Monday, April 28, 2025

Stat Plus Runs Detailed Profile of Chris Klomp, New Head, Center for Medicare

 

Kudos to Mario Aguilar, journalist at STAT PLUS, for his very detailed profile of Chris Klomp, the new head of the Center for Medicare.

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When thinking of CMS, in the lab industry we think about NCDs and we think about the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule.   

  • The NCD group is part of the Office of Clinical Standards and Quality, where the Coverage and Analysis ("NCD") group report to the CMS Chief Medical Office.   
  • For the CLFS - and all sorts of fee schedules and operational rules - pivot to the Center for Medicare.   

Chris Klomp replaced the prior Center for Medicare chief, Meena Seshamani, on April 21, 2025.

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Per the STAT PLUS article, Klomp was CEO of health IT company "Collective Medical," which raised $50M before its exit by acquisition.   (He thereafter had engagements such as board seats for Maven Clinic and Nomi Health.)  

Per STAT, Klomp's former associates and other experts say he has big plans for his role, both on the Medicare Advantage side and on the fee for service side.   As head of Center for Medicare, he will report to Dr. Oz, who is head of CMS as a whole.

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I've asked Chat GPT for a paragraph of two on Klomp.

Chris Klomp has recently been appointed as the Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicare at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), reporting directly to Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. In this role, Klomp oversees the Medicare program, which provides health coverage to approximately 68 million Americans and manages an annual budget of around $1 trillion.​

Prior to his CMS appointment, Klomp was the CEO of Collective Medical, a healthcare technology company focused on real-time care coordination, which was acquired by PointClickCare in 2020 . He also served as a senior advisor at PointClickCare and he has held board positions at organizations such as Nomi Health, Maven Clinic, and InnovaCare Health. 

Background.  Klomp's background includes experience in private equity at Bain Capital and consulting at Bain & Company. He holds a BA in Economics and English from Brigham Young University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar .​

Chat GPT summarizes several public sources in the business press as: 

Chris Klomp brings a leadership style deeply rooted in data-driven innovation and a commitment to improving care for vulnerable populations. As the former CEO of Collective Medical, he emphasized the importance of real-time care coordination to enhance patient outcomes. His approach at Collective Medical focused on integrating data to close information gaps across the healthcare continuum, particularly benefiting high-risk patients.  Given his background, Klomp may aim to modernize the program through better data sharing and technological advancements.


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A sidebar to the Stat article cites CBO data that Medicare is now solvent to 2052