NEW YORK (March 29, 2022) – Yuvo Health, a leading technology-enabled administrative and managed-care solution for community health centers, today announced the expansion of its population-health program’s leadership team: Lora Council, MD, MPH, MHCM, is Chief Population Health Officer; Michelle Garde, MPA, is Head of Value Analytics; and Angela Spanos, BSN, NE-BC, RN-BC, is Head of Quality.
Earlier this year, Yuvo Health announced a $7.3 million seed round of funding to expand its initial program in downstate New York, develop proprietary technology tools and platform, and strengthen partnerships with FQHCs in the greater New York area and beyond. Creating this new team demonstrates the organization's commitment to scaling population-health programs and resources for their FQHC partners.
Leading the program will be Chief Population Health Officer, Dr. Lora Council who, throughout her 15-year career in healthcare, has honed her expertise in person-centered, care-delivery improvement across complicated healthcare systems. In her role at Yuvo Health, she will be responsible for implementing innovative, quality-driven initiatives and ensuring a culture of continuous quality improvement throughout Yuvo Health's Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) partner locations in the downstate New York market and beyond. Previously, Dr. Council served as President of Medical Staff at Cambridge Health Alliance, an academic, public-health, safety-net system that is focused on health equity. As CHA's Vice President and Senior Medical Director of primary care, she led a dozen community health clinics catering to 120,000 patients to succeed in value-based care models. Earlier in her career, Dr. Council was a practicing physician for Dartmouth Hitchcock Health, after receiving her MD degree from UMass Chan Medical School.
“Population-health improvements result from combining data and evidence-based best practices into useful tools that address the health needs of individuals, served by our client health centers,” said Dr. Council. “Improvement science designs and enables systems-of-care to achieve desired results, and I’m thrilled to join the Yuvo Health team which shares my passion for optimizing these systems to improve the health equities of underserved communities.”
Rounding out the company’s population-health leadership team are Michelle Garde and Angela Spanos. As Yuvo Health’s Head of Value Analytics, Garde brings over 20 years of expertise as a value-based architect, healthcare strategist, and risk-adjustment advisor. An advocate for value-based arrangements to drive cost savings, reduce operation deficiencies, and improve quality performance, she joins most recently from EmblemHealth, where she served as Director of Value-Based Contracting, managing a team of provider network operations managers and clinical advisors. And as Yuvo’s Health’s Head of Quality, Spanos will bring her 30 years of leadership experience in nursing, operations, quality management, and primary care to bear as she develops and implements quality programs directly with our FQHC partners. Prior to Yuvo Health, she was Director of Primary Care Operations Support at Cambridge Health Alliance, where she worked with Dr. Council.
“We are so honored to have Dr. Lora Council at the helm, leading our population-health programming,” said Cesar Herrera, CEO and co-founder of Yuvo Health. “We know our FQHC partners are already providing quality, community-centric care, but health plans rarely recognize their efforts. With collective leadership from Lora, Michelle, and Angela, Yuvo Health is poised to systematize this work, enabling our FQHCs to thrive in a world of value-based care.”
About Yuvo Health:
Launched in January 2021, Yuvo Health was founded in New York City by a fully BIPOC team with the common goal of bringing fair, quality care to underserved communities. A team that shares first-hand experience of the impact quality health care can make, strive to instill more compassionate care within healthcare systems. Yuvo Health is continuously proving their innovation and reliability by providing an industry-leading product of administrative and managed-care contracting solutions to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC). Yuvo aims to relieve administrative pressure from FQHCs to allow them to focus completely on providing quality care to communities in need. While continuing to serve the downstate New York market, Yuvo anticipates providing their services across New York, the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic regions. For more information, please visit www.yuvohealth.com.
