Laura Minardi ’24 MBA
Transforming healthcare through leadership and innovation
As a family medicine-trained primary care provider at Oak Street Health, Laura Minardi delivers care with a focus on seniors and disabled adults on Medicare. But for Laura, the desire to improve healthcare goes far beyond individual patient encounters. It’s about transforming the system itself.
“The healthcare system is far from perfect,” Laura said. “I've worked in a lot of systems with really passionate people who want to change how we deliver care, but often reach barriers just because the systems are really inefficient and it's hard to align everyone towards goals that we feel like all make sense.”
Bridging medicine and business
As part of Kellogg's partnership with Oak Street Health, Laura was able to take advantage of the Fellowship for Value-Based Care Leadership, designed to give emerging physician leaders within the company an opportunity to develop their expertise while earning their MBA through the Evening & Weekend Program.
When asked about the benefits of practicing medicine and earning an MBA, Laura said: “I've learned skills I never got in medical school, like accounting and finance and statistics. But the skills that I didn't appreciate would be as important as they are, were the leadership development, learning team dynamics, how to motivate people, learning to think about different people's perspectives, and how everyone has a stake in the solution.”
BA in Neuroscience and Music, Vanderbilt University
“We need tech-based solutions to help guide providers and free them up for more of the art of medicine. That allows them to walk patients through their journey with their disease and support them and their families.”
A passion for people and science
Laura’s initial interest in healthcare stemmed from her love of science. After first trying research, she decided to dedicate herself to becoming a physician who could engage with families and communities, helping them achieve their healthiest selves.
At Oak Street Health, Laura is part of a value-based care model designed to improve outcomes by prioritizing quality over quantity. “Oak Street is a network of primary care clinics that takes care of Medicare adults,” she said. “We're a value-based care system. So, for me as a provider, I get to spend more time with my patients. I have more resources to take care of them — social workers, mental health support. It frees me up to think about all of the ways I can take care of a patient.”
When thinking about how to improve the massive ecosystem of the healthcare industry for patients, Kellogg’s focus on collaboration has given Laura a unique lens into potential solutions for the sector’s challenges. “In order to fix it, we first need to understand the forces at play that created this system. And then hopefully together, the people in this room today can start working towards their own parts of the solution,” she shared. “That makes me feel very hopeful.”
Building skills for today and for the future
As she considers her future in improving the industry, Laura values the opportunity to hear about other areas of the healthcare sector. A recent Healthcare Deep Dive in Miami brought together students from the Evening & Weekend Program, in addition to peers from the Full-Time and Executive MBA Programs, faculty and alumni to create a unique opportunity for collaboration. “We are learning about healthcare strategy in all parts of the industry. I'm learning a lot, both from lectures and from classmates, about the other aspects of the industry that influence my patients and the decisions that I have to think about every day.”
With her dual expertise in medicine and business, Laura is poised to make a lasting impact. She doesn’t need to wait though, as Laura is finding that the cases she is studying in class directly apply to her work in Oak Street Health’s value-based care model. “It’s exciting to see that the cases that we're discussing in my classes, in value-based care, are all analyzing companies that are really pushing to deliver better outcomes than we've traditionally accepted.”
Reflecting on the importance of the Deep Dive program in her own development, Laura emphasizes the value of protected time to push her learning and growth. “Normally in my evening classes, I'm coming to class after a busy day at work, taking care of my family,” she explained. “Here I have protected three days of my life where I'm not thinking about work and I get to just think about the topics in class, getting to know my classmates and trying to dream what I want to do about healthcare next.”
Optimism to Impact
Learn more about Healthcare at Kellogg as Laura and other healthcare experts dig into the industry's biggest challenges and opportunities in this four-part documentary.
