Debbie Welle-Powell is a healthcare thought leader, educator, national speaker, and content expert in delivery systems models of care, population health and digital care. As the former Chief Population Health Officer at Essentia Health, an integrated delivery system with 14 hospitals, 1,500 provider health system spanning the states of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. She designed, built, and operationalized Essentia’s $2.5 billion dollar transition from a primarily fee-for-service model of care to one that focused on value, the patient and risk-based contracting with payers. The results led to forty- five percent of the system’s fee-for-service revenue tied to financial and clinical performance which produced record earnings on shared savings.

Welle-Powell built a high-performance team of 200 hundred associates responsible for aligning the Health System’s clinical and economic transformations to support Essentia’s vision to become the leading health system for patients in the Midwest. This included developing care management programs and clinically redesigning care to ensure that high-value care is delivered across the Health System’s service area. Her direct reports covered the areas of telehealth, payer contracting and strategy, care management, remote patient monitoring, hospital at home, community health and wellness, and community benefit.

Her twenty-five years of exceptional and national executive healthcare experience and background in multi-state, large integrated delivery systems, coupled with industry involvement and insights into emerging opportunities, trends, and challenges have been valuable to health systems and purchasers seeking to grow, diversity and promote its expertise in the development and implementation of data-driven strategies and solutions in population health and value-based care.

Debbie is extremely active in the community and currently serves on many national and local boards including the National Association of Accountable Care Organizations, National Committee on Quality Assurance, International Women’s Forum, Summit Community Care Clinic in Frisco, Colorado, International Women’s Forum, and adjunct professor at Univ of CO Executive MBA program.

Her work has earned her many honors including being recognized as 1 of 58 Top Leaders in Population Health by Becker’s in 2022, Women of Distinction from Girl Scouts Colorado, Colorado’s Most Powerful and Influential Women Award, Outstanding Businesswoman Award from the Denver community, the Frances Wisebart Jacobs Award for Philanthropy from Mile High United Way, Health Care Champion award from Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved, and Inspiring Leadership award from CampExperience