Dr. Pooja Kumar

A physician by training, Pooja has spent the last 15 years working with healthcare systems, medical groups, payers, states, and foundations to materially improve performance and outcomes. She leads McKinsey’s public health domain and work with academic health systems in the United States. She is also a global leader for the McKinsey Health Institute, a not-for-profit entity within the firm that aspires to catalyze action to add a collective 45 billion years of higher-quality life for all people around the world.

Pooja orchestrates multifunctional teams to deliver top- and bottom-line impact as well as tangible improvements in patient experience and access. She is a deep expert in multilever performance transformations across all clinical and nonclinical functions, including growth operations, supply chain, revenue cycle, and patient access as well as complex operational programs such as revamping public-health strategies, vaccine rollouts, and standing up new business units or programs.

Some examples of her work include the following:

• leading performance turnarounds of more than 20 large health systems and medical schools, focused on both patient experience, cost efficiency, and revenue
• leading over 25 growth strategies for national and regional health systems, including organic and inorganic growth, and consumer-focused service strategies
• leading multiple efforts on determining risk and value-based payment strategies and capability roadmaps for health systems in markets experiencing payment reform
• leading and providing expertise to teams working with more than 20 US states and jurisdictions on public health strategies and rolling out complex public health programs, including on COVID-19 response, aging and elderly care, children’s programs, and health equity
• developing investment approach to bend the US healthcare cost curve for a major philanthropic foundation

She sits on the board of directors of Last Mile Health, a leading not-for-profit focused on expanding the community-health-worker model to the more than one billion people worldwide who lack access to healthcare because of distance. Prior to McKinsey, Pooja worked extensively in refugee health across Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.