A senior TennCare executive will take over as CEO of primary care provider Neighborhood Health on Oct. 1.
Brian Haile will take over the helm at Neighborhood Health, which runs 11 Nashville clinics that serve 30,000 people, from longtime leader Mary Bufwack, who has led the organization for 29 years. Bufwack will stay on in an advisory role as CEO emeritus through the end of the year.
“When Mary announced her retirement earlier this year, we knew it would be a challenge to find someone to fill her shoes,” said Scott Mertie, president of Kraft Healthcare Consulting, Neighborhood Health board member and chairman of its CEO search committee. “After a national search, we were able to find Brian in our own community. His experience at TennCare will bring an aspect to Neighborhood Health that we have not had in the past.”
Until this summer, Haile was deputy chief operating officer at the Bureau of TennCare, where he worked with federal officials and the InsureTN plan, among other things. From early 2013 till the spring of 2014, he was senior vice president for health care policy at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service and before that was executive director of the Insurance Exchange Planning Initiative for the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration.
“Nashville leans heavily on Neighborhood Health,” Haile said, pointing to the growing number of people struggling with high deductibles or working jobs without insurance coverage. “Knowing both Mary Bufwack’s amazing reputation and the important impact this organization has on Nashville, I knew right away I wanted to join the team.”
In addition to its Nashville footprint, Neighborhood Health also runs two mobile health units and clinics in Hartsville and Lebanon.
Date: Sep 13, 2017