Cheryl Waltko

Cheryl has over 40 years of experience in healthcare executive and senior leadership positions, with a background in evaluating and improving operations as well as managing single and multispecialty groups.

About Cheryl

Cheryl has spent her 40-year career in executive and senior management positions throughout the healthcare industry. She specializes in helping healthcare organizations identify and assess opportunities to enhance productivity, control costs and increase revenue.

Cheryl has developed specialized expertise in healthcare operations, provider-based regulatory requirements, personnel management, revenue cycle and physician relations. She has led a diverse range of projects, from redesigning compensation plans for academic health centers and large multispecialty practices to providing regulatory compliance and audit support.

Over the course of her career, Cheryl has:

• Led the integration of hospital-owned multispecialty practices, establishing a new governance and management structure, setting provider compensation model guardrails, and standardizing operational processes and improvement of referral retention within the network.
• Provided interim executive directorship to a bankrupt Federally Qualified Health Clinic (FQHC) in the that resulted in financial turnaround and continued operations.
• Served as two-year interim management of a large public academic faculty clinic which included overseeing the transition of its clinics from community- to provider-based.
• Acted as interim COO for a large healthcare system to manage compensation, data systems and business operations, as well as provide mentoring to the practice managers and division directors of its over 350-member, multispecialty, multisite enterprise, yielding a $14 million turnaround.
• Managed a dedicated interim COO and financial director team for a for-profit hospital where she implemented internal controls, established group governance and reengineered its revenue cycle processes.

Prior to joining Huron, Cheryl was the vice president and managing director for Equation Consulting, a firm specializing in healthcare analytics and healthcare system operational improvement. She led a team of operational consulting experts who supported group medical practices through assessments, interim management, provider-based clinic and rural health clinic transitions, and performance improvement initiatives. Cheryl founded her own firm, HealthCare Compliance & Consulting Resources in 2001, serving as president and CEO until 2010 when she sold the business to Equation Consulting.