Executive Vice President and Western PA Market President, Highmark Health
Bruce A. Meyer, MD, MBA, is Executive Vice President and Western PA Market President for Highmark Health. In this role, Dr. Meyer oversees Highmark Health's blended payer-provider strategy in the western Pennsylvania market, including the operations of Highmark’s western Pennsylvania insurance division as well as its western Pennsylvania-based provider system, Allegheny Health Network.
Dr. Meyer joined Highmark Health in 2022 after serving as President of Jefferson Health in Philadelphia and Senior Executive Vice President of Thomas Jefferson University. He is also a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Population Health at Jefferson’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College.
At Jefferson, Dr. Meyer oversaw the health system's multitude of clinical services offered across the greater southwestern Philadelphia region, footprint that includes 18 hospitals and more than 100 outpatient and urgent care centers. Home to the renowned Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, and one of the largest faculty-based telehealth networks in the country, Jefferson employs approximately 37,000 people, including nearly 2,500 physicians and 9,600 nurses.
Prior to his role as President of Jefferson Health, Dr. Meyer was Executive VP for Health System Affairs, Executive Director of the Faculty Practice Plan and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UT Southwestern (UTSW) Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.
The author of over 70 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Meyer has won multiple teaching awards while serving as a residency and fellowship program director and academic chair.
Dr. Meyer earned his medical degree at the University of Texas, where he also completed an OB-GYN residency and maternal-fetal medicine fellowship. He received his MBA from the University of Tennessee.
President, Allegheny Health Network
Jim Benedict, JD, CPA, MAFIS, FACHE, serves as President of Allegheny Health Network. As AHN's president, he leads the planning, direction, and coordination of the network's day-to-day operations and long-range clinical strategy, across AHN's entire Western Pennsylvania service footprint.
Previously, he served as AHN's Chief Operating Officer, responsible for the strategic and operational management of all of AHN’s hospitals, as well as its acute-care and ambulatory-care facilities. In that role, Mr. Benedict was one of the chief architects of the network’s successful operational turnaround and its nearly $2 billion capital investment and market expansion strategy. He also was a key leader of the organization’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over his more than 30 years in health care, Mr. Benedict has extensive experience in physician practice management, ambulatory operations, and hospital operations, serving in executive leadership roles in the nonprofit, public, academic, and international medical settings.
Mr. Benedict came to AHN in 2016 from TeamHealth, where he served as the Executive Vice President of Anesthesia for U.S. operations. From 2020 to 2022, he served as Highmark Health's executive vice president, Living Health Partnerships and Operations. He returned to his AHN COO role in 2022, and was named AHN president in 2023.
He received his undergraduate degree from Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio, a Master’s in Accountancy from Cleveland State University, and his law degree from The Cleveland Marshall College of Law.
He is also a non-practicing certified public accountant in Ohio, is admitted to the Ohio Bar and is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Chief Medical Officer, Allegheny Clinic President
As Allegheny Health Network’s Chief Medical Officer, Donald Whiting, MD, is AHN’s senior-most clinical executive and the leader of AHN’s medical staff. He is also president of Allegheny Health Network’s physician organization, the Allegheny Clinic, one of the state’s largest physician groups, employing more than 1,400 physicians.
Dr. Whiting is a respected physician-leader who is passionate about changing the way health care is delivered. Regarded as one of the nation’s foremost experts in the use of deep-brain stimulation to control the debilitating motor symptoms of patients with Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, Dr. Whiting has established Allegheny General Hospital as one of the top centers in the world for DBS treatment.
Dr. Whiting has served in numerous physician leadership roles over his two-decade affiliation with AHN. He continues to serve as Chair of the AHN Neuroscience Institute, and he had also served vice-chair of AGH’s Department of Neurosurgery, and co-director of AGH’s Division of Functional Neurosurgery and Neurosurgery Spine Bio-Mechanics Lab.
Dr. Whiting received his undergraduate education at Grinnell College in Iowa, earned an MS in Physiology at Georgetown University, and was awarded his medical degree in 1985 after training at Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Dr. Whiting completed a neurosurgical residency at The Cleveland Clinic and a neurotrauma fellowship at Allegheny General Hospital.
A professor of Neurosurgery at Drexel University College of Medicine and Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Whiting has been an active member of many of his field’s leading professional and scientific organizations, including the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and the American Society of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery.
He has been active with the Parkinson Foundation of Western PA and The Cahouet Center for Parkinsons Disease.
Chief Financial Officer
James Rohrbaugh serves as Chief Financial Officer for Allegheny Health Network. As CFO, Mr. Rohrbaugh is responsible for overseeing and sustaining AHN’s strong financial performance, including direction of the network’s accounting and revenue cycle operations, budget planning, and capital investments.
Mr. Rohrbaugh has more than 25 years of experience as a financial executive, primarily within the health care industry. He joined AHN in 2014 as vice president of Finance and Chief Financial Officer for Jefferson Hospital, and was appointed Senior Vice President of Financial Operations for AHN in 2018.
Prior to joining AHN in 2014, Mr. Rohrbaugh served in various financial and executive leadership positions at Ascension Health’s Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C., and Inova Loudoun Hospital in Leesburg, Virginia. He also spent three years in the health care regulatory consulting practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and is a certified public accountant in the state of Virginia.
Mr. Rohrbaugh earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Accounting, at Shenandoah University. His Pittsburgh-area community affiliations include board leadership roles with Allies for Children, Clairton Cares, and the West Jefferson Chamber of Commerce. He is also a member of the Healthcare Financial Management Association.
Chief Quality & Learning Officer
Brian M. Parker, MD, is the Chief Quality & Learning Officer for Allegheny Health Network. In this role, Dr. Parker is responsible for ensuring that the highest standards of patient care quality, safety, and service excellence are achieved across the system’s 14 hospitals and its hundreds of clinical locations, primary care offices and specialty practices.
Dr. Parker has more than two decades of experience in health care, holding leadership roles in quality and patient safety, risk management, patient experience, hospital operations, and education. Following almost 20 years at Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Parker joined AHN in early 2017.
Dr. Parker received both his undergraduate and medical degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and completed both his anesthesiology residency and liver transplantation fellowship training at the University of Pittsburgh.
Professional affiliations include membership on the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia, the Pennsylvania Society of Anesthesiologists, and the International Liver Transplantation Society.
Chief Clinical Diversity Officer
Margaret Larkins-Pettigrew, MD, MEd, MPPM, FACOG, is a Senior Vice President and the Chief Clinical Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer for Allegheny Health Network.
As Chief Clinical DEI Officer, Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew’s role is to advance diversity and inclusion among the clinical and caregiving staff at AHN, and to advocate for equitable health outcomes among all patient populations by developing programs that target disparities in medical care. An internationally respected expert in cultural humility within the health care field, Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew has spent her career engaging marginalized communities and building programs that focus on promoting outcomes equity for vulnerable patients and mitigating socio-political barriers to care. She has a special interest in educating and empowering women, especially those pursuing careers in medicine.
Although Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew cares for women in her general OB/GYN practice, she also focuses on providing care to women living in low- to middle-resource communities, with a clinical focus in the care of women living with HIV.
A native Pittsburgher, Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew recently returned from Cleveland, Ohio where she led the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs for University Hospitals of Cleveland. There, she served as Chair & Director of the Center for Clinical Excellence and Diversity at University Hospitals as well as Dean of Students for Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew is the founder and current CEO and President of JUSTWONDOOR (Women and Newborns, Diversity, Outreach, Opportunity and Research), a program that aims to educate global medical providers through local and international health care collaborations.
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