Dr. Marty Doerfler has been an advocate for Truveta from its earliest days. He served as one of the original members of Truveta’s Board of Directors in his role at Northwell Health. Marty recently joined Truveta in a new role as Executive Vice President of Healthcare, where his work focuses on health system membership and success, as well as Truveta Research and genomics innovation.
Read on for a Q&A with Marty to learn what motivated him to join Truveta, how his healthcare experience gives him a unique opportunity to drive impact, and what he sees as some of the biggest challenges facing the healthcare industry today.
Tell us how you first got involved with Truveta.
At my previous employer, Northwell Health, I learned about Truveta through working with other health systems, including Providence. Right away I thought this had the potential to transform care. Northwell ended up being the fifth health system to join Truveta within the first few months of incorporation. I was excited about the idea and requested to be on the board to represent Northwell.
What motivated the transition to come on full time with Truveta?
I’m so grateful for my 13 years at Northwell. I led two major business units – the Office of Clinical Transformation focused on system-wide clinical improvements, and our telehealth virtual care which rapidly accelerated and matured throughout Covid. I also had this growing interest in the work I was doing in my role with Truveta. I was starting to see from the member side some of the things that I thought Truveta could do to optimize health system member value and thought I could bring value to that space. When a new opportunity opened to lead the health system membership and success, research and genomics innovation teams, I jumped at the chance to join.
How does your experience give you a unique perspective for your role working directly with Truveta’s health system members?
There’s a saying that “nothing happens faster than the speed of trust,” and I’m fortunate that through my past work and my board experience, I have already built relationships with senior executives at other health systems across the country. The fact that I’m going to be working on member success as a significant component of my role, where that trust has already been built, allows me to get up to speed very quickly.
Being on the board I’m also used to being a conduit of what Truveta is working on and how it’s looking to grow. I was the person responsible for communicating back with the operating entities at Northwell – whether it’s the data people, research, ethics, etc. – which gives me some familiarity with what that exchange looks like and gives me a base to now begin to look at the system more broadly to best support our members.
What are some of the biggest challenges facing healthcare today and how do you see Truveta helping to address them?
We’re in a situation now where the cost of delivering healthcare is accelerating, while payments for services are decelerating. Health systems hold a very valuable asset in patient data. There are a lot of industries that want to find ways to find answers that are in the data, but the value that comes out of that has generally ended up in industries not directly connected to caring for patients.
Part of the vision for Truveta was that our members are the providers of care to their communities and are the trusted stewards of that patient information. They’ve entrusted Truveta to safely use their information to the benefit of patients and their communities, not simply to generate profit. There is also a revenue diversification opportunity for health care providers from this data which is enhanced by the health systems getting organized together, having the data organized by Truveta, then turning back and helping support the mission of best serving communities.
Another hurdle is that healthcare organizations are fragmented in how they’ve come together and are fighting back against years or decades of inefficient ways of managing data. To be able to have accessible data in an organized fashion and see what the best care is for an individual, and what processes of care are most effective, might actually result in the best outcomes lowering waste and lowering patient harm. That’s what Truveta can provide. Highly organized, high quality, large volume information has transformed a lot of industries, but healthcare has had nothing like this come along before to give it the tools necessary to transform itself.
What are you looking forward to most in your new role?
I’ve been given a tremendously talented team to help achieve the mission we are on and to help our health system members optimize the value they are going to get from the tools we are creating for them. If I look back at my career, the one constant is building things. I have a chance now to come in early enough to help be a part of building and maturing, and seeing our members and other partners achieve value and make a positive impact in their communities. That’s the part that makes it worth it.