Jim McEvoy

Senior Principal, Policy and Strategy

Health Management Associates

Lansing, MI

[javascript protected email address]

(517) 482-9236

Jim McEvoy is a Senior Principal at Health Management Associates who helps state Medicaid agencies, health plans, and public health and human services organizations turn AI interest into governed, measurable programs, drawing on more than 20 years of hands-on experience with healthcare data, IT modernization, and Medicaid operations.

Bio

Jim McEvoy is a Senior Principal with Health Management Associates (HMA) who helps health and human services organizations use data, technology, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve performance and outcomes. With more than 20 years of experience spanning healthcare IT, Medicaid programs, data strategy, and operational transformation, he has served as project director and subject matter expert directly on engagements for state agencies, correctional health systems, and Medicaid programs across Michigan, South Dakota, and Indiana.

As a leader in HMA’s AI advisory practice, Jim helps organizations assess AI readiness, identify high-value use cases, establish governance frameworks, and build practical roadmaps for responsible adoption. His work centers on translating emerging technology into measurable operational, financial, and service improvements while managing risk and preserving public trust—the same governance-first, evidence-based approach he has applied throughout his Medicaid and public sector data career.

How Jim Helps Clients

Jim’s approach answers the questions buyers actually ask before investing in AI or new technology, including where to start, how to prove its worth it, and how to avoid a costly mistake. Specifically, he:

• Prioritizes before he builds. Convenes the clinical, IT, compliance, and finance stakeholders who own a piece of the decision, and weighs candidate use cases against value, feasibility, and risk, so clients commit a limited budget to the few opportunities that matter instead of spreading it across every idea on the table.
• Builds the business case, not just the plan. Grounds every recommendation in a defensible business case and detailed design requirements—the same discipline he brings to developing RFPs and technical assistance for state Medicaid systems—so leadership has evidence it can defend to a board, a funder, or a legislature.
• Governs before he scales. Works the “design, implement, evaluate” cycle with particular weight on the evaluation phase, building measurement and cost avoidance methodology into a program from day one rather than adding it after a pilot has already stalled.
• Stays vendor-neutral. Comes from a background of writing requirements and running procurements, not selling a platform. His goal is to help clients decide what to build, buy, or extend before they sign with a vendor, not to steer them toward one.
• Leaves the client with the capability. Emphasizes learning and the diffusion of best practices so an internal team can sustain the work once the engagement ends.

Selected Client Engagements

A sample of engagements Jim has led directly includes:

• Michigan Department of Corrections (Project Director, 2017–present): Directs annual third-party reviews of healthcare vendors using claims data analysis to identify fraud, waste, and abuse. Led the state’s first in the nation integrated physical and behavioral health pilot inside correctional facilities and built a statewide COVID-19 case and vaccination tracker used for public reporting.
• South Dakota Medicaid Health Homes Evaluation (Project Director, 2018–present): Designed a pre/post quasi-experimental cost avoidance methodology with propensity matching to quantify program savings for the state and continues to produce the CMS-mandated quality measures reviewed annually with state leadership. Identified an access disparity tied to emergency department closures affecting Native American populations and proposed remediation.
• State of Michigan Medicaid IT modernization (2010–2017): Led development of approximately 40 ETL (extract, transform, load) processes and a dozen web applications; delivered custom software solutions that contributed to the state saving $1 million a day in Medicaid programming. Built CareConnect360, a statewide Medicaid claims and encounter platform now used by approximately 1,000 active users across seven business units at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, including health plans, community mental health agencies, health home providers, and foster care workers.
• Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (Project Director, Nov 2023–Feb 2024): Led a five-person team analyzing inpatient and emergency department claims data to project cost savings across alternative care models to inform a state plan amendment.
• South Dakota Department of Social Services data governance (current): Leads HMA’s engagement to build the state’s Medicaid data catalog, data lineage documentation, and interface control documents—the technical foundation for the department’s broader system modernization roadmap.