Michael Sherman, MD, MBA, MS

Previously, Dr. Sherman served as executive vice president and chief medical officer at Point32Health, the 20^th largest health plan in the US, formed in January 2021 by the merger of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan. Prior to that merger, he served as chief medical officer of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, nationally recognized for both innovation and quality. His accountabilities included clinical innovation, medical policy, quality, including regulatory and accreditation activities, health equity, and oversight of all physician functions (including provider engagement, medical cost management, utilization management, and employer engagement). He has been widely recognized as a pioneer in bringing advances in transformational therapeutics, precision medicine, and digital therapeutics to Point32Health’s members by launching structured pilots that balance access and affordability and also generate real world evidence.

His leadership in the development of value-based payment agreements with pharmaceutical companies, which tie payment for a drug to patient outcomes, has placed him at the forefront of the issue, and Dr. Sherman is credited with cementing Harvard Pilgrim’s position as a leader among insurers in crafting agreements with pharmaceutical companies that tie payments for a drug to its performance. In 2018, he received Xconomy’s “Contrarian Award” for his contributions, including having signed the nation’s first such payment model for a gene therapy, helping pave the way for developing innovative financing models. Dr. Sherman’s work is also featured in a Harvard Business School case study published in 2021. He has also led the nation to expand access to precision medicine, such as whole genome screening, and his organization became the first health plan to cover the GRAIL Galleri Multi-Cancer Early Detection Blood Test for a subset of its commercial members in 2022.

Dr. Sherman is a past chair of the Board of Managers of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, which encompasses the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School—the nation’s only appointing medical school department based in a health plan. He holds additional board appointments with several well-respected nonprofit organizations, including the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), the Personalized Medicine Coalition, the Harvard Business School Healthcare Initiative, and NEHI (Network for Excellence in Health Innovation). He is also a past chair of AHIP’s CMO Leadership Council, a trade association comprising chief medical officers from health plans throughout the United States and previously served as a board member and as Co-President of the Harvard Business School Healthcare Alumni Association. Dr. Sherman has also served as a mentor for emerging physician executives enrolled in the AHIP Executive Leadership Program.

Prior to joining Harvard Pilgrim in 2011, Dr. Sherman served as corporate medical director for physician strategies at Humana. He also served as vice president of network and consumer solutions for UnitedHealth Group’s subsidiary Ingenix (now part of Optum) and as chief business development officer for United’s Medicare Part D business. Formerly, Dr. Sherman held the position of vice president and general manager at Thomson Medstat (now part of IBM Watson Health), and he previously held management roles at Immusol, a San Diego-based biotechnology company; HealthAllies, an organization created to provide discretionary medical benefits to the cash-pay market, which by UnitedHealth Group purchased; and Da Vita, a national provider of dialysis services.

Before pursuing an M.B.A. at Harvard Business School, Dr. Sherman received his M.D. from Yale and practiced as a cardiac anesthesiologist. He also holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Natural Sciences and an M.S. in Biomedical Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Sherman is a diplomate of the American Board of Anesthesiology and the American Board of Medical Management. In 2009, he was named a fellow of the American College of Physician Executives in recognition of his national contributions to the field of medical management. Dr. Sherman frequently speaks at regional, national, and international conferences and lectures as a faculty member of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Population Medicine. He has also been called upon to provide legislative testimony at the national level. Speaking at the White House in 2017, Dr. Sherman presented Harvard Pilgrim’s efforts to combat the opioid epidemic at a meeting of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. He has also delivered congressional briefings on precision medicine.