Lauren Ohata
Principal
Health Management Associates
Los Angeles, CA
[javascript protected email address]
(213) 314-9090
Lauren Ohata is a highly versatile and strategic leader with experience in policy development and implementation across the public and private sectors. She is passionate about public policy that serves the needs of our communities.
As a principal at Health Management Associates (HMA), Lauren leads the implementation of California’s multi-year Medicaid (Medi-Cal) transformation (CalAIM) to improve and integrate care for millions of Medi-Cal beneficiaries in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and statewide. She provides stakeholder engagement, operational readiness, technical assistance and training leadership to commercial and Medicaid health plans, county and city agencies, and community-based providers. Lauren is skilled at strategic and collaborative planning, building organizational capacity, innovating with limited resources, and managing high-velocity, multi-stakeholder programs.
Lauren has been at the forefront of leading Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Marketplace program implementations nationwide since the start of the first open enrollment period. She has held multiple leadership roles within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), including chief of staff to the director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO). In this position, she facilitated the understanding of policy issues with top-level leadership and acted on behalf of the director. In her work with CMS, Lauren developed resolutions to key policy issues, aligning leadership across the Department of Health and Human Services, the White House, the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, and other federal agencies. She was integral to the HealthCare.gov recovery efforts at CMS and, while at HMA, has assisted several states in their transition to operate as State-based Marketplaces.
Lauren is skilled at the creation and management of strategic communications and developing collaborations between stakeholders responsible for the shared success of public programs. She has worked with partners and the public to provide training and technical assistance to ACA navigators, providers, health plans, and states. As a regulatory consultant at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan (KP), Lauren was the driving force behind the implementation of ACA requirements for millions of members. Her leadership responsibilities at KP included the alignment and integration of KP’s national and regional plan strategy and operations to ensure KP provided coverage to and met the unique needs of underserved members while bringing the company into compliance in nine states.
Lauren earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Claremont McKenna College and serves on the board of the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, one of the largest ethnic arts and cultural centers of its kind in the country.
Lauren enjoys art, good design, and is an advanced practitioner of Ikebana (the traditional Japanese art of flower arranging).