Executive Vice President and Western PA Market President, Highmark Health
Bruce A. Meyer, MD, MBA, is Executive Vice President and Western PA Market President for Highmark Health. In this role, Dr. Meyer oversees Highmark Health's blended payer-provider strategy in the western Pennsylvania market, including the operations of Highmark’s western Pennsylvania insurance division as well as its western Pennsylvania-based provider system, Allegheny Health Network.
Dr. Meyer joined Highmark Health in 2022 after serving as President of Jefferson Health in Philadelphia and Senior Executive Vice President of Thomas Jefferson University. He is also a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Population Health at Jefferson’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College.
At Jefferson, Dr. Meyer oversaw the health system's multitude of clinical services offered across the greater southwestern Philadelphia region, footprint that includes 18 hospitals and more than 100 outpatient and urgent care centers. Home to the renowned Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, and one of the largest faculty-based telehealth networks in the country, Jefferson employs approximately 37,000 people, including nearly 2,500 physicians and 9,600 nurses.
Prior to his role as President of Jefferson Health, Dr. Meyer was Executive VP for Health System Affairs, Executive Director of the Faculty Practice Plan and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UT Southwestern (UTSW) Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.
The author of over 70 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Meyer has won multiple teaching awards while serving as a residency and fellowship program director and academic chair.
Dr. Meyer earned his medical degree at the University of Texas, where he also completed an OB-GYN residency and maternal-fetal medicine fellowship. He received his MBA from the University of Tennessee.
President, Allegheny Health Network
Jim Benedict, JD, CPA, MAFIS, FACHE, serves as President of Allegheny Health Network. As AHN's president, he leads the planning, direction, and coordination of the network's day-to-day operations and long-range clinical strategy, across AHN's entire Western Pennsylvania service footprint.
Previously, he served as AHN's Chief Operating Officer, responsible for the strategic and operational management of all of AHN’s hospitals, as well as its acute-care and ambulatory-care facilities. In that role, Mr. Benedict was one of the chief architects of the network’s successful operational turnaround and its nearly $2 billion capital investment and market expansion strategy. He also was a key leader of the organization’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over his more than 30 years in health care, Mr. Benedict has extensive experience in physician practice management, ambulatory operations, and hospital operations, serving in executive leadership roles in the nonprofit, public, academic, and international medical settings.
Mr. Benedict came to AHN in 2016 from TeamHealth, where he served as the Executive Vice President of Anesthesia for U.S. operations. From 2020 to 2022, he served as Highmark Health's executive vice president, Living Health Partnerships and Operations. He returned to his AHN COO role in 2022, and was named AHN president in 2023.
He received his undergraduate degree from Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio, a Master’s in Accountancy from Cleveland State University, and his law degree from The Cleveland Marshall College of Law.
He is also a non-practicing certified public accountant in Ohio, is admitted to the Ohio Bar and is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Chief Medical Officer, Allegheny Clinic President
As Allegheny Health Network’s Chief Medical Officer, Donald Whiting, MD, is AHN’s senior-most clinical executive and the leader of AHN’s medical staff. He is also president of Allegheny Health Network’s physician organization, the Allegheny Clinic, one of the state’s largest physician groups, employing more than 1,400 physicians.
Dr. Whiting is a respected physician-leader who is passionate about changing the way health care is delivered. Regarded as one of the nation’s foremost experts in the use of deep-brain stimulation to control the debilitating motor symptoms of patients with Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, Dr. Whiting has established Allegheny General Hospital as one of the top centers in the world for DBS treatment.
Dr. Whiting has served in numerous physician leadership roles over his two-decade affiliation with AHN. He continues to serve as Chair of the AHN Neuroscience Institute, and he had also served vice-chair of AGH’s Department of Neurosurgery, and co-director of AGH’s Division of Functional Neurosurgery and Neurosurgery Spine Bio-Mechanics Lab.
Dr. Whiting received his undergraduate education at Grinnell College in Iowa, earned an MS in Physiology at Georgetown University, and was awarded his medical degree in 1985 after training at Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Dr. Whiting completed a neurosurgical residency at The Cleveland Clinic and a neurotrauma fellowship at Allegheny General Hospital.
A professor of Neurosurgery at Drexel University College of Medicine and Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Whiting has been an active member of many of his field’s leading professional and scientific organizations, including the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and the American Society of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery.
He has been active with the Parkinson Foundation of Western PA and The Cahouet Center for Parkinsons Disease.
Chief Financial Officer
James Rohrbaugh serves as Chief Financial Officer for Allegheny Health Network. As CFO, Mr. Rohrbaugh is responsible for overseeing and sustaining AHN’s strong financial performance, including direction of the network’s accounting and revenue cycle operations, budget planning, and capital investments.
Mr. Rohrbaugh has more than 25 years of experience as a financial executive, primarily within the health care industry. He joined AHN in 2014 as vice president of Finance and Chief Financial Officer for Jefferson Hospital, and was appointed Senior Vice President of Financial Operations for AHN in 2018.
Prior to joining AHN in 2014, Mr. Rohrbaugh served in various financial and executive leadership positions at Ascension Health’s Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C., and Inova Loudoun Hospital in Leesburg, Virginia. He also spent three years in the health care regulatory consulting practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and is a certified public accountant in the state of Virginia.
Mr. Rohrbaugh earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Accounting, at Shenandoah University. His Pittsburgh-area community affiliations include board leadership roles with Allies for Children, Clairton Cares, and the West Jefferson Chamber of Commerce. He is also a member of the Healthcare Financial Management Association.
Chief Quality & Learning Officer
Brian M. Parker, MD, is the Chief Quality & Learning Officer for Allegheny Health Network. In this role, Dr. Parker is responsible for ensuring that the highest standards of patient care quality, safety, and service excellence are achieved across the system’s 14 hospitals and its hundreds of clinical locations, primary care offices and specialty practices.
Dr. Parker has more than two decades of experience in health care, holding leadership roles in quality and patient safety, risk management, patient experience, hospital operations, and education. Following almost 20 years at Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Parker joined AHN in early 2017.
Dr. Parker received both his undergraduate and medical degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and completed both his anesthesiology residency and liver transplantation fellowship training at the University of Pittsburgh.
Professional affiliations include membership on the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia, the Pennsylvania Society of Anesthesiologists, and the International Liver Transplantation Society.
Chief Clinical Diversity Officer
Margaret Larkins-Pettigrew, MD, MEd, MPPM, FACOG, is a Senior Vice President and the Chief Clinical Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer for Allegheny Health Network.
As Chief Clinical DEI Officer, Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew’s role is to advance diversity and inclusion among the clinical and caregiving staff at AHN, and to advocate for equitable health outcomes among all patient populations by developing programs that target disparities in medical care. An internationally respected expert in cultural humility within the health care field, Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew has spent her career engaging marginalized communities and building programs that focus on promoting outcomes equity for vulnerable patients and mitigating socio-political barriers to care. She has a special interest in educating and empowering women, especially those pursuing careers in medicine.
Although Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew cares for women in her general OB/GYN practice, she also focuses on providing care to women living in low- to middle-resource communities, with a clinical focus in the care of women living with HIV.
A native Pittsburgher, Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew recently returned from Cleveland, Ohio where she led the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs for University Hospitals of Cleveland. There, she served as Chair & Director of the Center for Clinical Excellence and Diversity at University Hospitals as well as Dean of Students for Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew is the founder and current CEO and President of JUSTWONDOOR (Women and Newborns, Diversity, Outreach, Opportunity and Research), a program that aims to educate global medical providers through local and international health care collaborations.
Prior to receiving her medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh, she practiced as a critical care nurse, receiving her baccalaureate degree in nursing from the University of Pittsburgh, a master’s degree in education from California State University Los Angeles, an Adult Nurse Practitioner certification from California State University, Long Beach, and a master’s degree in public policy and management (International Affairs) from the University of Pittsburgh. She is also a veteran of the United States Navy, where she cared for active duty members, veterans and their families.
Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew lectures frequently, regionally and internationally, on health issues relating to the wellness of women and strategies that advance diversity, equity and inclusion in healthcare. She is also the author of “The Colors of My Heart: Embracing My Blackness with History, Family, Fear and Faith,” a recently published autobiography.
Chief Medical Operations Officer
Sricharan Chalikonda, MD, MHA, FACS, is the Chief Medical Operations Officer at Allegheny Health Network, and serves as Chair, AHN Surgical Institute. A nationally recognized physician leader and pioneer in the use of highly advanced surgical procedures for abdominal cancers and other diseases, he joined AHN in 2018 from the Cleveland Clinic.
At AHN, Dr. Chalikonda leads clinical operations for the network’s physician organization, a role that includes oversight of surgical services provided at AHN’s inpatient and outpatient facilities. He also maintains his surgical practice as part of AHN’s Center for Digestive Diseases and Cancer Institute.
Dr. Chalikonda earned his medical degree from Kasturba Medical College and a master’s degree in healthcare administration from Ohio University. He completed his general surgery residency and a fellowship in minimally invasive and bariatric surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, and a surgical oncology fellowship at UPMC.
Dr. Chalikonda has published dozens of scientific articles, abstracts and book chapters about issues and advancements in his field, including the surgical treatment of pancreatic cancer, the treatment of peritoneal surface malignancies and minimally invasive treatment of liver disease.
He is a member of the American College of Surgeons, the American Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association and the Society of Surgical Oncology.
Chief Digital Information Officer
Ashis Barad, MD, is AHN’s chief digital information officer. He came to Pittsburgh in spring 2022 from Baylor Scott & White Health, a 52-hospital system based in Dallas, Texas. Most recently, Dr. Barad served as clinical lead for Baylor Scott & White’s Digital Health Office, managing the office’s general data analytics and spearheading the network’s digital health and virtual clinical strategies.
As CDIO, Dr. Barad now leads AHN’s efforts to deploy technologies that extend the reach, access, and effectiveness of AHN’s clinical care delivery, enhancing both the patient and clinician experience relative to electronic health records, artificial-intelligence-powered data analytics, wearable devices, and other virtual tools and platforms.
He also guides AHN clinical informatics efforts and its MyChart optimization.
A pediatric gastroenterologist by training, Dr. Barad received his medical degree from the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and completed a pediatrics residency at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. He completed a pediatric gastroenterology fellowship at Northwestern University.
He is happily married with two young children. His passion for medicine started when he developed typhoid fever at the age of 8 in rural India with no access to health care. He wants to bring wellness and health care to every corner of the U.S. and meet patients and members where they are.
Chief Experience Officer
Eugene Scioscia, Jr., MD, is Allegheny Health Network’s Chief Experience Officer.
Dr. Scioscia has been a part of AHN and its family of hospitals for nearly 30 years, working in leadership roles at both Allegheny General Hospital, where he served as chairman and residency training program director for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and West Penn Hospital, where he is past president of the medical staff. At the network leadership level, he continues to serve as AHN’s vice chairman, Clinical Operations, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He also continues to maintain his gynecology practice.
Under his leadership, AHN’s Patient Experience Office is building a system-wide culture of service excellence and superior patient communication, working closely with clinicians, hospital and institute leadership, and front-line staff across the network to meet and exceed patient and employee expectations.
Dr. Scioscia received his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine. His post-graduate training comprises four years of residency at Yale-New Haven Medical Center, including two years as the center’s chief OBGYN resident. Today, he is an adjunct clinical associate professor in obstetrics and gynecology at Temple University School of Medicine’s Pittsburgh Clinical Campus at AHN, and an assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Drexel University College of Medicine.
His professional affiliations include membership in the Pittsburgh Obstetrics/Gynecology Society (past president), and service as a fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He also has served as an examiner for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Chief Population Health Officer
Medical Director, Clinically Integrated Network
William Johnjulio, MD, is the Medical Director of AHN’s clinically integrated network, Physician Partners of Western Pennsylvania LLC, and serves as AHN's Chief Population Health Officer. He is also chair of Allegheny Health Network’s Primary Care Institute, as well as the system chair of the Department of Family Medicine at AHN.
Previously, Dr. Johnjulio served as the program director of Forbes Family Medicine Residency at AHN, and he is also a member of the Medical Staff Executive Committee at AHN. He joined AHN in 2010 and maintains his clinical practice with Forbes Family Medicine.
Dr. Johnjulio graduated from the University of Iowa College of Medicine and completed postgraduate training with a family medicine internship at the University of Rochester/Highland Hospital and a residency and chief year in family medicine at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He also completed a Faculty Development program at Duke University and an Executive Business Program at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business.
He has held academic appointments in the Departments of Family Medicine at Forbes Hospital, Temple University and Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, as well as at the University of Pittsburgh College of Pharmacy.
Dr. Johnjulio is certified by the American Board of Family Medicine, and he is a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine. He has served on the board of directors of the Allegheny County Medical Society since 2013.
General Counsel, Chief Administrative Officer, Corporate Secretary
Jacqueline M. Bauer is General Counsel, Chief Administrative Officer and Corporate Secretary of Allegheny Health Network.
Ms. Bauer serves as the chief legal counsel for the provider network and works closely with the AHN executive management team on strategic matters, including transactions and corporate initiatives. Additionally, she oversees regulatory and government affairs for AHN. She also serves as secretary of the Board of Directors of AHN and of the hospital and foundation boards within the network.
Previously, Ms. Bauer served as counsel in the Highmark Health law department and worked for the law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart (now known as K&L Gates). She has a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and received her undergraduate degree from Washington and Jefferson College, where she currently serves on the Board of Trustees.
Ms. Bauer also serves on the Board of Directors of Family House, Inc.
Chief Philanthropy Officer
Allie Quick is Allegheny Health Network’s Chief Philanthropy Officer, leading AHN’s fundraising team and philanthropic strategy. Ms. Quick directs the Network’s annual, major, and planned gifts programs, and cultivates support from grateful patients, corporations, foundations, and other donors who share AHN goals of providing affordable, high quality, patient-centered care. She also manages fundraising events, including the AHN Golf Classic and AHN Gala.
Ms. Quick joined AHN in 2017. With more than two decades of fundraising experience, she had most recently served as the senior executive director of principal gifts and university leadership engagement at the University of Pittsburgh.
Ms. Quick earned a bachelor's degree from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and a master’s degree in public policy and management from the University of Pittsburgh. She is currently pursuing a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in administrative and policy studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
She is active in the Pittsburgh nonprofit community, having served as a volunteer or board member for a variety of health- and welfare-focused organizations, including the local Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America chapter and Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership.
Senior Vice President, Virtual Health and Access
Deborah (Deb) Duffy, MPA, FACHE, is AHN’s senior vice president of virtual health and clinical access. In this role, Ms. Duffy leads all virtual and clinical access initiatives at AHN, helping to expand AHN’s service capacity in high-demand specialties by developing and implementing strategies to improve care access and the experience of AHN patients overall. She has oversight of the AHN call center, capacity and optimization, and all of AHN’s mission-critical initiatives related to clinician appointments.
Ms. Duffy has over 25 years of administrative health care experience across many disciplines, including access to care, clinical compliance, space planning, managed care contracting, business and program development, practice management, medical staff development, recruitment and education at several hospital systems in northeast Ohio.
Prior to coming to AHN, Ms. Duffy served as in a variety of leadership roles at Cleveland Clinic. In 2012, she was named Executive Director for the Office of Clinical Compliance where she implemented and managed a program to measure appropriateness of care for procedures, surgeries and tests. At the same time, Ms. Duffy led the strategy and action planning to improve patient access. Prior to Clinical Compliance and access, she held roles where she was responsible strategic space planning and business development, as well as contracting with payors for tertiary care and centers of excellence, including employer-direct contracts.
Ms. Duffy has a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Public Administration degree with a focus on Healthcare Administration, both from Cleveland State University. She is a credentialed Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE) and has previously served on the Board of Directors for the local ACHE chapter, Northeast Ohio American College of Healthcare Executives (NEOACHE).
Senior Vice President, Human Resources
Melissa Ferraro serves as Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Allegheny Health Network. In this role, Ms. Ferraro strategically partners with executive leaders and contributes to client strategy and objective-setting while influencing the overall HR strategy for the enterprise. She is a results-driven, innovative thought leader with a proven ability to build solutions that impact business results.
Previously, Ms. Ferraro held the roles of Vice President, Human Resources, AHN and Director, Talent Acquisition at Highmark, where she was responsible for reengineering and redesigning processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical performance measures, such as cost, quality, speed, and service satisfaction. She also successfully led the conceptualization and design of a corporate-wide accessibility strategy focused providing comparable access for customers and employees with disabilities.
Ms. Ferraro received her Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Grove City College. She is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives and is a volunteer executive leadership team member of Go Red for Women.
