Virginia Opipare to Join Health Start Partners

Media, PA U.S.A. – WEBWIRE – Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Health Start Partners welcomes new Associate Partner Virginia Opipare. As a 25+ year healthcare veteran, Opipare brings significant experience leading academic and tertiary medical centers, sub-specialty hospitals, and start-up firms to the group. In addition to her organizational leadership experience, Opipare adds significant experience leading enterprise growth and performance improvement initiatives. Some examples follow:

Prior to joining Health Start Partners, Opipare spent 13 months as the Interim President and CEO of a Highmark Blue Cross/ Blue Shield start-up company focused on building a physician network for a newly formed Integrated Delivery Network of providers in western Pennsylvania. Previously, she served as the EVP and Chief Operating Officer at City of Hope in Los Angeles where she had corporate leadership responsibility for the National Medical Center, Ambulatory Clinics and the Beckman Research Institute. During her tenure, Opipare established strategic and tactical plans and led the organizational implementation of these plans to realize over $65 million in productivity improvements and the management of a $500 million portfolio of technology and facility expansion projects. Using Six Sigma techniques, she achieved a 20-30% improvement in quality targets.

Before joining City of Hope, she was EVP and Chief Operating Officer of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the Health Research Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., where she co-led strategic planning to transition the organization to a new governance model as a Public Benefit Corporation, along with a required financial turnaround. The financial turnaround reduced New York State’s annual subsidy by $30 million. At the same time she led the organization to the highest patient satisfaction rating in the marketplace, and re-established the organization’s National Cancer Institute designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Opipare has also served as Chief Executive Officer and Hospitals Administrator of the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. Her accomplishments include improved financial performance, better alignment with the physician practice plan and the development of a hospital-wide patient satisfaction program that moved the organization to a “best performer” ranking among peers.

“We are very excited to add Ginny to our Leadership Team”, said Bill Lenihan, Health Start Partners’ Managing Partner and CEO. “Ginny is a collaborative, analytical and results oriented leader with the expertise to lead complex, enterprise-scale, change programs and proven ability to significantly improve financial, operational and clinical outcomes.”

About Health Start Partners: Health Start Partners is a specialty strategy and technology consulting firm. The firm’s highly experienced team of Healthcare and Technology Leaders is focused on helping organizations across the ecosystem innovate to achieve sustained growth in performance outcomes. In addition to traditional strategy and technology advisory services, Health Start Partners has a portfolio of Launch Pad solutions that are designed to enable young organizations to drive growth efficiently and mature organizations to maximize the value of commercializing intellectual property. Learn more at www.healthstartpartners.com

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