• Sadhna Paralkar

    Senior Vice President and National Medical Director, Segal

    Expertise

    Dr. Paralkar is a Senior Vice President and National Medical Director in Segal’s Chicago office with over 20 years of experience. Dr. Paralkar leads Segal’s Medical Management consulting and has specialized expertise in on-site clinics, wellness programs, medical management program design, health care informatics, network management strategies to optimize health improvement while containing costs, and evaluation and implementation of disease management and wellness programs.

    Professional Background

    Dr. Paralkar’s extensive experience in health care operations, informatics and consulting includes positions at UnitedHealth Group (UHG) and Ingenix (now Optum Insight), where she provided data centric clinical expertise to clients in the payer, public sector and employer markets. She was responsible for the Care Management ROI model as the Director of Product Development for the Care Management suite of products at Optum.

    Prior to joining UHG, Dr. Paralkar worked at a Fortune 500 company, Navistar, in various capacities for six years. The last position Dr. Paralkar held at Navistar was Associate Medical Director, where she was responsible for occupational health and disability, on-site clinics, on-site wellness programs, health benefits plan design and health care purchasing.

    Education/Professional Designations

    A native of Mumbai (Bombay), India, Dr. Paralkar completed her medical internship in 1992 at L.T.M. General Hospital of University of Bombay, India after she received her baccalaureate degree in Medicine and Surgery from the same institution in 1990.

    As a licensed family practitioner, some of Dr. Paralkar’s public health achievements include implementation and evaluation of immunization programs in rural India. In 1995, she received an MS in Public Health from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign focusing on Health Data Analysis and Epidemiology. The National Institutes of Health funded part of her analytic research on health communications in mass media. Dr. Paralkar also received an MBA with a focus on Health Industry Management and Marketing from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in 2003.

    Dr. Paralkar is a member of the American Public Health Association, American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, The Institute of Medicine of Chicago, American Association of Physicians from India and Women Business Leaders of the U.S. Health Care Industry Foundation.

    Publications/Speeches

    Dr. Paralkar has published several articles on health and productivity in peer-reviewed journals and is a frequent speaker at national conferences concerning health care. Past speaking engagements include the Made in America Conference, the Society of Actuaries conference and the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) conference.