The Mississippi Hospital Association (MHA) Board of Governors today announced that Richard Roberson, J.D., will become the association's new President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Richard becomes only the fourth CEO to lead the MHA in its 100-year history.
After an extensive recruitment process, partnering with WittKeiffer and involving key stakeholders, Richard’s extensive qualifications and experience, his longstanding commitment to MHA, and his dedication to improving health care in Mississippi influenced the final decision.
Richard received his B.A. from Baylor University and his J.D. from the University of Mississippi. Prior to entering private practice, he spent over 15 years in Mississippi state government, several of which were spent with the Office of the Attorney General and over nine of which were spent at the Mississippi Division of Medicaid where he served as legal counsel and as Chief of Staff/Deputy Administrator.
Before joining MHA in 2015, Richard’s healthcare practice primarily focused on Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement, certificate of need, and other regulatory and audit issues for a variety of healthcare clients including hospitals, physicians, dentists, pharmacies, physical therapists, hospice, and nursing homes.
At MHA, Roberson served as Vice President of Policy and State Advocacy until February of 2023. In that role, he handled in-house legal issues for MHA and coordinated the association’s government relations and health policy strategies with an emphasis on federal and state regulatory and reimbursement issues and with a particular focus on Medicaid issues. During his tenure, MHA advocacy efforts achieved a positive impact of over $1.5 billion for Mississippi hospitals. Richard was also actively involved in the creation of MHA-led transformational healthcare programs such as IntelliTrue, a new statewide health information exchange, which currently connects health plans, hospitals, community mental health clinics, and clinics; the creation of a Medicare ACO, Myriad Health Alliance, which has returned over $37 Million in shared savings to its hospital members; and provider-sponsored health plan statutory language which enabled the creation of MississippiTrue, now doing business as TrueCare.
In 2023, Richard transitioned from MHA to become the first President and CEO of TrueCare, a non-profit Mississippi provider-sponsored health plan which is poised to contract with the Mississippi Division of Medicaid to provide care coordination services to eligible Medicaid beneficiaries through its strategic alliance with CareSource, one of the nation’s largest non-profit managed care plans offering services to over two million members. TrueCare aims to improve the healthcare outcomes for its plan members while partnering with Mississippi healthcare providers to streamline the delivery of care by leveraging data and predictive analytics to support patients and providers and transform care management.
"Over the past two decades, Richard’s achievements have improved the bottom line for hospitals, improved healthcare quality, better positioned providers for the transition to value-based programs, and benefitted Mississippi patients. Richard is uniquely qualified to lead this organization through challenging times," said Lee McCall, Chairman of the MHA Board of Governors.