DR . WHO
“ You get to chat and consult with people on all the different body systems . Interventional radiology procedures are diverse and not limited to a particular disease process or body system , you get to use different modalities and technology .”
Finally his training was complete , and he decided to return to his old stomping grounds . Joining a private practice in San Francisco , he stayed busy as a managing partner while also juggling hospital leadership positions . He served as Vice Chief of Staff of the county public hospital in San Mateo County and was the Chief of Radiology at Sutter Health , a large integrated delivery network in California . His wife Kimberly decided to change career paths and became a clinical instructor in nursing at the University of San Francisco .
Back on home turf , the calls from Silicon Valley came quickly - his health care knowledge was in high demand from several startups . “ I ended up as an advisor and consultant to a number of startups who were in the telemedicine space , connected medical devices and digital health .” While working with startups was fascinating and rewarding , he soon found himself being called upon by another company that was just a bit more notable .
“ For the last handful of years , I was at Google as a consultant . I was the first radiologist for their AI team that was looking to build AI machine learning algorithms to be used on medical imaging . It was a great experience .”
With his experience in business and leadership and roles with tech companies , he started to realize how much he enjoyed non-clinical health care work as well .
“ In order to think about the next stage in my career , whether that was going to be practice , hospital leadership or innovation , I thought I needed to develop other skills that I didn ’ t think I ’ d learned
while at medical school .”
While still practicing , he decided to venture into an MBA through the nationally ranked Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania . This program gave him time to think about career direction and look at different opportunities to build the muscles of the new skills he was building . As fate would have it , this led him to us here in Louisville .
In August 2020 , he accepted a role at Humana as a Medical Director and Physician Executive in Residence . In these roles , he serves throughout the organization , working on different projects that are of strategic value and interest to the company . On the horizon for Humana is a transition to more of a clinical organization rather than just a payer organization and Dr . Ding spend a lot of his time leading this transition . Also part of his role is to address social determinants of health , the move toward value-based care and serving as a physician advocate within the organization .
“ A lot of what I do is discovery of what is happening in the company and throughout health care and connecting the dots to other parts of the organization and helping to develop a cohesive strategy .”
Because he wanted to make sure he still had a hand in clinical work alongside his role at Humana , he also serves at the University of Louisville as a Clinical Associate Professor of Radiology . “ I really do enjoy clinical practice so that ’ s a part of my career I didn ’ t want to lose . It was very important to me to continue to practice . I think it ’ s really important to understand what is happening day-to-day , in the trenches , on the ground in clinical practice so that when I ’ m speaking to other physicians or when I ’ m trying to represent them , I understand the pain points and the opportunities for us to work on .
( continued on page 30 ) JANUARY 2022 29