Meet Zhao, Head of Business Operations

At Cerebrae, we are on a mission to enable frictionless value-based contracting in the evolving healthcare landscape. Today, we introduce the newest member of our team, Zhao Zhang, whose experience ranges from healthcare SaaS to value-based contracting from both the payer and provider perspectives. He joins us as Head of Business Operations.

Where did you grow up and where are you based now?
I originally grew up in San Diego, California, but recently moved to DC from Boston with my partner Tiffany. We have been enjoying exploring wineries in Virginia.

What brought you to Cerebrae?
Value-based care is the care that I would want my family and I to receive, so I’m excited about enabling value-based care for all patients. Given all the friction points today, accelerating the transformation of our healthcare system requires technology enablement. Having been on both the provider and payer sides of value-based contracting at ConcertoCare and MassHealth, I understand why contracting is hard today. A significant barrier to adoption is the transaction cost of the contracting process, which is long, expensive, and uneven in terms of expertise. Organizations vary in their familiarity with the nuances of value-based care contracting; just look at the lopsided distribution of actuarial expertise in our healthcare system today! On the other hand, I have also seen how appropriately deployed technology can uplevel healthcare operations from my experience at Kyruus. I joined Cerebrae to democratize access to actuarial sciences via technology.

What are you most excited about at Cerebrae?
I’m looking forward to bringing better and more efficient paths to value-based contracting for organizations of all sizes. Cerebrae’s actuarially-powered technology can help everyone, from new digital health providers with novel care models, to traditional healthcare providers and plans. Healthcare stakeholders face ever-growing administrative costs, both in terms of money and time, that distract from focusing on high-quality patient care. Enabling value-based care contracting ultimately benefits patients, and as patients, we all deserve a better healthcare system.

What’s a piece of advice you recently received?
I value sleep, and I recently learned that there is such a thing as sleeping too much. If you usually get 7.5 hours of sleep and then oversleep to 9 hours, you may be more sluggish. Related to that, I recommend doing something small (such as making the bed or breakfast for the family) in the morning to get the day off to the right start.

Finally, what game show would you excel at?
Jeopardy. I used to play Quiz Bowl in high school, and I like to play trivia. History, physics, chemistry, and biology would be my top topics.     

Interested in joining Zhao and the rest of the Cerebrae team on our mission? Check out our open positions!