FULCRUM STRATEGIES - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Executive Assistant
• Manager, Healthcare Consulting

Allison was born in Baltimore, Maryland but spent the majority of her childhood in the Chapel Hill area before continuing her education at The University of North Carolina-Wilmington. During her time at UNCW, she majored in Public Health, held a leadership role as the Alumni Relations chair with the Alpha Gamma Delta Sorority, spent much of her time volunteering with a local animal rescue, and maintained a position as a receptionist with a local car dealership. Upon graduating in 2017, Allison relocated to Orlando, Florida and became a Certified Childcare Professional, using her background in public health to develop individual wellness plans to support cognitive development in the children she cared for. Before long, Allison returned to North Carolina to pursue a new career as the Administrative Coordinator for a major real estate development company in Raleigh. In this position, Allison supported the entire Executive Team by overseeing office operations and providing exceptional customer service to clients and service providers. In 2019, Allison joined Fulcrum Strategies as Executive Assistant to the CEO. Allison is delighted to gain new experience in the medical/healthcare field while enjoying the opportunity to work with a staff of highly experienced individuals. In her spare time, Allison enjoys watching football and cheering for the UCF Knights and the Carolina Panthers. She also loves arts and crafts projects, and spending time with family, friends and her dogs.

Job Titles:

• Director, Healthcare Consulting

Ashley Elmore came to Fulcrum Strategies with a wealth of experience in the managed care industry. Her position at Fulcrum is Director of Healthcare Consulting, handling a large and growing client base in the mid-Atlantic region. Ashley began her health care career at The Carolina Permanente Medical Group (Kaiser Permanente) in Raleigh, NC. There she had operational roles in credentialing research for TCPMG, compliance and provider relations. Remaining with Kaiser but moving into the health plan, Ashley moved into her new role as a Compliance Specialist, where she began processing capitation payments, completing capitated membership reconciliations and a host of other managed care contracting functions. She was also the primary contact with the North Carolina Department of Insurance, and resource for internal and external customers to interpret negotiated terms of contracts, capitation issues, and membership eligibility questions. In 1999, she stepped away from Kaiser to function as a Managed Care Specialist for Carolina Premier Medical Group. This gave her a broad range of experience working in a provider setting, where she handled issues ranging from credentialing and contracting, to managing a staff that completed in-services. She was also responsible for developing and implementing a universal check-in, check-out, referral and billing process. From there, she moved on to United Health Care of North Carolina, based in Cary, NC. At United, she worked as a Network Development Specialist, responsible for physician retention in a nine-county territory. During her tenure at United, she was involved in physician recruitment, contracting and negotiation of cost-effective reimbursement rates, including primary care, specialty care, and hospital based physician groups. Her last position before coming to Fulcrum Strategies was with Aetna US Healthcare. Ashley began as a Provider Relations Manager, responsible for overall management of Physician Recruiters, Provider Relations Representatives and administrative staff in Eastern North Carolina. She also completed special projects as requested by the Medical Director, General Manager, Sr. Sales Management and Network Manager, giving her close access to every major decision maker throughout the state's health plan. She was then promoted to Senior Network Account Manager. In this role, she was accountable for recruitment, contract negotiations, network retention, education, and resolving servicing issues for large physician groups, hospitals, hospital-based groups and physicians, ancillaries and facilities in Eastern North Carolina. She also reviewed contract reimbursement arrangements for compliance with standards, and determined the most appropriate system input methodology to facilitate accurate claim adjudication.

Job Titles:

• COO
• Vice President
• Database Administrator for the Network Management Department at Lovelace Health Systems

Dustin Clark is Vice President and COO of Fulcrum Strategies. Dustin has 14 years of experience in the managed care industry. Nearly all of those years were spent working in Provider Network Management, specializing in information systems and data administration. Dustin has served in health plans from Utah and New Mexico in the west, to North Carolina in the east, working in traditional HMO and PPO environments, as well as a staff-model system. In 1996, Dustin began his career in Salt Lake City with CIGNA HealthCare of Utah as an entry-level assistant. Within a year, he was active in nearly all departments: clinical record review, member communications, preparation of sales documents, and support to the Provider Relations team. After being with CIGNA just over one year, Dustin was promoted to Database Administrator for the Network Management department at Lovelace Health Systems in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lovelace was a CIGNA staff-model system incorporating a large hospital and physician network with the health plan. During his tenure, Dustin was responsible for building, integrating and maintaining data systems used by health plan and delivery system staff. Dustin was also responsible for overseeing the interpretation of physician and hospital contracts for installation on Lovelace's claim payment systems. In the spring of 1999, Dustin transferred to CIGNA HealthCare of North Carolina in Raleigh. At the time, the North Carolina plan was the largest CIGNA HMO in the country. He continued his work with data management in the Provider Relations and Contracting department, with emphasis on contract and rate installation across five separate claim engines. In 2000, Dustin was promoted to Contract Implementation Manager, with responsibility for the systematic interpretation of the plan's most complex contracts. In 2001, he was a major factor in the migration of data from the historic claims payment systems used by CIGNA, to a completely new platform. By 2003, as Assistant Director of Network Management, Dustin managed the entire provider data and contract loading team for North Carolina, while continuing to develop new methods to improve the management of data for CIGNA. When Dustin left CIGNA HealthCare at the end of 2005, he had managed all aspects relating to hospital and ancillary contract installation, and facility data management for North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC.

Job Titles:

• Owner, Joyi Design Company

Job Titles:

• Manager
• Manager, Healthcare Consulting

Matthew Handley was born in and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. After graduating high school, he relocated to Grand Rapids, Michigan and studied theology and political science at Aquinas College. Upon completion of his coursework in 2020, Matthew moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan to work as a producer and news anchor for a nationally syndicated, Catholic, talk radio show. The program he worked on is syndicated across 350 AM and FM radio stations from Washington to San Diego and is on SiriusXM. Matthew joined Fulcrum Strategies as a manager in October 2021 and works closely with the other consultants. He is excited to bring his knowledge about media and broadcasting to Fulcrum Strategies and is eager to gain new experience in the healthcare field. In his spare time, Matthew continues to work with and advise non-profit and Catholic radio stations in both North Carolina and Michigan.

Job Titles:

• CEO
• President

Ron Howrigon is President and CEO of Fulcrum Strategies. Ron has 18 years of experience in the Managed Care Industry as a Negotiator and Network Manager. He has held Senior Management level positions with three of the largest Managed Care Companies in the country, including Kaiser Permanente, CIGNA HealthCare and BlueCross BlueShield. His experience with these organizations covered the North East, Mid-Atlantic, and Western areas of the country. Ron began his career with Kaiser Permanente in North Carolina as the Director of Community Medical Services. During the late 80's, with Kaiser, Ron was at the forefront of Managed Care Innovation and negotiated a large number of single specialty capitation contracts; he also developed a Hospital capitation model. After leaving Kaiser, Ron joined CIGNA HealthCare. He was a key component in the effort that turned a small unprofitable plan in Utah, into a profitable venture for CIGNA. During this time, he helped test a new provider profiling system and used it to develop a variable compensation system that included Quality, Cost Effectiveness, and Patient Satisfaction results as part of the model. From Utah, Ron was transferred to CIGNA's Lovelace Health Plan in New Mexico as Vice President and Executive Director of the HealthPlan. During his tenure in New Mexico, he finished building a statewide provider network, in addition to developing and managing a new and successful managed Medicaid product for Lovelace. At the time of his departure, the Lovelace Health Plan was profitable and growing. After New Mexico, CIGNA transferred Ron to North Carolina to fill the position of Vice President of Network Management. The North Carolina Health Plan was CIGNA's largest commercial HMO and covered almost 1 million members. Again, Ron was a key member of a team that turned a health plan around and made it a profitable and growing health plan in just 2 years. By the time he decided to leave CIGNA, Ron was responsible for the Networks and Contracting in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas. Finally, Ron concluded his Managed Care career as the Vice President of Provider Contracting for Capital Blue Cross in Pennsylvania. Ron has held a number of board level positions. He is the past President of the Board of Directors for the North Carolina Association of Health Plans, as well as a past member of the Lovelace Health Systems Board of Directors, and the Utah Visiting Nurses Association Board of Directors. Ron earned a Masters in Economics from North Carolina State University, where he focused in the area of Health Economics with a minor in Statistics. He also earned a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Western Michigan University.

Job Titles:

• Director of Healthcare Consulting With
• Director, Healthcare Consulting

Trista comes to Fulcrum Strategies with a wealth of experience in the managed care industry. Trista began her extensive health care career at Healthsource North Carolina in 1994. There she held operational roles in both the sales and legal departments. Trista left Healthsource North Carolina to take a position as the Director of Managed Care for US Oncology of North Carolina. She was responsible for payor contract negotiations for the entire state. She also worked with the individual practice locations to ensure proper implementation of payor contracts and terms. In 2003, she stepped away from US Oncology to work directly with physicians by performing consulting work with Healthcare Counsel. At Healthcare Counsel, Trista was responsible for working with physician groups on contract negotiations, strategic practice planning and implementation. Trista then moved on to a Network Account Manager position at Aetna, based in Cary, North Carolina. As Network Account Manager, Trista was responsible for physician recruitment, education, resolving servicing issues and retention in an eight-county territory. She was also involved in contracting and negotiation of cost-effective reimbursement rates, including primary care, specialty care, and hospital based physician groups. Currently, in her role as Director of Healthcare Consulting with Fulcrum Strategies, Trista is in charge of handling managed care contracts and negotiations for our growing physician client base across the United States.