Dr. Chris DeRienzo is a dedicated husband, a proud father, a mediocre triathlete, and author of Tiny Medicine: One Doctor’s Biggest Lessons from His Smallest Patients (Big Eye Books, Summer 2019). He’s also a physician committed to improving America’s health and striving to match Theodore Roosevelt’s efforts to live life as a spectacle of the human engine driven at full speed. He currently serves as Chief Medical Officer for Cardinal Analytx, leading the company’s clinical enterprise and helping connect world-class data science to “Better Care Sooner” for patients, employees, and plan members across the nation. He is also an Adjunct Professor with Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center.

Recognized by Modern Healthcare in 2018 as one of 15 “Up and Comers” Under 40 and Becker’s as one of healthcare’s “Rising Stars,” Chris has published and presented internationally on leveraging analytics to drive continuous improvement, implementing data science in healthcare, and the intersection of humanity and technology. A frequent keynote speaker and the first ever HIMSS SPARK (TED-style) Speaker, he also advises both state and national governments and companies from early-stage ventures to the Fortune 500 on issues related to healthcare quality, safety, and analytics.

Prior to joining Cardinal, Chris served as Chief Quality Officer for Mission Health, a $2B integrated delivery system based in Asheville, NC. In this role, he had senior executive responsibility for quality, safety, experience, analytics and population health across Mission’s inpatient, ambulatory, and post-acute enterprise. His leadership helped create a truly data-driven culture of continuous improvement, propelling the system back to recognition by IBM Watson as a Top 15 Health System in both 2017 and 2018 while delivering measurably better clinical outcomes and multi-million dollar returns on value-based risk contracts.

Board Certified in both Pediatrics and Neonatology, Dr. DeRienzo completed his M.D., Masters in Public Policy, and post-graduate medical training all at Duke. He is still a practicing neonatologist in the Mission Children’s NICU follow-up clinic and volunteers as a member of the Mercy Health (Chesterfield, MO) Board Quality Committee and the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly Board of Directors. At a national level, Dr. DeRienzo was just the fourth medical student elected and re-elected to serve on the AMA Board of Trustees. He is a Past-President of the Durham-Orange County Medical Society and has served in leadership roles within the American Academy of Pediatrics and the North Carolina Medical Society. He was appointed in early 2018 by the North Carolina Secretary of Health and Human Services to serve on the Medical Care Advisory Committee, advising the Department on all aspects of Medicaid transformation, and has spent time advising the NC Quality Center on Safety Culture, the NC Division of Public Health, and the NC Institute of Medicine.

Outside of work Chris enjoys competing in triathlon. He finished his first (and potentially only) Ironman race in Louisville in 2018, is a two-time Ironman 70.3 Finisher and raced at the 2017 USA Triathlon Olympic Distance Age Group National Championships. He’s also a sucker for bucket list races his friends convince him “really won’t be as hard as they sound” and a frequent early-morning Zwift rider. He’s seen every episode of The West Wing at least twice and can quote “Two Cathedrals” line-for-line… including the Latin swearing.

Chris lives with his family and their two incredibly energetic dogs in Asheville, NC.