Why Partner With Rural Health Solutions? In a Word... EXPERIENCE!
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30 years of experience with more than 200 hospitals and ambulatory care organizations improving operating margin through increased access, improved care experience and quality as well as reliable staffing across North America
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Provision of interim and permanent leadership, provider, and nursing/ support staffing to more than 30 rural hospitals
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Physician-led organization with senior hospital and nurse leadership team members​
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National leadership experience in Emergency Departments, Perioperative Services, Urgent Care, and Ambulatory Services care redesign and provider compensation models
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National leadership in establishing Primary, Urgent and Specialty Care Telehealth Services programs for more than 50 hospitals/healthcare organizations
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National leadership in CMS quality program development and performance measures
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National leadership in Rural Emergency Hospital Assessment and Conversion
Michael Hill, MD - President & Chief Executive Officer
Michael Hill, MD is an accomplished healthcare executive with 25 years of consulting experience and success, employing polished operations and clinical care redesign, technology and analytics development, and leadership acumen. His specific focus is on developing accelerated strategic plans, optimizing contribution margins through operational and clinical care variation reductions across the hospital and ambulatory care environment, hospital operations process transformation, and physician alignment. He demonstrates expansive and relevant experience directing healthcare organizations (190+ national clients) through today’s financial landscape with improved clinical operations, quality, satisfaction, and outcomes.
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Michael has deep technology experience with incorporation of clinical standards and decision support tools into electronic health records (EHRs) across all major specialty medical groups, as well as home health and population health. He has developed clinical pathways from the ambulatory to the acute care setting to post-acute care environment for more than 40 hospitals and health systems. He has worked with the top 5 EHRs in developing order sets, Best Practice Alerts, and monitoring and analytics systems for more than 100 hospitals.
Michael is a residency-trained emergency physician with 15+ years of clinical practice, directing operations for a 52-hospital emergency medicine group. His professional career has focused on hospital and clinical operations redesign, patient safety, best practice introduction, and ensuring established hospital and ambulatory medical practices operate at top quartile performance.
John Shufeldt, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP - Interim Chief Medical Officer
John Shufeldt has nearly three decades of experience leading high performing teams and being a thought leader and agent of change in the delivery of healthcare, entrepreneurism and leadership.
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John received his BA from Drake University in 1982 and his MD from the University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School in 1986. He completed his Emergency Medicine Residency at Christ Hospital and Medical Center in 1989 where he spent his final year as Chief Resident. John received his MBA in 1995, and his Juris Doctorate in 2005, both from Arizona State University. He is admitted to the State Bar in Arizona, the Federal District Court and Supreme Court of the United States. His certifications include Fellow, American Board of Emergency Medicine, College of Legal Medicine and American College of Emergency Physicians. In 2015, he completed his Six Sigma Black Belt from the Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University. In 2019, he completed a certificate program in Artificial Intelligence at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
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John founded NextCare Inc. in 1993 as well as numerous other health and non-health care businesses over the course of his career. He served as NextCare’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board until 2010. Under John’s leadership, NextCare grew from a single clinic to 60 clinics in six states with revenue of nearly $100 million. He is the business manager and one of the founding partners of Empower Emergency Physicians and continues to practice emergency medicine at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.
In 2010, John left NextCare and founded MeMD, LLC. At present, MeMD is used by more than 300 medical and mental health providers in 50 states to virtually treat patients on-demand and in the comfort of their home or place of work. At present, MeMD has nearly 5 million subscribers enrolled. MeMD was acquired by Walmart in 2021.
John is the CEO of Tribal EM, a hospital and emergency department consulting, management and provider/nurse staffing company which works exclusively with more than 30 Tribal facilities across the county.
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Susan Nedza, MD, MBA, MLA, FACEP - Chief Medical Informatics Officer
With health policy leadership and recognition at the specialty, state, and federal level over the last 3 decades, Susan leads Rural Health Solutions’ rural health policy development, as well as our hospital and ambulatory quality/analytics programs.
As a CMS Chief Medical Officer, Susan worked closely with Critical Access Hospitals and Tribal Health Systems in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. As the VP of Quality and Patient Safety for the American Medical Association, Susan led the development of measures for value-based payment models for physicians and health systems. And, most recently, Susan was technical expert for developing the Physician Focused Payment Model, the Acute Unscheduled Care Model, for emergency services. This model will align with the Rural Emergency Hospital legislation currently being implemented by CMS.
Susan has over three decades of experience as a leader in designing, researching, and implementing the compliant government and private payer value-based programs that impact hospitals, outpatient facilities, emergency departments, SNFs and ambulance providers. She has been recognized for her work by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the American Medical Association, and the American College of Emergency Physicians.
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Susan received her BS from Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, and her MD from Loyola-Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago. She completed her emergency medicine residency at Christ Hospital and Medical Center and served on its faculty through 2001. In 2014, she became Board Certified in Clinical Informatics by the American Board of Preventive Medicine. She received her MBA from The Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University in 2001. She was awarded the Master of Liberal Arts degree from the University of Chicago in 2019. In 2021, she completed certificate programs in Global Health Delivery and Teaching Higher Education through HarvardX.
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Susan served as a Chief Medical Officer at CMS from 2003-2008. In this role, she served the critical need to facilitate communication between the agency and Medicare and Medicaid providers. In 2007, she was selected to join a team of experts charged with implementing the Hospital Acquired Infection, Hospital Value-based Purchasing, the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, and the Hospital Readmission Reduction programs. She received the CMS Administrator’s Citation for this work in 2008. After leaving CMS, she became the Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety at the American Medical Association. She built upon these experiences to become an expert in the development, approval, and adoption of new payment models across the health care system for all specialties. This expertise led to her appointment in 2021, as the Chair of the Technical Expert Panel tasked by the CMS contractor, Acumen LLC with the development of cost measures that will likely be incorporated across CMS alternative payment programs.
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In 2017, Susan successfully created a new payment model that was mandated by federal law as she envisioned, designed, and built the Acute Unscheduled Care Model for emergency services. The model is under consideration for integration into CMS population health-based alternative payment models.
Luwanna LaPole - Senior Vice President of Business Development and Operations
Luwanna LaPole is a dynamic, forward-thinking healthcare executive with progressively responsible leadership experience in developing excellence and profitability for organizations through effective strategies, solid partnerships and allocation of capital. She is a transformational leader in high growth arenas, adept at building and leading award-winning teams and creating business and clinical environments in which patients and employees thrive and healthcare entities see significant growth.
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Luwanna has experience within the healthcare provider, payor, GPO and medical device arenas, including large-scale health systems, multi-specialty medical groups, a large national insurance carrier and fortune 500 bio-technology companies.
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She has held strategic executive leadership positions in national healthcare network development at UnitedHealthcare, Alliance Healthcare Services and Vizient/Mayo Clinic executing Physician, Board and C-Suite engagement strategies, and increasing contract adoption, Joint Ventures, and optimization.
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During her tenure as the Director on UnitedHealthcare’s National Network Strategy & Innovation team, she partnered with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and developed Value Based Contracting and Accountable Care Organization (ACO) performance standards which were rolled out to the nation.
Healthcare service line executive oversight included Providence Healthcare’s premier Swedish Neuroscience Institute, Seattle WA, which provides world-class care and research for patients with brain, spine and central nervous system disorders, North Memorial Healthcare, Minneapolis MN, which encompassed multi-site oncology and radiology, a JV at a Critical Access Hospital (CAH) and end to end revenue cycle management, as well as healthcare consulting engagements.
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Additionally Luwanna has held pivotal market development roles for medical devices in the cardiac, peripheral vascular, male and female pelvic health and renal/dialysis markets for Medtronic, American Medical Systems and GraftCath (now HemoSphere).
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Luwanna holds an MBA and an MPH from the University of Minnesota and is a published research author. Professional affiliations include the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE), the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC), the University of Minnesota Technology Commercialization Venture Center and Senior Executive Virtual Roundtables.
Faith Allard, MBA - Director of Legislative Affairs
Faith is a member of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Michigan. She holds a master’s degree in business administration from Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, Alaska where she graduated with honors.
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As Director of Legislative Affairs, Faith leads Rural Health Solutions' relationships with State Rural Health Departments and Associations to ensure that our organization’s capabilities and approach meet the unique needs of each state’s rural hospital system. She also works with rural health organizations on funding and organizational development and performs grant identification and writing for our clients.
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Faith’s career includes over two decades of healthcare administration in the rural health setting, including leadership roles in the Tribal Health System, the State of Alaska Department of Health and Social Services as the State Rural Hospital Flex Director, Steering Committee Member for CMS demonstration projects (FESC) and participation at the federal level for unique and innovative healthcare delivery to the most rural of communities, that provided her with a profound understanding of health care industry business practices, tribal self-governance, and rural healthcare delivery.
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While serving as the Rural Hospital Flex Director, Faith provided a communication conduit between rural hospitals and state/federal funding sources and developed a strong network within the state and across the nation that provided direct resources to over a dozen Critical Access Hospitals.
OUR VISION & MISSION
We help rural healthcare organizations make their community members' lives better. We do this through increasing healthcare access to services, improving staffing capability and client loyalty, and ensuring health system financial viability.
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Rural Health Solutions provides superior and meaningful consulting, interim management and staffing to address the unique needs of rural healthcare systems so that they can improve the lives of rural Americans.
OUR VALUES
Clients Come First
We measure our success by our clients’ success. We make all of our resources available to our clients. In trade-offs between RHCS and a client’s interest, the client comes first.
Integrity
We represent our capabilities honestly. We observe appropriate confidentiality of client information. We only make promises we can keep.
Partnership
We take the long term view in our relationships. We know that teamwork and cooperation are essential to our success both as a firm and as individuals. We build bonds founded on respect, caring, honesty, mutual support, and investment. We work together in a manner that is team oriented, constructive, and challenging.
Impact
We are passionate about making a difference and take initiative to have a lasting impact on the hospitals and healthcare systems we serve.
Humility
While confident in our abilities, we realize that our current knowledge is just that. We yearn to learn, discover, and create.
Inclusion
We embrace different perspectives and draw on the strength of diversity.
Value Delivered
We deliver tangible and positive change to ensure our clients receive many multiples of their investment. We enhance client capabilities and deliver both competitive advantage and bottom-line impact.
Intellectual Curiosity
As lifelong learners, we explore and encourage new ideas and challenge the status quo to improve health care delivery.