Amar A. Desai, M.D., M.P.H., is chief executive officer of Optum Health, a national, comprehensive and patient-centered care organization enabling high-quality, fully accountable value-based care. Optum Health helps deliver better experiences for patients and care providers, improve health outcomes, lowers total cost of care, and proactively engages people in managing their health and well-being in person, in home and virtually.
Optum Health serves more than 100 million individuals in all 50 states across primary, surgical, behavioral and specialty care centers as well as behavioral health benefits, healthy lifestyle, prevention and financial service offerings. Optum Health empowers care teams with the latest information, insights and best practices to help them efficiently coordinate all patient care, manage referrals and identify higher-quality, lower-cost options by leveraging distinctive assets in data, analytics, technology and clinical expertise.
A physician, public health advocate and health care executive with decades of experience leading health system transformation to help patients lead healthier, more fulfilled lives, Dr. Desai is focused on accelerating a patient-centered, value-based care model to achieve quality outcomes and improved experiences for patients, while lowering the total cost of care and supporting the physician practice of medicine.
Dr. Desai previously served as president for Health Care Delivery at CVS Health. In this role, he was responsible for the company’s health services organization and care delivery strategy.
Dr. Desai first joined Optum in 2019 when he served as president, HealthCare Partners, a leading medical group and integrated delivery network serving over 700,000 patients and later became president and CEO of Optum Pacific West, building and operating the largest multi-payer value-based care delivery organization on the West Coast.
Prior to joining Optum, Dr. Desai was chief executive officer, University of Southern California (USC) Care and a senior executive at DaVita, a global leader in dialysis care. Earlier in his career, Dr. Desai served as an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company.
Dr. Desai earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees from Brown University, and his master’s in public health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He has previously served as associate clinical professor of medicine at Keck School of Medicine at USC and held faculty appointments at Stanford School of Medicine and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.