David L. Holmberg, EMBA’00, president and chief executive officer of Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health was the featured speaker at the JSOM Scholarship Breakfast. The Nov. 1 event was held in the Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center.
The $26 million Highmark Health is a blended healthcare organization, combining care with coverage. It includes Blue Cross Blue Shield in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Delaware, and a growing regional hospital and physician network.
The JSOM Scholarship Breakfast offers a forum for discussing current business issues while also supporting the educational goals of students. This year’s event drew 250 attendees and raised more than $120,000. It has raised more than $1.1 million in its history.
Dr. David Springate, emeritus associate professor of Executive Education, founder of the Executive MBA program and one of Holmberg’s former professors, moderated the discussion. He was also associate dean of Executive Education from 1992-2007.
Describing the healthcare system in the U.S. as “broken,” Holmberg outlined some of the steps Highmark Health is taking to better respond to the needs of the consumer.
“The future of healthcare is going to be about innovation,” he said. “Most of healthcare is data rich but insight poor. Our goal is to create actionable information from that data. We need to find ways to use that information to make improvements.”
Challenges to the healthcare industry brought on by the pandemic linger, he said. One of those is staffing issues.
“The pandemic accelerated some of the macro issues we were going to see anyway,” he said. “Many nurses who worked through the pandemic were exhausted and we had two to three years’ worth of retirements happen all at once.”
He quoted statics showing that, by 2030, the United States could be facing a shortage of 180,000 physicians. The good news, he said, is there are opportunities for those seeking a career in the industry and not just as clinicians. Data experts, those skilled in AI and other sectors are needed.
The country is also in the midst of a mental health crisis, Holmberg said, which presents another set of challenges in healthcare.
“You can tie 50% of emergency room visits to some kind of mental health issue,” he said. “And statistics that should scare you are that 50 percent of counties in the U.S. have no psychiatrists and 80% of rural counties have no mental health services.”
The crisis connects back to a time in the U.S. when mental institutions were closed in response to reported negative occurrences at some facilities. That action left many in need of mental health assistance with few or no options.
The first step in improving mental healthcare options is to put more money into creating options, Holmberg said.
Dr. Diane McNulty, associate dean of External Relations, Communications and Corporate Development at the Jindal School, opened the program by thanking guests for their support of the scholarship program.
“This event is our school’s major fundraiser, bringing in over $1 million over the years,” she said. “(Our sponsors), you and our alumni make some of our students’ dreams come true.”
She introduced Dr. Hasan Pirkul, Jindal School dean and Caruth Chair, who welcomed guests to the event and discussed the growth of the university and its strong academic rankings.
“We have a student population of more than 11,000, the largest we have ever seen,” he said. “And, we are planning our third building.”
He pointed to the Jindal School’s rankings, including being named No. 8 in MBA Return on Investment by U.S. News & World Report.
“Our students don’t have to borrow huge amounts of money to get the degree,” he said. “We are very proud of the fact that we can pull that off and provide a great education to our students.”
Pirkul introduced JSOM student, Sarah Gifford, a business administration major with a 3.99 grade average and recipient of the David L. Holmberg Scholarship. She talked about the importance of receiving the scholarship and being able to attend the Jindal School in her life.
“I come from a humble background, like many students at JSOM,” she said. “Scholarships are not just about financial support. They are a lifeline. Events like these light the way for many students.”
Through the Jindal School, Gifford was hired by Texas Instruments which for her family, she explained, was going from blue-collar to white-collar.
Sponsors of the scholarship breakfast were Highmark, Beck, Lennox, Merit Energy Company, Blue Cross BlueShield of Texas, Deloitte, Fujitsu, G6, Perkins & Will, Vistra, Andersen LLC, Austin Commercial, HM&M, Texas Instruments and Jindal School Executive Education.
