INFORMATION FOR
Major: Biology
Current Title: Medical Director, Vytalize Health, LLC
Dr. Hoda Bastani ’02 is a medical director at Vytalize Health, where she works with more than 70 primary care practices across the country, caring for over 22,000 Medicare beneficiaries. In her role, she supports the physicians in these practices in improving the health outcomes of their patients, while reducing the extremely high cost of healthcare paid for by Medicare. Hoda began her career in medicine as a pediatrician at a pediatric hospital in the U.S. and also provided pediatric training to general practitioners in Rwanda. A year later, she joined the Inova Cares Clinic for Children in Virginia where she provided care to children from low-income families. Faced with the limitations she and other physicians face in trying to improve the health of patients within the confines of a medical clinic, Hoda decided to pursue additional training, completing a second residency in general preventive medicine and public health, also obtaining a master’s degree in public health. Following her training, she joined the Johns Hopkins’ Health Plans (JHHP) as a medical director and was later promoted to associate chief medical officer. She spent five years at JHHP, focusing on high-level strategies to improve the health of the 350,000 members belonging to the health plan’s Medicare, Medicaid, commercial, and military TRICARE lines.
Proudest Professional Accomplishment: “I am most proud of the risks I took that led to the two key turning points in my career. When I started my position as a primary care pediatrician, my assumption was that I would remain in that job until I retired. Five years in, I discovered an opportunity to shift my career in a direction that would broaden the impact of my work. The safe choice would have been to remain in the same position. But opting for a change to a path lesser known to me paid off immensely. Similarly, when I was associate chief medical officer at the Johns Hopkins Health Plans, my original goal had been to work my way up to chief medical officer, not because the position would have been personally meaningful to me, but because it was the next step in the path that I was on. Again, the safe choice would have been to remain on that path, but changing the direction of my path led to finding my dream job. In my career, the lesson I’ve learned that I am most proud of is that it’s important to have a five-year plan and a ten-year plan, but it’s equally important to keep those plans flexible. One must be open to pivoting the direction of their career, even if that pivot wasn’t part of their original plan.”
WP Pride. “My time at William Paterson was a very formative period in my life. I think more important than the information and facts that I learned in my courses were the skills I learned in my time at WP: leadership, teamwork and collaboration, effective communication, and the organization skills, hard work, and persistence needed to pursue my goals. These skills led me to success in medical school, residency, and far beyond.”
