Constance Payne
Associate Principal
Nashville, TN
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Constance Payne is a healthcare subject matter expert who brings highly successful, strategic solutions to an array of value-based care initiatives. Her extensive background includes pharmacy practice, federal healthcare policy, Medicaid, behavioral health services, and management consulting.
Prior to joining HMA, Constance was a project delivery senior consultant in the Government and Public Services division at Deloitte. In this role, she created high quality rules design deliverables used to streamline the development and implementation of a cloud-based long-term services and supports solution. She helped translate designs for developers, walked through complex change requests with clients and helped develop training materials during a system transition.
As the opioid program director at United Healthcare, Constance led the Tennessee community and state opioid program. In this role, she managed the successful buildout of a statewide TennCare medication-assisted treatment (MAT) network involving over 90 medical and behavioral health providers. She also led the Health Link program, a multi-payer healthcare payment reform initiative for TennCare members with the highest behavioral health needs, as the director of payment reform and transformation. She identified and implemented several key processes that allowed for the smooth transition of the program to a behavioral health matrix partner. She also assisted the vice president of Payment Reform and Transformation in oversight of two additional TennCare value-based care programs – patient-centered medical homes and episodes of care (EOC). Constance also held roles at TennCare where she expanded the availability and access of health care information and data to TennCare providers and internal TennCare stakeholders. She supported management of the care coordination tool (CCT), a web-based provider portal and was the primary lead for the Health Link program. She also supported the emergency operations center (EOC) team by leading pharmacy-related operations projects and was the point of contact for the chief medical officer of the pharmacy department and behavioral health operations.
In the role of legislative assistant in the office of Senator Thad Cochran, she conducted extensive research on healthcare, education, labor, and veterans’ issues and policy for Senator Cochran, then-chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. She gained in-depth knowledge of the appropriations process by drafting, finalizing, and submitting all priority requests to the proper Appropriations Subcommittee and authored talking points, official statements, hearing materials, briefing documents, and speeches for Senator Cochran. She was also a research/staff assistant in the office of Senator Lamar Alexander, where she conducted independent research and preparation of health-related policy papers.
Constance earned a Doctor of Pharmacy and a Bachelor of Science in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Mississippi.