Texas Covered Clinical Leadership Forum
The Texas Covered Clinical Leadership Forum is an invitation-only forum for clinical leaders across Texas health plans, including medical, pharmacy, dental, vision, and behavioral health.
The forum is designed for collaboration on policy updates, sharing practical ideas, and addressing common challenges facing Texas health plans and the communities they serve
đź”’ Attendance is limited to health plan clinical leaders and approved event sponsors.
Stephen F. Austin, Capitol Ballroom B
701 Congress Ave., Austin, TX
Jul 28, 2026
9:00 am - 3:15 pm
Sponsored by
Agenda
9:00am
Opening Remarks + Announcements
9:10am
State & Federal Policy: Updates & Trends
Speaker: Margaret Tatar, Vice President, Client Solutions, HMA
10:00am
Solving the Dementia Crisis Through Personalized Care Ecosystems for Patients and Families
Dementia is a hidden driver of unsustainable medical spend. Patients living with dementia use the ER and inpatient services at 2x the rate of their peers, often due to limited management of the condition. Dr. Joel Salinas examines why traditional care models fail dementia patients, resulting in high-acuity events and premature institutionalization. He’ll analyze the industry’s pivot toward the CMS GUIDE Model and similar frameworks, which stabilize the patient and caregiver by reducing ED utilization and improving clinical outcomes.
Speaker: Dr. Joel Salinas, Behavioral Neurologist; Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder, Isaac Health
10:50am
From Lost to Engaged: A Social-First Model to Reconnect Medicaid Members back to Care and Improve Quality
Across Medicaid, a driver of poor outcomes and cost is the “unengaged” member—patients attributed to a health home, but who have not had a meaningful connection with their primary care provider for 18+ months; in Texas, this unengaged member rate ranges from 20% to 40% depending on the health plan. This session shares a social-first, data-driven engagement model designed to identify “lost” members, stratify risk, and deploy a multi-channel outreach approach led by care teams—with clear escalation pathways for higher-risk members and facilitate proper coordination.
Speaker: Dr. Sherri Onyiego, Senior Market Medical Director, Equality Health
11:40am
Beyond the Device: Scaling Health Plan Savings with RPM V2.0
Device costs and logistics have kept traditional Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) confined to the highest-risk 1% of members — leaving rising-risk populations invisible until a high-cost claims event forces a response. This session explores how AI-driven, smartphone-based monitoring eliminates those barriers, enabling health plans to detect undiagnosed conditions earlier, intervene before disease progression accelerates, and extend proactive care across broader populations — driving better clinical outcomes, stronger HEDIS and Stars performance, and measurable MLR improvement.
Presenter: Eric Rock, CEO and Co-Founder, Percipio Health
12:10pm
Expanding the Cost Containment Toolkit: Beyond Prior Authorization
Prior auth is essential under CMS-0057, but it remains downstream of utilization that has already occurred. The greater opportunity is proactive cost containment addressing avoidable utilization through timely, informed care management across the continuum. The advantage is not more staff or data, but clinical context at critical moments, especially transitions of care. Knowing risks, medications, and follow-up needs turns outreach into intervention, driving adherence, reducing readmissions, and closing gaps. Plans that act on timely data will outperform as CMS focuses on outcomes.
Presenter: Nicole Sunder, Vice President, Solution Design, PointClickCare
12:30pm
Lunch + Peer Networking
1:15pm-3:15pm
Closed Door Collaborative Session - Clinical Leaders Only - The Future of ABA Care: Aligning Clinical Guidelines, Compliance, and Quality
Panelists:
- Margaret Tartar, Vice President, Client Solutions at Health Management Associates (HMA)
- Dr. Nhung Tran, Co-chair of our Autism Taskforce and Developmental/Behavioral Pediatrician
- Sarah Johnson, MD, MSc, EMBA, Senior Medical Director for InterQual Behavioral Health
- Ellen Rhoads, Public Policy Group President, TxABA
Speakers
Dr. Sherri Onyiego
Senior Market Medical Director, Equality Health
Dr. Sherri Onyiego serves as the Senior Market Medical Director for value-based care leader, Equality Health, where she engages and supports primary care practices across the state to advance value-based care models to patient populations with socioeconomic barriers.
Prior to this role, Dr. Onyiego was part of the executive leadership team within Harris County Public Health (HCPH) in Houston Texas, serving as the Director for Nutrition & Chronic Disease Prevention focusing on promoting chronic disease prevention efforts in the community. Dr. Onyiego is a Board-Certified Family Physician with over 20 years of clinical experience in managing and treating chronic diseases as it relates to individual patient care and population health.
Dr. Onyiego has a passion for public health and addressing health inequities and currently serves on several local, state, and national committees, workgroups, and boards. She serves as a volunteer physician with San Jose’ Clinic where she provides patient care.
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Eric Rock
CEO and Co-Founder, Percipio Health
Eric Rock, CEO and Co-Founder of Percipio Health, is a veteran healthcare technology entrepreneur and innovator. He has founded, scaled and exited three software companies, including Vivify Health, a remote patient monitoring platform that was acquired by UnitedHealthGroup’s Optum division in 2019.
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Dr. Joel Salinas
Behavioral Neurologist; Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of Isaac Health
Dr. Joel Salinas, MD, MBA, MSc, FAAN, is Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Isaac Health, a tech-enabled brain health platform and telehealth service that works with health plans and systems to identify and manage conditions related to brain health and dementia across populations. Dr. Salinas is a behavioral neurologist, scientist, speaker, and author. He is an expert in clinical and population health approaches to brain health, helps to lead the American Academy of Neurology’s National Brain Health Initiative, and has led NIH-NIA-funded research to understand psychosocial determinants of health and harness these insights to preserve healthy cognitive function at the population level. He has authored over 50 peer-reviewed academic papers and contributed to nine books on evidence-based practice of neurology. He and his work have been featured often in prominent national and international media outlets. He is currently Clinical Associate Professor of Neurology and the former Lulu P. and David J. Levidow Assistant Professor of Neurology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Prior to NYU, he was Assistant Professor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Mass General and was Clinical Director of the McCance Center for Brain Health.
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Nicole Sunder
VP, Solution Design, PointClickCare
Nicole Sunder is Vice President of Solution Design & Strategy at PointClickCare and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with deep experience across the healthcare continuum. She began her career as a field-based care manager and has led the design and implementation of clinical programs supporting Medicaid, dual-eligible, and long-term services and supports populations nationwide. Nicole has extensive experience advancing care management, utilization management, and behavioral health programs, and in recent years has focused on leveraging technology to strengthen care collaboration and drive better outcomes for providers, health plans, and the patients they serve.
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Margaret Tatar
Vice President, Client Solutions, HMA
Margaret Tatar, Vice-President Client Solutions at Health Management Associates (HMA), has more than 35 years of public and private sector experience in health program development, advocacy, and government/legislative affairs. HMA, a leading independent healthcare consulting firm founded in 1985, focuses on the publicly financed health care segment in all fifty states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Clients include public, not for profit, and commercial health plans; providers; associations; foundations; technology companies; pharmaceutical companies; and government entities. Before joining HMA, Margaret served in CMS, as well as the executive and legislative branches in Colorado and California. She has also served in CEO and other leadership positions in several Medicaid managed care plans and has launched PACE programs and Medicare Advantage D-SNP plans.
A native of Washington, D.C., Margaret earned her undergraduate degree at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and her law degree at Villanova University School of Law in Villanova, Pennsylvania.
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