CVAUSA Leadership

About Tim Attebery

Dr. Tim Attebery is the CEO of Cardiovascular Associates of America (CVAUSA). He and Webster Equity Partners founded CVAUSA in 2021 and designed this premier network with the common goal of bringing together leading cardiovascular group practices that provide the best patient care to individuals with heart and vascular disease.

At CVAUSA, Attebery has created a business model that enables cardiovascular specialists to retain autonomy and ownership augmented by sharing best practices, executive management support, and financial support for major projects and expansion. Practices within the network will continue to drive all clinical decisions, manage regional operations, maintain their physician compensation plan, and be highly involved in strategic planning and execution at a national level.

Previously, Dr. Attebery was the CEO of the American College of Cardiology and MedAxiom. Before taking the helm at the ACC, he served as the President/CEO of Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, Tennessee, with oversight responsibilities for HVMC Main Campus, HVMC’s 10 outpatient locations, Hawkins County Memorial Hospital in Rogersville, and Hancock County Hospital in Sneedville. Prior to his HVMC role, Dr. Attebery was the System Vice-President of Cardiovascular Services for Wellmont Health System and CEO of Cardiovascular Associates.

He has 36 years of healthcare consulting and senior management experience including serving as the CEO of three large cardiovascular group practices. He served as the President of the Cardiology Advocacy Alliance for two years; CAA is a not-for-profit organization providing federal lobbying and advocacy for 7,000 cardiologists nationwide. He was instrumental in the initial founding of MedAxiom and the Society of Cardiovascular CT. He has authored/co-authored numerous published articles on hospital mergers, strategic planning, advanced cardiac imaging, emerging healthcare services, and healthcare IT.

He has a BS degree in Business Administration from Western Governors University; an MBA from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Haslam College of Business; and a doctoral degree in healthcare leadership from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is a Fellow of, and board certified in healthcare administration by, the American College of Healthcare Executives.

Dr. Attebery is an adjunct faculty member at East Tennessee State University and a guest lecturer at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Dr. Dan Blumenthal brings a unique combination of business leadership skills and medical expertise to his role as President of the Novocardia Division. Dr. Blumenthal is a practicing board-certified non-invasive cardiologist and an instructor at Harvard Medical School.

He received his MD and MBA degrees from Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School and trained in internal medicine and cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Blumenthal is a past recipient of the American Heart Association’s Laennec Young Clinician Award and an accomplished health services and cardiovascular disease outcomes researcher whose previous work has focused on innovations in payment model design, quality improvement in cardiology, and leadership development. He has published over 50 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Blumenthal previously was a member of the founding team at Devoted Health, where he held the roles of Associate Chief Medical Officer and Medical Director for the health plan.

About Fang Xia

Fang Xia comes from US Anesthesia Partners (USAP), Florida region, where she served as chief financial officer driving its financial strategy and performance since 2018. USAP is a private equity-backed physician-led healthcare company. Xia brings more than 17 years of extensive finance and accounting leadership experience, primarily in healthcare through partnering with physicians and administrative leaders. Xia is a CPA and holds a Master of Accountancy from Cleveland State University.

About Tom Schwallie

Tom Schwallie brings 20+ years of highly successful M&A leadership to CVAUSA, and for the past 15 years, he has exclusively focused on the healthcare vertical.

Prior to joining CVAUSA, Tom was the Chief Growth Officer at Duly Health and Care in Chicago, Illinois. There he developed corporate infrastructure and processes for inorganic growth initiatives and created a national pipeline of potential targets. He is a self-starter and succeeds in a fast-paced environment while being a tremendous team player.

Schwallie holds his undergraduate degree from Southern Methodist University and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Tom is a founding member of the non-profit organization, Making Life Better, a 70-person volunteer organization focusing on maximizing a positive financial impact on the local needs of the community. Making Life Better is in Glenview, Illinois where Tom resides.

About Jack Sunderman

Throughout his tenured career, Sunderman has provided strategic direction to executive management on technology and implementing robust enterprise-wide solutions. He has managed multi-national teams with the ability to prioritize, delegate and bring sound solutions to the table. Sunderman provides IT strategy and solutions and guidance and partners with the physician and administrative leaders of the CVAUSA network.

About Lori Jackson

Lori Jackson is a senior leader in the cardiovascular field providing financial, operational oversight, and direction to CVAUSA.

With deep roots in Tennessee, she was instrumental in the recently formed Ballad Health System which was a merger of Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health System forming one alliance that included 21 hospitals serving 29 counties in the Appalachian Highlands of Northwest Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, Northwest North Carolina and Southeast Kentucky. Lori understands the intricacies of working with heart centers, and Ballad Health offers two major heart centers that provide open heart, RAVR, EKOS, and diverse interventions including ECMO including 15 cardiac cath labs with 61 cardiac providers.

Jackson holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Management from Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tennessee.

About Irene Gilchrist

Irene C. Gilchrist is a financial leader with extensive experience in not-for-profit and for-profit healthcare accounting and auditing. With more than a decade of accounting and finance experience, she has been successful in implementing strategic and operational initiatives to drive organizational impact.

Prior to joining CVAUSA, Irene worked at UF Health as the Controller overseeing the accounting department. She has over nine years of audit experience with PwC focusing on healthcare and investment companies. Irene is a CPA and holds a Master of Accountancy from the University of Florida.

About Anne Beekman

Anne Beekman joins CVAUSA with more than 30 years of experience including roles in cardiovascular nursing, hospital administrator, consultant, and industry solutions. At the heart, Anne is passionate about developing and implementing new programs that optimize resources and ultimately improve patient outcomes. She is a driven professional that prides herself in work where she can influence quality, outcomes, and cost around care delivery.

Prior to joining CVAUSA, Anne served at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI where she was a clinical nurse and administrator responsible for cardiovascular care in both inpatient and procedural areas. After working in the hospital space Anne worked for MedAxiom and Terumo Health Outcomes.

About Travis Stamper

Travis Stamper has more than 30 years of healthcare experience, including leadership in the acute care setting, cardiovascular service line management, and strategic consulting in the cardiovascular space.  

Prior to joining CVAUSA, Stamper partnered with physicians to create two, de novo, cardiovascular-specific ambulatory surgery centers.  During his time on this two-year project, he was highly involved in every aspect of this assignment from concept to completion.  Additionally, he was previously retained to assist with negotiations of ownership arrangements between other independent physicians, a large cardiology group, and a cardiovascular-specific ASC management company, Cardiovascular Centers of America (CCA).    

Stamper is a well-rounded individual as both a leader and clinician which allows him to make the most informed decisions.  He is a trained cardiovascular invasive specialist (Cath Lab, EP, Interventional Radiology, Hybrid OR) and a licensed and registered Respiratory Therapist in Utah and Florida and holds a BS and MBA in healthcare administration from Western Governors University.  

About Susan Colby

Colby has worked in the healthcare finance field for thirty years.  As a veteran in the industry, Colby has extensive experience in budgeting, financial analysis, forecasting, productivity reporters, and staffing modeling. She has worked collaboratively with the clinical and operations teams in the hospital environment to improve both operational and financial performance.

Prior to joining CVAUSA she most recently worked at a 186-bed hospital in Massachusetts where she oversaw the Financial Planning and Analysis function for the past seven years.  Colby prides herself as a team player and mentor, in addition to jumping in to find sound solutions that deliver to the bottom line. 

About Niki Patel

Nikita Patel is a meticulous healthcare professional who has developed and executed strategic health program initiatives to increase efficiency, improve patient care, and assure regulatory compliance. Niki is an analytical thinker with a strategic mindset who conducts thoughtful analysis and makes educational decisions to help in operational development.

She has a robust background in healthcare and business administration, as well as a polished ability to create key relationships at all levels of an organization.  Being a collaborative leader, Niki is capable of teaching and onboarding personnel, developing teams, clinical resource management, and aligning resources to achieve operational excellence.

About Brad Tillman

Brad Tillman has vast experience in the finance and accounting field. With more than 35 years of practice, he specializes in data analytics, budgeting, and forecasting, in addition to accounts receivable management and process improvement. Tillman's skill set in finance coupled with his deep cardiovascular experience is in great alignment with CVAUSA. Prior to CVAUSA, he was controller at Prairie Cardiovascular Consultants in Springfield, Illinois where he prepared financial statements, aggregated data for board reports as well as conducted CPT and RVU analysis.

Tillman is a mission-oriented team member who constantly pushes himself to enhance and innovate existing processes. He has an eye for detail in every project he manages and prides himself on being an effective communicator.

About Lori VanderBoegh

With more than 20 years of healthcare experience, Lori brings great knowledge and learnings to CVAUSA in her position as Director of Provider Recruitment.  She has a particular focus on healthcare Executive, Clinical Leadership, and Physician Search in specialty hospitals and private equity portfolio companies. VanderBoegh creates and nurtures collaborative relationships to engage top clinical and non-clinical talent.

Prior to joining CVAUSA, VanderBoegh partnered with a National Specialty five Hospital System and its portfolio companies as well as an eleven Hospital System. As a retained search consultant, she supported their organizational talent strategy to build the Clinical leadership and Physician pipelines across their enterprises. 

When not working, VanderBoegh is passionate about supporting the needs of foster children and at-risk youth transitioning out of the foster care system as both a volunteer and Board Member of Monroe Harding in Nashville, TN. 

About Jeff Ozmon

Jeff Ozmon joins CVAUSA as a Senior Consultant with more than 25 years of healthcare industry experience service health systems, hospitals, medical groups, and academic institutions. For the past year, Jeff served as the Director of Operation for a private equity startup VitalSkin Dermatology, where Jeff and his team help to develop the operational handbook for new Dermatology practices. Prior to that Jeff served as the Senior VP for Atrium Heath leading the Primary Care Division.

Ozmon has great expertise in workforce planning, strategic planning clinical care re-design, hospital-physician alignment, service line development, operational efficiency, revenue cycle management, physician compensation design, and organizational/governance design. Ozmon holds an MBA from Averett University and is a Certified Practice Executive since 2009.

About Denise Brown

Denise Brown is a tenured healthcare leader with a proven record of implementing sustainable operational excellence, exceeding financial goals, optimizing clinical delivery mechanisms, and developing strong physician and organizational support; all to ultimately achieve the delivery of exceptional patient care.

In addition to her operational skills, she has been a CV program developer with clinical design, budget, physical build, recruitment, and patient acquisition experience. This rich background including physician recruitment and clinical resource management expertise will be instrumental to her role at CVAUSA. 

Prior to joining CVAUSA, Brown worked at Reset Healthcare Consulting (“RHC”), where she built a consulting service focusing on the exclusive project needs of healthcare cardiology clients requiring customized organization or process redesign services. At RHC, she achieved a 200% growth of physician new patient intakes and optimized APP use by 100% within seven months to meet the demographic growth and financial requirements of a national health system.

About Brian Tolin

Tolin has worked in the healthcare finance field for many years and prides himself on being highly motivated with the ability to consistently seek out improvements to current processes and be solutions-oriented. He regularly demonstrates his deep knowledge of auditing practices and procedures to provide advice and guidance appropriately. With his strong interpersonal skills, he has the skill set to influence, impact, and lead while adjusting to a new work-from-home model including working across many geographies where his team resides. 

About Ed Bassin

Ed Bassin, Ph.D brings more than 30 years of experience to CVAUSA. Bassin is a nationally recognized expert in alternative payment models for healthcare delivery. He will spearhead CVAUSA’s vision to develop and implement a new payment model which will greatly reduce the overall cost of cardiovascular care.

Most recently, Bassin has served as the President of Value-Based Long-Term Care and developed analytic models to help LabCorp and several physician practices with alternative payment models in oncology. His pioneering methods for extracting meaningful information from claims data include ways to measure efficiency, risk, and quality. Bassin also is a thought leader in the bundled payment area, participating in many task forces and national groups including the Health Care Payment Learning Action Network’s Clinical Episode Payment work group.

About Larry Johnston

Larry Johnston is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Strategic Foresight Healthcare. He has over 30 years of experience as a chief executive leading cardiovascular delivery services with cardiologists, cardiothoracic surgeons, and cardiac anesthesiologists. His experiences include managing private cardiovascular practices, health system employed cardiovascular specialists, and the health system’s multispecialty physician network.

Prior to Strategic Foresight, Johnston managed the cardiovascular service line at Huntsville Health System, the 5th largest non-profit health system in the US. While at Huntsville Health System, he was responsible for all administrative aspects including strategy, quality, finance, and operations.

About Scott Holbrook

Scott Holbrook is Chief Strategy Officer and General Manager at PharmaLogic Holdings. In this role, Holbrook is responsible for overseeing the strategic direction and execution of diagnostic and therapeutic drug products. He specializes in facilitating the translation of novel precision medicine technology from the bench to the clinical setting through unique professional experience and leadership. Holbrook will consult for CVAUSA and partner with the executive team to further understand radiopharmaceuticals and the interesting role they play in heart disease and how to bring those findings to clinicians.

Dr. Julius Torelli ensures patients receive the highest quality care available through innovative clinical programs transforming the practice of cardiology. Certified in both internal medicine and cardiovascular disease, Dr. Torelli spent over 20 years practicing cardiology in the Piedmont area of North Carolina.

He also founded the Integrative Cardiology Center in High Point, NC, and served as Chief of Cardiovascular Services at eviCore healthcare, a division of Cigna Inc. He completed his MD at the University of South Florida College of Medicine and his internal medicine residency and fellowship in cardiovascular disease at the Cleveland Clinic.

Jeff leads strategy and execution for the Novocardia Division's data, analytics, and point-of-care solutions. He previously served as Vice President of Analytics at New Century Health, Senior Director of Statistics at FAIR Health, and Senior Statistician at the UCLA Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics.

Jeff received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Irvine, an MPH from Columbia University, and a PhD and MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Katherine Evans oversees operations of clinical programs for the Novocardia Division, including implementing new initiatives, training and managing clinical personnel, and developing case management programs.

Dr. Evans is a nurse practitioner with board certifications in geriatrics and hospice & palliative care, as well as experience in inpatient and outpatient cardiology.

Prior to joining the Novocardia Division of CVAUSA, she served as national president of the Gerontological Advanced Practice Nurses Association (GAPNA); Chief Nursing Officer for UnitedHealthcare Retiree Solutions; and Director of the Doctor of Nursing Practice program at Georgia State University. A Fellow of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, she received her MS in Nursing from Emory University and her DNP from Vanderbilt University.

Jonathan Collins is the Chief Operations Officer of the Novocardia Division, leading value-based strategy, product, and operations.

He previously worked at Strive, a value-based kidney care company, where he served as SVP of Operations and Managing Director of Market Operations for Evolent Health.

Jon received his B.S. in information and communications technologies from Michigan State University.

Ben is Vice President of Corporate Development for the Novocardia Division. He is responsible for leading corporate development initiatives, including M&A, de novo growth, and market expansion opportunities.

Prior to joining our team, Ben led business development activities at CareCentrix and was a Consultant at the Advisory Board Company. Ben holds received his undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland, where he ran varsity track and field, and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Brian is a highly experienced IT leader who brings proficiency in design, development, and administration of technology infrastructure and applications to his role as Vice President, IT & Business Systems for the Novocardia Division.

He has held a number of leadership positions in IT across multiple industries, including health care. He most recently served as Director of IT Operations at Seniorlink, where he was responsible for providing strategic guidance on all corporate infrastructure, cloud, security, and service desk services.

He earned an MBA from Whittemore School of Business & Economics (now the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics) at the University of New Hampshire and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Dickinson College.

Ana is Vice President of Contracting & VBA Partnerships for the Novocardia Division, where she is responsible for leading contract strategies and negotiations with Commercial payers and risk provider groups.

Highly focused on fee-for-value contracting, provider performance improvement, and management services operations, Ana has more than 30 years of experience in the health care industry – including payer reimbursement models, government shared saving programs, IPAs, and Medicare Risk Adjustments.

Prior to joining our team, she served in several leadership roles with a multi-specialty group and accountable care organization. Ana received her undergraduate degree in business from Florida International University and is a licensed professional medical coder.

As the Vice President of Central Operations, Jesse focuses on evolving strategic administrative functions that will support long-term growth and empower clinicians to deliver high-quality patient care and outcomes. She is a dedicated leader with over 30 years of experience helping organizations grow and form successful integrative relationships.

Prior to joining our team, Jesse led the Integration Management Office at United Urology Group and served as Lead Marketing Manager at T. Rowe Price, and Training Manager at Discovery Communications. She earned her BA in Psychology from Washington College.