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2 6 C T I N N O V A T O R S , 2 0 2 5 "If we want to fix health care, we need to recognize that clinicians need to lead." — Lisa Trumble do think the physician community sees this as a challenge and a prob- lem for their ability to really innovate and deliver care." One of her boldest moves was leading a decision to end SoNE's affiliation with Trinity Health Of New England in 2024 to become an independent, 100% doctor-owned healthcare group. "We hit a pivotal point in the organization where the hospital strate- gies that the hospital system had and the physicians had were entirely different, and the board voted to separate," she said. Trumble has also introduced innovative direct-to-employer health- care contracts. e deals aim for more transparency and control by cutting out the middlemen — namely insurance companies — and allowing companies to contract directly with SoNE for value-based healthcare services. Blue-collar roots Growing up in western Massachusetts, Trumble never imagined be- coming a healthcare leader. Her parents worked for defense manufac- turers — her mother at Sprague Electric and her father at GE — and as a teen, she thought she might become an electrician. Fascinated with electronics, she was the first female accepted into her local technical high school's traditionally male electrical program. Aer graduating from high school, she went on to initially study engineering at North Adams State College, with a minor in business. To help with expenses, she took a finance job doing analytics for the nursing division at the local hospital system, a move that would set her on her current career path. "My supervisor at the time was a very caring and supportive nurse who mentored me and taught me about the connections between pa- tients, clinical outcomes and financial results in health care," Trumble recalled. She quickly realized the market principles she learned in her busi- ness courses didn't apply to health care. "Health care doesn't operate the same way, where you compete, you set a price and you get paid. It's completely different," she said. She eventually switched her major to business administration, with a minor in accounting, determined to use what she learned to help people. "From that point," she said, "all the roles I've had have always been about, 'Can I impact something positively?" She said she found her "sweet spot" in her next role with Common- wealth Health Management Service, a multispecialty physician's group in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where she remained for 10 years, working her way up to chief operating officer. ere, she developed a financial model and care structure similar to today's value-based care. Aer scaling the organization to include 140 physicians in three states, she helped sell it to a private equity firm and le to pursue con- sulting. But before long, the doctors were calling her back, unhappy with their new corporate owners. "I oen tell people I was essentially brought in at the wake because the relationship had become so strained that repairing it was impossi- ble," she recalled. Trumble helped deconstruct the deal, selling assets back to the in- dividual doctors and the local hospital — an experience that foreshad- owed her later move to separate SoNE from its hospital ownership. Trumble, who earned her MBA from Western New England Uni- versity, would go on to hold senior roles at other healthcare systems in the Bay State, including Cambridge Health Alliance. ere, she worked with the state to build one of Massachusetts' first Medicaid accountable care organizations, a network of doctors and other pro- viders who work together to deliver value-based care. at work led to seats on the Massachusetts Health Policy Commis- sion and other advisory committees, and helped influence a statewide policy requiring all Medicaid providers to participate in value-based care. 'Data-obsessed' Although the details of value-based contracts vary, a healthcare provider would typically get a fixed amount to care for an assigned patient population. As part of the agreement, the provider must meet certain targets for quality — such as patient satisfaction scores or hospital readmissions — and cost. If the costs come in below the budgeted amount, the providers get to share in the savings. Some contracts go a step further and hold doctors accountable for potential losses. Dr. John Rodis — the former president and CEO of St. Francis Hos- pital, who now leads consulting firm Arista Health — said Trumble "has a keen eye for how to align the incentives so that physicians can deliver high-quality care and be reimbursed adequately for it" while also reducing costs. "You need to really create a substantial enough incentive that pays, and then you also have to educate the providers on what the metrics are and help them achieve those goals," Rodis said, adding Trumble has accomplished all three. "at probably sounds easy, but it's not. It's not the way most doctors are trained, and it's not the way doctors think." Hogan, with Upside Health Partners, describes Trumble as "completely data-obsessed," noting her gi for using data to win over skeptics. "She's able to use data on populations … and say, 'this (fee-for-ser- vice model) is garbage. You're paying lots of money and getting really bad outcomes.'" One of Trumble's first steps at SoNE was to build out a population health team — including doctors, social workers, nurses, pharmacists and community health workers — to proactively manage patient populations and connect all aspects of care. She also invested in technology to analyze patient risk, guide interventions and track outcomes. Under her leadership, SoNE developed clinical protocols to manage the most stubborn chronic conditions — congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and end- stage kidney disease. A care management team takes the highest-risk populations and follows them to ensure they are getting everything they need to stay healthy and out of the hospital. Trumble estimates SoNE has saved Medicare and commercial car- riers $192 million in the last seven years through these interventions, which are designed to reduce hospital admissions and ER visits and keep chronic diseases from escalating. Trumble points to success stories like the recent case of a man in his early 40s with uncontrolled diabetes and other chronic conditions Continued from previous page