Practice Leaders

John R. Prufeta

John Prufeta is Founder and Chairman of Agilence Health Advisors, LLC. Agilence is a national health care performance acceleration firm serving Academic Medical Centers, Health Information Technology organizations, Health Insurers/Consumer-Directed Plans, PBMs, Private Equity Firms, and Venture Firms. Agilence provides new ventures and established health care institutions with advanced tools to build revenue, products and human capital talent.

Prufeta is the former president and CEO of Medix Resources, a publicly-held company (AMEX:MXR) providing technologies that enable the secure communication of clinical, financial and administrative data between physicians and insurers, PBMs, hospitals and reference laboratories. Prufeta was recruited by the Board of Directors to lead this struggling, early stage organization in need of talent, capital, product and customers. Prior to his tenure as CEO, member of the Board of Directors, Prufeta recruited a new Board of Directors that included luminaries from the insurance, health systems, financial services and technology sectors. Led complete strategy review of Medix products, people, markets and positioning.

Mr. Prufeta was Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive of OnPoint Partners, Inc., a national health care services firm. OnPoint Partners is a boutique health care services firm providing health care payers, hospitals, physicians and technology organizations with a range of development services including new product development, interim and permanent executive talent, and network contracting. OnPoint was formerly The Creative Group.

Mr. Prufeta held the position of Managing General Partner of The Creative Group (TCG), the New York City-based holding company for three health care development companies. Prufeta co-founded The Creative Group in 1989.

Mr. Prufeta is a member of the Board of Trustees of New York Hospital of Queens, Silvercrest facility, where he serves as Chair of the Finance, Audit and Compliance Committees and is a member of the Executive Committee; and of Silvercrest Services, a for-profit home health care subsidiary of Silvercrest; and a member of the board of advisors of the National Managed Health Care Congress. Mr. Prufeta serves as a Director of Jobosaurus, an innovative job search technology company: and WallStreetJobs.com, an industry leading job search organization serving the Wall Street and Financial services communities. Additionally, he is an Adjunct Professor, Consortium on Managed Care at Fordham University School of Business. He is also a founding Committee Member of “America’s Huey” a not for profit organization dedicated to educating Americans about the achievements and sacrifices made by our Armed Forces. The committee purchased a Vietnam-era Huey helicopter, which was then donated to the Smithsonian Institution and appears as the central artifact in the “America at War” exhibit.

Prufeta is a graduate of the Harvard Executive Program OPM28 at the Harvard University Graduate School of Business. He holds a BS degree in Management from St. John’s University.

Jeffrey Weisberg, MD

Jeff Weisberg, MD is Agilence Health Advisors' Physician Initiatives Practice Leader. Jeff leads physician-related projects across all Agilence business lines. A graduate, with honors, of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, Jeff is a pioneer in the fields of emergency medicine and physician practice management methodologies. After medical school, Dr. Weisberg trained in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai and Stanford University Medical Centers.

Following training, Jeff pioneered the development of Emergency Medicine as a medical specialty. He served as Director of Emergency services and of all ambulatory services at major community hospitals in California, Washington D.C. and New York. During that period, he developed physician training programs, hired and fired physicians, and organized innovative programs to deliver first-rate services. Jeff also spearheaded one of the earliest sophisticated, pre-hospital paramedic services in the United States. While in the role of Emergency Department director, he developed processes to coordinate entire hospital staffs with the Emergency Department to establish referral and response systems.

Jeff co-founded DOCS, a model for capturing large volumes of patients for the primary and specialty physicians of the group and for testing and ancillary services. This was accomplished by strategically placing aesthetically attractive multi specialty centers over a large region in the Westchester and Manhattan counties. DOCS offered extended hour, seven day a week access to quality physicians. DOCS developed effective systems and procedures to coordinate specialists and specialty services with primary care services so that patients could receive most outpatient and hospital services within the practice. Within a few years, the DOCS managed several hundred physicians and over three thousand supporting employees. DOCS became nationally recognized as a high quality model for managing and integrating multi-specialty physician practices. Beth Israel Medical Center (now part of Continuum Health Partners) purchased DOCS as a centerpiece for their strategy to affiliate with a cadre of high quality physicians and access advanced practice management systems. Weisberg was retained by Continuum Health Partners to lead an innovative physician initiatives business unit designed to integrate referral, technology and physician recruiting methodologies developed at DOCS across all Continuum campuses. The physician initiatives unit was responsible for recruiting new voluntary and staff physicians, as well as implementing strategies to create synergies among physicians within the Continuum system. Weisberg implemented several effective initiatives including creating a unique physician service to facilitate referrals from across all specialties and campuses; New York Bone & Joint, a multiple hospital orthopedic venture to market and accrue more patients in unique ways; physician partnerships and real estate coordination; and the design and construction of new outpatient sites.

Jeff resides in both New York City and Connecticut. He is married with two grown children.

Patricia Minicucci

Brian S. Gould, MD

Dr. Gould has had an extensive career in international health care, health insurance and health care information technology.

Dr. Gould has headed the international divisions of the United HealthCare Corporation (NYSE:UNH) and WellPoint, Inc. (NYSE:WLP)

Dr. Gould began his career in the practice of clinical psychopharmacology medicine at the Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.  Subsequently, Dr. Gould held the position of SVP and Corporate Medical Director of Blue Cross of California (now WellPoint, Inc.) and was a key executive on the turn-around team reporting to Leonard Schaeffer.  He was recruited by United HealthCare to serve as Senior Vice President of Specialty Operations and subsequently, CEO of the Global Services Division.  Most recently, Dr. Gould was recruited back to WellPoint as Managing Director of the WorldWide Services Division of Arcus Enterprises Inc. (a wholly-owned subsidiary of WellPoint, Inc.).  He has extensive experience with health care joint ventures in the United States, the Republic of South Africa, the European Union, Hong Kong, Germany, China and India.

Since the late 1990’s, Dr. Gould has maintained an active consulting practice emphasizing innovative health care information technology companies. In this capacity, he has managed formal engagements with Discovery Health LLC, South Africa; Accel Partners (venture capital); McKessonHBOC (hospital systems); RxHub LLC, (electronic prescribing); NaviMedix Inc. (infrastructure for electronic communications between health plans and providers); the Medforma division of Ginality, Inc. (personal electronic health record and disease prevention); University of Washington, Dept. of Pharmaceutics; and MedDirect Health Benefits (electronic banking system for Health Savings Accounts).

Dr. Gould received his degrees, with honor, from Johns Hopkins University and the School of Medicine of the University of California at San Francisco.  He is a Diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

Aran Lawrence

Aran Lawrence is Chief of Staff of Agilence Health Advisors.  Prior to joining Agilence he was an analyst at Merrill Lynch, and a consultant at The Citigroup Private Bank.  He holds a B.A. degree in Economics from Hamilton College.

Louis Hyman

Mr. Hyman's health care information technology expertise comes from over 14 years in strategic technology roles and developing successful health care connectivity solutions, physician practice management systems, electronic prescribing applications and computerized order entry tools servicing physician practices, payers and nursing homes.

Mr. Hyman joined eHealth Solutions, Inc. as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. He is responsible for researching, establishing, and executing all technology and product strategies. eHealth Solutions develops and markets innovative, mobile point-of-care solutions for physician practices, hospitals, and long-term care facilities that enable physicians and other medical professionals to improve treatment outcomes, avert preventable medication errors, and significantly reduce administrative burden.

Mr. Hyman previously held executive and senior management positions at iDeal Technologies, Inc., WebMD and LaPook Lear Systems, Inc. along with starting his career as a Systems Engineer with IBM Corporation.

Mr. Hyman graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Computer Science from St. John's University. Mr. Hyman has been published in several health care industry publications, spoken at numerous health care information technology events and is regarded as a luminary in health care information technology.

Agilence Health Advisors is honored to have the following distinguished executives serving as Advisors to our organization. Each brings years of successful experience in the worlds of Health Care, Finance, Technology and Law. The Advisory Board acts as a valuable “force multiplier” for our executive team.

James Bode

Jim Bode has over 15 years of leadership experience in investment research, and has been a steady force in the distribution of research content for the investment banking community. With his guidance, research departments across the globe have been able to distribute their reports and data directly to the buy-side asset management/hedge fund market in real-time, where it is a critical ingredient in developing investment strategies. Additionally, Jim has helped create a secondary market for investment research by selling for it hard dollars on an embargoed basis to the financial and professional service communities as a research tool. Investment research is a cornerstone of several Thomson Financial products that are utilized by thousands of professional money managers, investment bankers and corporate executives on a daily basis.

Jim’s career also includes direct selling experience for Thomson Financial, Occidental Petroleum’s Parker Chemical Division, and Dow Chemical. In his most recent sales position, he managed the global, multi-million dollar Goldman Sachs account for Thomson Financial. Goldman Sachs currently purchases hundreds of databases and real-time exchange feeds for thousands of their employees around the globe.

Jim’s exceptional track record of business development is based on his philosophy of building a relationship with the client and solving problems. With a personal ethos of “make the client look good in their bosses eyes,” Jim has successfully developed loyal customers by understanding their needs and pain points, and then developing effective solutions.

Jim received his MA degree in Management from Georgetown University and BS degrees in Agricultural Economics and Poultry Science from Michigan State University. He is very active in his community, serving as a volunteer member of the Plandome Fire Department, an Assistant Scout Master for his local Boy Scout Troop, in his youth Jim earned his Eagle Badge, and he is a long time member of the National Ski Patrol. Skiing is Jim’s favorite pastime and one that he enjoys often with his wife and son.

Jonathan S. Bush

Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of AthenaHealth, Jonathan Bush began his career in healthcare as an EMT for the city of New Orleans, after which he founded a network of women's clinics in California. Currently chairman and chief executive officer of athenahealth, Bush founded the company to offer healthcare providers a comprehensive answer to their revenue cycle management needs.

Prior to AthenaHealth, Bush served as an associate with J. Bush & Company, Inc., an investment management firm, and as a consultant with Booz-Allen & Hamilton. As a founding member of Booz-Allen's Managed Care Strategy Group, he led a team in the creation and implementation of corporate growth strategies. Bush has spoken at numerous industry events, including the Eighth National HIPAA Summit, CHIM, TEPR, MGMA, the Symposium for eHealthcare Strategies, TIPAAA, AAMA, WONCA and Internet Healthcare 2000. Bush has also authored numerous articles, which have appeared in influential industry publications such as Group Practice Journal, Medical Group Management Journal, Managed Healthcare News, Health Management Technology, Advance for Health Information Executives and Health-IT World, among others.

Bush earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Wesleyan University and a master's degree with distinction in business administration from Harvard University.

Samuel Havens

Samuel Havens currently serves as a director and business development catalyst  for several leading-edge healthcare technology and services companies.  Previously, Mr. Havens served as President of Prudential Health Care, a national healthcare company with over $7 billion in revenue, where he was responsible for all health and dental operations.

While serving as President of Group Operations at Prudential, he led the company to recognition as the first national health plan network accredited by the National Committee on Quality Assurance (NCQA).  He designed and built the Prudential Research Center – a leader in the development of clinical outcome studies and consumer report cards – and created a joint venture with Rush Presbyterian Hospital to build a joint provider/insurer partnership in the Chicago marketplace. Prudential HealthCare grew to $7 billion of revenue, and 16,000 employees in markets throughout the United States. Mr. Havens received his Bachelor’s degree as well as a Juris Doctor degree from Temple University.

Zebadiah Kimmel, MD, MS

Zebadiah Kimmel is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Decision Systems Group of Harvard Medical School, and a Fellow in Medical Informatics in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He is a co-founder and Director of EZC Medical, LLC, an anesthesiology device company based in San Francisco.

Dr. Kimmel spent four months in 2004 as Visiting Fellow at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the US Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to attending medical school, he was the founder and CEO of Zebware, Inc., a software company that developed interactive technologies for the Web. He has developed software in realms such as online entertainment, digital television, cardiac imaging, and speech recognition, and his software won the Best of Show awards at both the 2001 and 2002 nationwide Cisco Convergence Expositions. He is a former Adjunct Lecturer in computer science at New York University.

Dr. Kimmel is currently pursuing the MBA degree at MIT's Sloan School of Management. He holds the M.D. degree from Northwestern University, where he received a Medical Scientist Training Fellowship grant from the NIH and a Keio University Medical School Scholarship for study in Tokyo, Japan; the M.S. degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and the B.A. in Math-Physics from Brown University, graduating Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and Sigma Xi. He resides in Boston.

Arthur Klein, MD

In May 2006, Dr. Klein accepted the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Physician Officer of Lifespan in Providence, Rhode Island and the position of Associate Dean for Strategic and Special Projects at Brown University Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island.

In 2005, Dr. Klein was promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System. In 2000, he assumed the role of Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System. He became a Senior Vice President for Clinical Affairs at The New York Hospital Care Network in 1995 and President of the New York Presbyterian Healthcare Network in 1997.

This System is comprised of 48 acute, sub-acute, long-term care and specialty health care campuses committed to create, where feasible, an integrated academic health care delivery system providing the highest quality and most cost effective medical care to the New York metropolitan region.  Dr. Klein oversees the integration of clinical activities and administrative activities for this commonwealth of medical institutions.  Dr. Klein served as Executive Vice Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell for 12 years and as Director of the Pediatric Department at the Hospital for Special Surgery for 11 years.

He has been in active practice in Pediatric Cardiology since 1976 with special interest in pediatric cardiac catheterization and pediatric hypertension.  He is currently a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics and Clinical Public Health at the Weill Cornell Medical College, and an attending pediatrician at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Dr. Klein completed his undergraduate training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology receiving a Bachelor of Natural Science in 1968.  He attended medical school at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center and subsequently completed an internship and residency in Pediatrics and a fellowship in Pediatric Cardiology at the New York Hospital – Cornell Medical Center.

Among his many healthcare industry responsibilities, Dr. Klein is Co-Chair of the National Committee on Quality Healthcare’s Pay for Performance Taskforce, Chairman of VHA Metro New York Organization and a member of VHA’s national Board and Chairman of the Hospital Association of New York State’s Statewide Steering Committee on Quality Initiatives, and is on the Board of Directors of the Shepton Mallett Treatment Centre Limited.

Peter Stingi

Peter Stingi is a Senior Vice President and Head of Client Human Resources Management for Merrill Lynch & Co. Peter has been with Merrill Lynch for the past 18 years and has served in various positions within the Human Resources group. Most recently, Peter was head of the Compensation & Benefits group. He has also been the Head of Human Resources for Merrill Lynch Investment Managers business.

Peter holds a B.S. in Communications from Ithaca College and an M.B.A. from San Diego State University. He also completed The General Manager Program at Harvard Business School.

Peter is married and has 3 children.

George Vecchione

George A. Vecchione, 59, is president and chief executive officer of Lifespan, a major New England health care system with four partners in Rhode Island.

Vecchione, a native of New York City, is a certified public accountant. He also holds a master’s degree in health care management systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY, and an undergraduate degree in accounting from St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY.

He began his career in 1967 with the accounting firm Haskins and Sells, and entered health care in 1970 as assistant director of finance with Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. In 1976, Vecchione began a 12-year period of service as president and chief executive officer of the New Rochelle Hospital Medical Center, a 481-bed teaching facility in Westchester County, NY.

In 1988, Vecchione was named executive vice president and director of The New York Hospital, a 1,077-bed acute care facility that is the principal teaching hospital of Cornell University Medical School. He was instrumental in the merger of The New York Hospital with Presbyterian Hospital (a 1,093-bed facility that is the principal teaching hospital for Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons) and was appointed executive vice president of The New York Presbyterian Healthcare System in 1997.

In Rhode Island, Mr. Vecchione serves as Chairman of the Board of the Rhode Island Quality Institute as well as serving as a member on the boards of the Hospital Association of Rhode Island, and the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council. He was appointed by the Governor to be member of the Governor’s Economic Policy Council. Mr. Vecchione was honored with Modern Healthcare Magazine’s 2003 CEO IT Achievement Award.

While in New York, Mr. Vecchione served as chairman of the board of the Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS). He is a recipient of one of the highest awards of the American College of Healthcare Executives, the Regents Award for Senior Level Executives. A Fellow in the Healthcare Financial Management Association, he was honored by the organization’s William G. Follner and Robert H. Reeves merit awards for outstanding service. Mr. Vecchione also has been recognized as the United Way’s Man of the Year.

Mr. Vecchione and his wife, Melanie, have two grown children.

Headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, Lifespan was formed in August 1994 by the merger of Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital, two principal teaching affiliates of the Brown University School of Medicine. Current Lifespan partners are Rhode Island Hospital and its Hasbro Children’s Hospital, The Miriam Hospital, Bradley Hospital, and Newport Hospital. From 1997 through November 2000, Tufts-New England Medical Center was also a member of the system.