Pritish Dandapat

Buena Park, CA ***** linkedin.com/in/pritish-dandapat

Sr. IT Program Manager

Strategy & Program Management Agile Product Management IT Transformation Leader Results-driven Senior IT Program Manager with two decades of experience in the healthcare and insurance industry. Over 8 years of traditional and agile program management (SAFe) experience and 15+ years of Client/Business facing roles, spearheaded medium to large-scale IT Program and Project implementations across India, USA, and Europe. A seasoned leader skilled at steering complex projects from conception to completion delivering on time and within budget programs to meet organizational objectives by imbibing industry best practices through optimal utilization of people, technology, and processes. Expertise includes

Professional Experience

Elevance Health /CareMore and Aspire Health (Full Time) 04/2018 – 10/2023 Engineering Lead (Program Manager, Sr.), Cerritos, CA 02/2021 – 10/2023 Managed multiple in-house and industry-leading clinical program implementations, spearheaded research analysis, and developed roadmaps and strategies for successful pilot go-lives across markets. Facilitated alignment with IT, Clinical operations, 3rd party vendors, and other cross-functional teams as per product vision. Implemented technology solutions and innovations to optimize Healthcare systems, and maximize ROI to help Improve care quality and patient experience.

Led planning process, delivery, and implementation of Epic Care ambulatory EHR systems for CareMore for 800,000 annual ambulatory visits spanning 43 clinics across 6 states.

Collaborated with Exec. Steering committee and implementation partner (Deloitte) to shape execution strategy, program timelines, budget, resourcing, risk mitigation plan, and reporting to ensure smooth program execution across various phases resulting in improved clinical efficiency (projected 26%), enhanced patient experience, and quality of care.

Defined program implementation scope, feasibility study, program estimation, and planning, review and baselining of master project plan, risk prioritization, reviewing CM plan and PM plan document.

Managed Clinical redesign programs that Improved care quality through redeploying IT solutions in iterations to align technology for pressing business needs that included Provider empanelment automation, integrating Validic remote patient monitoring, improving Patient Outreach and clinical analytics and reporting for Population Health management.

Researched and evaluated third-party software solutions and vendors, considering factors such as functionality, interoperability, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.

Implemented Dragon Dictation for 85 physicians, a cutting-edge technology that reduced transcription time by 55% by seamlessly integrating voice recognition and conversational AI capabilities to result in more efficient clinical documentation and less administrative burden.

Solution Engineer Advisor Sr. (Program Manager), Cerritos, CA 04/2018 – 01/2021 Led a cross-functional team of 12, facilitating communication and collaboration between IT and business stakeholders while Managing the full Program lifecycle, from initiation to closure, for 5 underlying projects at the same timeframe. Coordinated project resources and timelines, ensuring on-time and within-budget project delivery. Instrumental in piloting Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) for faster time-to-market strategy and switching from Waterfall to Agile Framework.

Planned and managed seamless migration of Enterprise toolset tools (Jira, Jira Align, and Confluence) from Anthem On- Prem. instance into DBG Cloud instance (Jira Cloud) to help enhance team collaboration and reduce YoY maintenance cost by 27%. Leveraged advanced features and add-ons to optimize workflow, capacity planning, and scalability as part of Elevance Health tool modernization.

Managed end-to-end Program and oversight Project deliverables by working closely with business stakeholders, overseeing implementation plans, product execution, and analysis of results. Strategic Planning and Prioritization

Risk Mitigation

Stakeholder Communication

Agile Project Management

Leadership and Conflict Management

Program/Portfolio Delivery

Medicare and Medicaid

Financial Planning and Budgeting

Analytical and Problem solving

Customer Expectation Management

Cross Team Collaboration

Enterprise tool and Agility

Solution Engineering / Architecture

Domain Acumen

QA and Automation

Successfully managed to automate work intake project from manual processing, creating robust agile planning, rapid product development framework, and reporting capabilities thereby reducing planning effort to 40% and increasing release train delivery efficiency up to 30-35%

Cognizant Technology Solutions (Full Time) 01/2010– 04/2018 Sr. Manager, CareMore Health, Cerritos, CA 03/2015– 04/2018 Managed IT Delivery and Implementation of mid to large-sized programs by leading a team of 7 members. Established clear and open lines of communication with stakeholders, and collaborated effectively with internal and external development partners to ensure appropriate sizing, scoping, and delivery of key initiatives to achieve business impact. Manage integrations of multiple vendors, ensuring strong collaboration and seamless integration points.

Managed CareMore Facets integration with Cotiviti (iHealth) for Professional and Outpatient claims that enabled a comprehensive, defensible, and rules-driven Payment policy and resulted in Annual savings of up to $2.5M by reducing overpayment to providers. Additional savings of $0.8M for reduction of overpayments for DME claims.

Created Project plan, scope document, estimation, and timelines for various IT teams, developed solution diagrams for interface development, and assessed impact on current claim adjudication and payment cycles.

Maintain multiple channels of coordination, issues escalations, and status reporting with the Cotiviti development team, CM business clients, CM IT development leads, and senior management. Sr. Manager (Program Manager, QA), Hudson Bay Corporation, St Luis, MO 05/2013 – 02/2015 Managed delivery @HBC OCC (Omni Channel Commerce) Digital modernization projects that piloted various market features for OMS and WCS line of business with multiple rollouts

Successful e-commerce Project to accomplish an 18% increase in test data provisioning efficiency by coordinating data profiling and masking initiatives with TD-Max, implemented an in-house RISE tool for risk mitigation to boost productivity by 23%

Framework implementation that Increased test execution speed by implementing a Behavior-Driven Development

(BDD) automation framework using Selenium WebDriver for Order Management System (OMS), resulting in a 35% ROI and annual savings of ~$300K.

Sr. Manager (Program Transformation Lead), Staples Inc. Marlborough, MA 08/2011 – 04/2013 Led value-driven Cost Optimization Project by reducing Total Cost of Ownership through a series of Engineering, Operational, and Operating model transformations by lowering cost, reducing time to market, and increasing overall efficiency.

Demonstrated capabilities and ROI projections to Sr. Executives (CIO) by leveraging industry-leading solution accelerators and service offerings

Managed simultaneous Program/Project efforts for process automation, CI/CD integration, engagement transformation, and environment virtualization) to help cumulative annual benefit realization of $3.4M (savings of $2.5 Million/Annum- ROI Based) and Risk Based Testing (saving of $ 0.9 million capacity-based). Manager (Lead Consultant), Delta Lloyd Life, Brussels, Belgium 01/2011 – 08/2011 Planned and managed testing effort for mid-scale ALIS to BINDA product migration for DLL that involved 23000 legacy policy migrations into a new application platform.

Improved test delivery productivity to 33% by leveraging test execution and 21% for test design Automation.

Established clear and open lines of communication with stakeholders for product implementation status, managed prioritization and trade-offs between customer experience, business impact, performance, and post-launch support.

Provided regular updates and status reports to management and project sponsors.

Acted as an escalation point and addressed concerns and feedback from both IT and non-IT stakeholders.

Collaborated with key executive stakeholders, balancing competing interests and needs across the organization to arrive at a clear vision, communicating effectively, and aligning various partners along the way.

Collaborated with cross-functional teams to identify and eliminate impediments, promoting a culture of continuous improvement and resulting in an improved project delivery timeline. Associate Manager (Project Manager), WellPoint, Newbury Park, CA 01/2010– 12/2010 Led large-scale UAT effort (test strategy, execution, and implementation) for One-Point healthcare system migration into multiple regions and states.

Improved test delivery productivity by 24% by leveraging test execution and 21% for test design Automation by usage of Cognizant solution accelerators

Built superior relationships with IT and Business stakeholders, influenced, communication and negotiation skills within cross-functional teams

Infosys Technologies Ltd. (Full Time) 06/2002– 12/2009 Technical Lead (Transformation Lead), Health Ways Inc. Nashville, TN 03/2009– 12/2009 Led project delivery transformation as per Agile (Scrum and Kanban) principles. Advocated Agile-based value proposition to multiple stakeholders from ideation to implementation, grew a team of size 6 to 38 including offshore and onsite in 8 months.

Demonstrated advantages of agile (scrum) methodology over a traditional waterfall delivery, and developed an overall IT strategy to implement the scrum-based delivery model.

Implemented Scrum and Kanban frameworks, tailoring them to fit the unique needs of each project and team, Implemented User story estimation techniques and product backlog refinement strategies.

Facilitated various agile ceremonies e.g. daily stand-up meetings, sprint planning, and retrospectives to enhance communication and collaboration among team members.

Conducted agile training sessions for team members and stakeholders, ensuring a shared understanding of agile principles and practices.

Technical Lead (Sr. Business Analyst), Aetna, Hartford, CT 01/2005 – 02/2009 Contributed to Aetna Medical Management Program (MMP), customized UM platform to increase Auto approval protocols (via direct denials, procedure/Diag. code automation) to reduce manual intervention and increase authorization efficiency.

Lead Multiyear Business initiative for Aetna AA Program that increased the Auto-Adjudication (AA) rate of Professional and Institutional claims to 6.5% by automating the claim processing logic to bring in yearly savings up to $2.2M and cumulative savings of $12 M for 5 years.

Conducted thorough data analysis to support business decision-making processes, analyzed and prioritized requirements based on business needs and objectives

Data analysis to help identify opportunities for payment policy optimization and efficiency improvements, communicated effectively, and ensured a shared understanding of business needs to align with the product vision. Programmer Analyst (Business Analyst), Cigna, Bluebell, PA 02/2004 – 12/2004 Business Analyst for claims administration, Evaluating existing healthcare systems, software applications, and processes to identify areas for enhancement or optimization. Collaborate with Business teams to implement changes.

Collaborated with various teams within IT and Business stakeholders to implement changes.

Responsible for detailed requirement analysis and UAT and post-production validation to ensure successful implementation.

Software Engineer (System Analyst), Aetna (offsite), Bhubaneswar, India 06/2002 – 01/2004 System Analyst for multiple Health Plan systems including claims adjudication and Payment, EDI, Provider Network Management, and membership.

Identified potential risks and vulnerabilities within existing systems and provided proposed solutions, particularly concerning data security, privacy, and regulatory compliance

Gathered requirements and developed detailed system specifications, data models, and workflow diagrams based on requirements gathered, ensuring alignment with healthcare industry standards and best practices. Technology and Products

Atlassian (Jira/Jira Align/ Confluence), Jira Portfolio Management (PPM), Epic Healthy Planet, Facets (Claim Processing), Epic Care Ambulatory, Selenium, HP ALM, qTest, BDD Framework, Tableau, Omni channel Commerce (OCC), Microsoft Office and Project

Education

Disruptive Strategies, Harvard Business School – Online Leadership Program (Continuing)

Bachelor of Engineering, I.G.I.T Sarang, Utkal University, India Certifications

• PMP (Project Management Professional) (PMI ID – 2049777)

• CSM (Certified Scrum Master)(Scrum Alliance ID – 000521029)

• PAHM (Professional Academy of Healthcare Management)

• SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager(570*****-****)

• SAFe Scrum Master (511*****-****)

• Epic Healthy Planet and Compass Rose (ID – 718019487)

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