At Health Evolution’s 2025 Connect, officials from the Trump administration sat down with health care leaders for policy-focused fireside chats, where they outlined some of their key health care priorities. These dynamic conversations featured insights from standout discussion leaders:
- Aneesh Chopra, Chief Strategy Officer, Arcadia; former U.S. Chief Technology Officer
- Amy Gleason, Acting Administrator, U.S. DOGE Service, and Strategic Advisor, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
- Corbin Petro, President, Carelon Behavioral Health
- Abe Sutton, Director of CMS’ Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) and CMS Deputy Administrator
Fireside Chat with Amy Gleason
In a fireside chat moderated by Chopra, Gleason shared how challenges she experienced navigating the health care system inspired her to become an advocate for care coordination, data accessibility, and better health outcomes—and she outlined key priorities and initiatives aimed at achieving those goals.
Gleason said her experience navigating the health care system as a caregiver for her daughter has helped guide her efforts. When Gleason’s daughter was 10 years old, she began experiencing symptoms that were later diagnosed as a rare disease.
“It took a year and three months to get that diagnosis, mainly because no single doctor was seeing all her information at one time and they didn’t understand that her symptoms were all in concert together,” Gleason said. “But if just one doctor had seen all her data in one place, she would’ve been diagnosed a lot sooner.”
Gleason said she learned firsthand how fragmented data and siloed care undermine the patient journey, driving her to champion improvements in care navigation and data accessibility.
In 2015, Gleason was recognized as a White House Champions of Change for Precision Medicine for spearheading an effort to help patients with complex diseases navigate the health care system.
“I became head of the research group for a nonprofit and piloted patient registries and a lot of precision medicine,” Gleason said. “I also co-founded a company out of this experience to help patients with complex diseases gather their data and provided health assistants serving as a concierge service to help people navigate the system.”
Improving data accessibility and streamlining care navigation
Gleason emphasized that she remains committed to these goals in her current role with the Trump administration. For example, she noted that CMS in May published a request for information (RFI) to gather input on data sharing and the health technology infrastructure. “The biggest takeaway from the RFI was that we can’t regulate our way to success,” Gleason said. “We have to inspire people and try to get people to voluntarily aim for a higher bar.”
With that imperative in mind, CMS launched the Health Technology Ecosystem—a voluntary program designed to bring organizations together to collaborate on a framework to advance data accessibility, with the goals of empowering individuals, improving care quality, and driving progress.
Gleason said CMS is focused on making the health care system work better for patients. “We put together this ecosystem with the main goal of empowering patients,” Gleason said. She added, “We struck a vision that we want all patients to be able to access their data from anywhere.”
According to Gleason, the Trump administration’s initial launch of the Health Technology Ecosystem included “about 60 companies.” She said, “Our early adopters included EMRs, networks, provider groups, payers, patients, and apps.” And “since the initial launch, around 250 or 300 more companies have pledged, but we really want everyone to join us,” Gleason noted.
Chopra underscored the impact of using a federal call to action as a policy vehicle. “What I love about this is that the policy tool you’ve used is the convening,” Chopra said. “You emphasized that this is voluntary, but I want everyone to understand the policy lever of convening.”
Gleason agreed. “Throughout my career, I’ve found health care does best when we’re challenged to rise above and do what’s right for patients,” she said. Gleason observed that although stakeholders often find common ground on key issues, translating that alignment into meaningful progress remains a significant challenge. “I think the better way is to set a vision and start a race in a competition and prove to people that we can do it,” she said.
The Future of Payment Innovation with Abe Sutton
To close out 2025 Connect, Petro moderated a fireside chat with Sutton focused on the key objectives shaping the future of payment innovation—and the three new core pillars guiding CMMI’s approach to value-based care (VBC).
“The HES community is very passionate about delivering the best care at the right time and in the right place,” Petro noted, adding, “VBC is a huge part of that and CMMI drives the agenda we take on as leaders in the industry.”
Sutton said when he became CMMI’s Director, he was most energized by the opportunity to address key industry challenges by advancing solutions that could reshape care delivery and transform health care.
“CMMI offers the promise of changing the trajectory of our health care system,” Sutton said. “It offers the chance to grapple with some of the challenges we face and some of the opportunities inherent with those challenges.”
Sutton said he worked alongside CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz to launch in May a strategy for CMMI that is grounded in two clear objectives—improving quality without increasing costs and decreasing costs without harming quality. “We’re the part of CMS that’s charged with thinking about how to do things better, how to improve margins, and how to make the product experience better for patients,” he noted.
With those goals in mind, CMMI has deployed several payment models to experiment and determine which payment innovations are most effective, Sutton said. And under CMMI’s new strategy, Sutton noted that the center focuses on three core pillars: evidence-based prevention, empowering people to achieve their health goals, and choice and competition in health care markets.
1. Evidence-based prevention
According to Sutton, CMMI under this pillar evaluates possible interventions that could improve care delivery, evaluating factors including return on investment, application, and scalability. “We’re putting a lot of thought into this right now—how to embed it into the portfolio and what new things we can do,” Sutton said.
To help prove models are effective, Sutton said CMMI is considering how it can enable organizations to lay an evidence base. “We can do things that allow organizations to come forward with ideas that have a lighter evidence base and build the evidence base for the prevention and lifestyle interventions we’re looking to see,” Sutton said.
2. Empowering people to achieve their health goals
According to Sutton, this pillar underscores the importance of prioritizing price, quality, and transparency to ensure patients can access information that enables them to make informed decisions. “Dr. Oz believes that the way we make America healthy again is giving people the tools and technologies to take that information and act on it,” Sutton noted.
Sutton shared that CMMI is actively evaluating mechanisms to serve Medicare and Medicaid patients. “We spend a lot of time coordinating on how to implement supports that could dramatically increase access for patients across the country,” he said.
CMMI also is looking to empower people to achieve their health goals by proactively engaging providers in care coordination, Sutton added. “This is something CMMI has done a lot on historically. The entire approach on aligned incentives, risk, and VBC is centered on that aspect and that’s something we’re still focused on today.”
3. Choice and competition in health care markets
In addition, Sutton said CMMI is looking to test reimbursement mechanisms that make navigating health care less frustrating for patients. “Third party payment structures contribute to a flawed experience. Patients don’t feel like the process serves them, and we have a very convoluted, difficult to navigate care delivery system,” he proclaimed.
According to Sutton, CMMI aims to advance a competitive ecosystem that forces stakeholders to compete to serve people. “We should rework our system to ensure patients are presented with information that enables them to make an informed decision, and have people competing to serve them,” he said.
“Even when you’re trying to do the right thing in health care today, it feels impossible to find your way through and do it—even when you understand the ins and outs of the system,” Sutton contended. He concluded, “We need to set up a competitive system that allows consumers to make informed decisions and enables patients to navigate the system and own their care journey.”
