Imagine working multiple jobs at once to provide healthcare access to the most vulnerable residents of your community while operating on razor-thin margins and also saving the overall US healthcare system money.

That’s what it takes to be the CEO of a community health system (CHCs), according to Andrea Schwab-Galindo, chief exec of the Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Tiburcio Vasquez is a nonprofit and federally qualified health center, which means it’s an outpatient clinic that’s eligible for certain types of state and federal funding. The health center was founded in 1971 and now operates 14 sites, treating about 30,000 patients across roughly 113,000 visits annually.

“Unlike other CEOs at other health systems, as a community health center CEO you have to wear multiple hats,” Schwab-Galindo told Healthcare Brew. “I joke around and I tell our staff that if you work at a community clinic you can work anywhere because you really have the opportunity to learn so many things and to do a lot more than you would at a private hospital.”

Read more about Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center and its CEO here.—MA

Move over, Amex. There’s a new gold card in town.

Payers including UnitedHealthcare and Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) and states like Arkansas and Texas have created “gold card” requirements to cut down on prior authorization wait times for vetted providers.

United’s program, for instance, gives a gold card to “provider groups who consistently adhere to evidence-based care guidelines” and have prior authorization approval rates of 92% or higher over at least two years.

Unlike a credit card, however, you can’t tuck prior authorization gold cards into your wallet. This designation just means these providers are allowed to give advance notification to United for eligible procedure codes rather than going through the full prior-authorization process, which requires clinical information and can have lengthy wait times.

Learn more about what insurance gold cards do.—CC

Despite rising Medicare Advantage (MA) utilization, Elevance Health has come out of Q1 2025 unscathed.

The company reported adjusted diluted earnings per share of $11.97 and stuck to its prediction of $34.15 to $34.85 adjusted earnings per share for 2025. This contrasts with peer UnitedHealth Group, which lowered its earnings predictions for the year in its call last week following a disappointing quarter. (Elevance released a preview of its earnings in a Form 8-K on April 17, hours after UnitedHealth detailed its surprisingly bad quarter, to reassure investors.)

“We’re staying focused on what we can control, delivering operational results, engaging proactively with partners, and advancing our long-term strategy,” President and CEO Gail Boudreaux said in Elevance’s April 22 earnings call.

United attributed its struggle to surprisingly high MA utilization and unexpected expenses from Optum, the company’s healthcare services business, Healthcare Brew previously reported.

See more on Elevance’s earnings here.—CC

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