Q&A with the April 9 Virtual Roundtable Panelist – Garrett Gillespie

By | April 6, 2021

HFMA Virtual Roundtable – Speaker Q&A – for Garrett Gillespie, JD, CHIE, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Boston Medical Center HealthNet Plan

  1. Tell us about your compliance career journey. I think most folks in healthcare have non-linear career paths and I’m no different. I started my career as an employment litigator in San Diego. I assumed that I’d be a litigator for life, but then fate interceded when I returned to Boston and was assigned to work on one of the early DOJ criminal and civil investigations regarding the marketing practices of a pharmaceutical company, the case involving TAP pharmaceuticals and its prostate cancer drug Lupron. The next three years were a crash course in healthcare law. I worked closely with TAP’s lead in-house attorney, which sparked my interest to work for a healthcare company as in-house counsel. After stints at healthcare firms in the Boston area, in 2011 I joined CVS Health as the lead lawyer for MinuteClinic, and then in 2016 joined the BMC Health System, as an attorney, and now also corporate compliance officer, for the System’s health plan, BMC HealthNet Plan.
  2. What are your tips on staying informed & effectively disseminating news, given the ever-changing health care landscape? The Boston Globe has pretty good healthcare reporting. And I’m actually a fan of Twitter for obtaining up-to-date healthcare news. I follow a variety of healthcare entities (providers, plans, trade associations), current and former government officials and political figures, news organizations, and reporters and I find this gives me a good cross section of information.
  3. What does the future of health care compliance look like for you? It will no doubt be interesting and ever-changing.  I like to jokingly ask, “How do you know when you’re a real healthcare person?” The answer is: When you’re driving down the road and you see an impenetrable fog bank just 100 feet in front of you , and you don’t know what’s in there – a cliff, a wall, or more road – and you’re OK with that.
  4. If somebody googled you, what would they not find out about you? I’m a fan of big dogs, particularly mastiffs. We have a new mastiff puppy at home who is currently 30 pounds and likely on the way to about 175 pounds.

Check back next week for more Q&A with the HFMA Virtual Roundtable panelists. If you would more information on the program or to register, CLICK HERE.