The Cornell Health Policy Center organized its first Business Leaders Roundtable in New York City last week with the aim of engaging senior industry leaders from the health care sector with existing and upcoming research on topics like Medicare Advantage, Medicaid reform, and prescription drug pricing.

“These are people with an incredible amount of knowledge and experience who are working in organizations where policy changes can have a critical effect on their ability to serve patients,” said Sean Nicholson, Professor of Economics and Health Policy at the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and Associate Director of the Cornell Health Policy Center. “We want our research to be useful to them, and we want to harness their expertise as we develop new research initiatives.”

The format of the CHPC Business Leaders Roundtable is an open, collaborative discussion between industry leaders and Cornell faculty. For faculty, the goal is to identify new research ideas, help interpret emerging results, and spark deeper and more rigorous analyses. For business leaders, the goal is to learn about the research process and identify under explored health policy areas.

Last week’s event featured discussions of Medicare Advantage reimbursement policies, Medicare prescription drug policies, and broader health policy topics and engaged a mix of senior business leaders on the provider and insurer sides of the healthcare industry. Business leaders in attendance were: Alan Lieber, former President of Overlook Medical Center, Atlantic Health System; Amy Mulderry, President of CarelonRx, Elevance Health; Clive Fields, co-founder and former CMO of VillageMD; Dan Grauman, Managing Director, VMG Health; Gary Grossfeld, Vice President of Physician Enterprise and Business Development for Centralus Health; Gokhan Metan, Co-Founder & Chairman of the Board, WiseCareAI Inc. and MedPAC Commissioner; John Hui Co-Founder, Twiage and Rendr; Rachel Miller, Principal, Deloitte; Mark O'Hern President, WVU Medicine; Tim Barry, co-founder and past CEO of VillageMD; and Tommy Ibrahim President and CEO, Sanford Health Plan.

“Our goal is to create deeper connections between industry leaders and researchers in ways that help both sides generate new and better policy ideas,” said Amelia Bond, associate professor of health policy and economics at Weill Cornell Medicine and Associate Director of the CHPC. “Whether we’re looking at real time changes to large programs like Medicare Advantage or into the future at issues that are just taking shape, it’s important that researchers and healthcare leaders are connected.”

Established last year, CHPC is a partnership between Weill Cornell Medicine and the Brooks School of Public Policy and serves as the locus of health policy impact, research, and training at Cornell. The Center brings together the strong cadre of health policy researchers across Cornell to pursue the mission of using evidence to shape effective health policy at the federal, state, local, and organization levels.

The next CHPC Business Leaders Roundtable will take place in 2026.