters.

Hubert received his Doctorate in Medicine (M.D.) from the University of Vienna, School of Medicine (1996), and his Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University in 2006 (Beta-Gamma-Sigma). He is a fellow of the American Society of Nephrology (F.A.S.N.)

He is an active speaker, panelist and thought leader on healthcare startups, digital health, entrepreneurship and funding topics. . He lives in Dallas, with his wife, Beth McNally Zajicek, MD and two daughters.