Intermountain Healthcare Appoints Rajesh Shrestha to Lead Community-Based Care

Intermountain Healthcare is undergoing an innovative change to its organizational structure, built around its patients and communities served. This includes Community-Based Care, focused on wellness, primary care, and population health; and Specialty-Based Care, focused on specialist and hospital care, and episodic care.

After a national search, Rajesh Shrestha has been named Intermountain’s Associate Chief Operating Officer, Community Based Care reporting to Rob Allen, Intermountain’s Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Shrestha will be responsible for the P/L and operations of Community-Based Care, which includes the Intermountain Medical Group practice management and primary care physicians, Homecare, Hospice, Senior Services, retail and wellness clinics, and population health management within the clinically integrated network. Shrestha will also help lead exploration and deployment of new care models, including Intermountain Healthcare’s focus on digital health, Telehealth, and Connect Care Pro virtual hospital services. 

“The Community-Based Care team is responsible for optimizing patient outcomes and managing total cost of care through effective population health management and seamless integration across Intermountain’s entire care continuum,” said Allen. “We are excited to have Rajesh lead this effort and bring his significant expertise in population health and innovative care delivery models including digital transformation.”

Shrestha joins Intermountain Healthcare after eight years at Cigna, where he most recently served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of CareAllies, a Cigna-company he helped launch in 2016 to accelerate the move from fee-for-service to value-based care. In that role, Shrestha led Population Health Management as well as a portfolio of business lines including Medicare ACOs and Practice Transformation, and served as President of Cigna’s home-based care delivery organization. Before this, he was the Chief Operating Officer for Cigna Medical Group and led all operations, accountable care development, quality, and informatics. He also led the Cigna Healthcare of Arizona Medicare Advantage Plan to a 5 Star Rating. Shrestha held other leadership positions including Cigna Onsite Health and Cigna International where he served as a care delivery expert for different global ventures. Prior to joining Cigna, he spent more than a decade working closely with health plans and providers as well as state and federal agencies to set up quality programs, value-based purchasing, and network arrangements. 

Marc Harrison, MD, President and CEO of Intermountain Healthcare said, “Rajesh brings over two decades of experience as a standout operating executive who has successfully delivered results in complex environments and is known globally for his expertise in care delivery.  Rajesh’s unique talents and experience in value based care will strengthen our team and we are thrilled that he will be joining the Intermountain family to help people live the healthiest lives possible.”

Intermountain Healthcare is a Utah-based not-for-profit system of 22 hospitals, 180 clinics, a Medical Group with about 1,500 employed physicians and advanced practitioners, a health plans group called SelectHealth, and other medical services. Intermountain is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare through high quality and sustainable costs.