Cassie Houff, MBA | 2025 MHE Emerging Leaders in Healthcare

I grew up in Virginia and moved around the state a bit throughout childhood. I had an interest in healthcare from a young age and was inspired by my mom’s career as a nurse and my dad’s career in ministry. Both live their values to the core — putting the needs and outcomes of others above their own. I attended Emory University as an undergrad and intended to go to medical school. I shifted toward leadership roles in healthcare administration after being a caregiver in my early 20s to a family member with lymphoma. The experience compelled me to focus on making a systemic difference to improve the patient experience. At that point, I chose Vanderbilt for my MBA and took my next steps into healthcare leadership.

Turning point in your career

I have had many positive influences and epiphany moments over the years, and I’m grateful to all the mentors and advisers who have helped me develop insights. One of the biggest turning points for me was in taking the leap into home care when it was a new idea for payers. That decision led me on a multiyear learning journey into different specialties across postacute care.

Biggest day-to-day challenges

We work at national scale with a large network of providers. To ensure the best outcomes, we must help shoulder the burden of challenges those providers are facing. Our dedicated clinicians take every patient case and confer when needed about appropriate care. Our network support functions push themselves to innovate to find an easier path that lessens the burden on the system.

Top priority

We are laser-focused on drivingnhigh-quality care and improved outcomes through our models while optimizing the system by aligning provider and payer incentives. We can offer support to maximize payers’ postacute care outcomes through our network management options, so we are excited for conversations with more payers to help them see how we can support their members.

Change one thing about U.S. healthcare

It’s tough to pick one thing because I think we have many upstream and downstream inputs that are driving our challenges within the healthcare system and the way patients receive care. I would pick the most impactful single “thing” that I think would drive change: an overhaul of fee-for-service payment systems. We need patients to receive necessary, timely care, which will require more aligned payment solutions and incentives between providers and payers.

A book or article that everyone working in healthcare should read

I attribute the success of organizations in the long term to strong leadership and the ongoing commitment of their leaders to an aligned purpose. There are many great books in this category, but I recently read a three-book series [by Simon Sinek], “Start With Why.” I particularly appreciated the advice to start with why and then shift to how leaders need to show up to make their organizations successful. I think this message is so poignant for healthcare because of the complexity of the system and the high stakes for our patients
and members.

Personal goal this year

I always have a lot of goals for myself and time with my family. Each year, my kids get a year older, and I try to be present to enjoy and support their experiences as they learn and grow. Beyond that, I always tackle a couple of home DIY projects every year, and I’m going to expand my worldview with some stateside and international travel as well.