Ursa Health recently worked with an integrated delivery system to reduce readmissions from skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). The geriatrician charged with leading the effort had summary data from the CMS QIO about the hospital’s readmission rates, but these did not help her to identify specific changes or to engage her colleagues, the hospitals, and the SNFs.
Author: Sandy Bielawa
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Meet the founders: Andy Hackbarth
What’s your role at Ursa Health, and what do you do?
My position is chief product officer. My primary responsibility is to oversee development of the software platform, to think strategically about the direction in which the software should go in consultation with others in the organization, and to consider what features would be most valuable for our users. I also work with clients that need data architectural guidance, whether that’s setting up their data warehouse, helping them answer tough analytic questions, or considering how the different data that are available could be used to answer those questions. So my role is a mix of product development and scrubbing in with the professional services team.
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A new look for Ursa Health
We’re always busy here at Ursa Health, but over the last few months we’ve been engaged in a special project: reinventing Ursa Health’s brand identity.
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Meet the founders: Steve Hackbarth
What’s your role at Ursa Health, and what do you do?
As chief technology officer, I primarily manage development of our application, Ursa Studio, as well as the technical infrastructure surrounding it.
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We are Ursa Health: meet Caroline Sullivan
What’s your role at Ursa Health, and what do you do?
I recently joined Ursa Health as chief administrative officer. In my role, I support Ursa Health’s general operations and maintain the smooth functioning of its administrative processes. I also manage the company’s vendor relationships, ensuring best-in-class services so the Ursa team can work efficiently and focus on delivering for clients. In addition, I’m responsible for the company’s privacy policies and procedures, working in partnership with the security team.
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We are Ursa Health: meet Rob Viola
What’s your role at Ursa Health, and what do you do?
As a senior manager of DevOps, my role is pretty diverse—I do a little bit of everything. Half my time is consulting with clients on things like SQL development and other aspects of customer support. I also make sure we’re extremely solid on the privacy and security front. Part of that work is guiding our HITRUST recertification process. And then I have a role in maintaining our reference data sources as well. In small companies, you do a lot.
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We are Ursa Health: meet John Toher
What’s your role at Ursa Health, and what do you do?
I am director of technical services, which means I am a technical resource for clients during their implementation of the Ursa Health Platform. The job allows me to exercise my two core strengths: my technical expertise and then my ability to help people achieve success using technology. It really hit my sweet spot.
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The pain of real values
Early in my career, I was thinking of getting an MBA and attended an introductory lecture at Boston University. I don’t remember which professor gave it, but I’ve thought of his words often over the years: In the workplace, it’s better to not define your core values than to define them and not live up to them.
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We are Ursa Health: meet Aaron Mock
What’s your role at Ursa Health, and what do you do?
As vice president of operations, I have the privilege of overseeing the development and delivery of all services to our customers. I work directly with these members of the Ursa Health community to ensure their data journey with Ursa is successful and enjoyable, and that it yields daily insights to help them innovate.