Asking The Right Questions

Suzanne R. Fuller, Vice President and Chief Solutions Officer, Companion Data Services, is responsible for strategic partnerships and solutions for all CDS markets. Her background spans 30 years of leading business development, strategy, marketing, population health management, product development, and P&L operations within health plans, third-party administrators, health information technology solution organizations, and consulting firms.

She has held executive and senior leadership positions in global for-profits and technology start-ups, bringing a keen ability to rapidly identify the right strategy and solution to meet market and customer business needs. Suzanne is a licensed mental health counselor with national certifications in counseling, disability management, and rehabilitation counseling. Her clinical and technology background has led to innovative solutions and organic growth in population health and clinical technology solutions from both the provider and the payer side, lending a unique perspective to health plans, hospital systems, clinical solution providers, and federal health agencies and their customers and partners.

Suzanne has always mentored potential female leaders throughout her career, both through informal and formal mentor/coaching relationships, as well as through networks, continuing education, and organizational leadership. While most of her support to emerging and current leaders has been within formalized corporate and for-profit organizations, she has had the opportunity to support women interested in developing their entrepreneurial capabilities, up to and including business plan development, marketing planning, and feasibility in the not-for-profit and start-up settings. “In most instances, mentoring is more like a collaboration, where support of a business leader/owner doesn’t necessarily lead to radical changes. Oftentimes, the most important thing that one can do to support an emerging business idea is to simply validate an existing thought process or approach,” says Suzanne.

As a leader, she pays attention to the finer details as well as the big picture, asking relevant and focused questions of her team members to encourage them to develop and present fully realized proposals. She also encourages the team to think strategically in developing long-term initiatives. Suzanne enjoys one-on-one and group settings for coaching, idea generation, and problem resolution.

Companion Data Services has been highly successful with existing and prospective customers across their verticals, including commercial health and federal health agencies, higher education, and state and local government. With a Federal health agency, the CDS team worked closely with a visionary leader to enact a new model for transitioning applications from a physical data center to a co-located cloud environment, seamlessly without disruptions to any service levels. With a large Commercial customer, CDS supported development of a proprietary platform to support their transactional processing of claims unique to their needs. “These innovations have largely been achieved through our “meet you where you are” strategy and approach. Unlike many IT product-centric companies, CDS understands IT deeply. We are healthcare experts with deep roots in an 80-year-old, highly regarded, successful health services company,” says Suzanne. “Our approach is consultative. We seek first to understand the complexity of our customer’s business needs and then we design an effective solution tailored to their desired service models and outcomes.”

As a continuous learner, Suzanne is always curious about the evolution the core business (healthcare solutions) is experiencing. To that end, she must stay current on operational and clinical models and legislative and market impacts. “Some of this learning comes organically as part of ongoing continuing education units (CEUs) for my various clinical professional licenses and certifications,” Suzanne adds. “I’m constantly reviewing articles and blogs on best practices, innovation, and trends. This year I’m focusing on bringing a new and transformation approach to managing insurance market risk with a trusted partner.”

With a seasoned and growing team, Suzanne focuses on strategy, particularly strategic growth opportunities in existing and emerging markets. Some of this involves making surgically precise “tweaks” to an existing strategy. In other aspects, her team investigates growth in new and emerging markets where their proven capabilities and past performance support the prospective customer’s needs. “We are looking towards enhancing our solutions and providing the best services to our clients for years to come,” says Suzanne. WL