Sep 13th 2019

Faces of EviCore: Linda Huverserian

They say variety is the spice of life. This has certainly been the case for Dr. Linda Huverserian of EviCore! Born and raised in Los Angeles, she attended undergraduate school at UCLA. She then took a hiatus from sunny California to attend medical school at Temple in Philadelphia, focusing her studies on family medicine and primary care. She performed her family residency at UCLA, and then promptly joined a multispecialty group which was located closer to home and gave her the opportunity to learn and grow in new practice styles.

Proud of Her Roots

Clearly, family has always been an important factor in Dr. Huverserian’s life, from her choosing to stay close to her own, to her focusing her medical practice on caring for the families of others. She has a real passion for the family bond and helping families live long and healthy lives together. Her family is Armenian, and as such, she jumped at the opportunity to join an Armenian medical professional society when it came up. She had started thinking about what was next in her career and heard of an opening with a community clinic that focused on delivering medicine to an underserved (including a large Armenian population). She worked there for 3 years before the itch to serve more people on a more macro scale became too great to ignore. As she puts it, she wanted to “…impact health more widely.”

A Real Knack for Research

It doesn’t take Dr. Huverserian long to find what she’s looking for once she gets after it. In fact, she found opportunities at EviCore not long after starting to scratch that “need to grow” itch and submitted an application. She was, she says, very excited about the EviCore team from the moment of her interview with Doctors Marino, Israel, and Hoffman. “I was really in awe of the dedication and focus to quality care... the positivity is really pervasive.”

Positive Mind, Positive Vibes

When approaching a peer-to-peer consultation, Dr. Huverserian works towards creating a positive attitude from the get-go. Both parties, she emphasizes, are advocating for the best care of the patient. “It’s more effective to think, ‘what is our mutual goal and how can we make that happen?” Her best moments in these calls, she says, come when her peers reveal that they feel like they’ve been heard and appreciated. “It really feels great to get the feedback, ‘Thank you so much for helping.” After all, that really is what EviCore’s role is in assisting the patient’s journey. Her strongest asset in serving patients is her storehouse of multifaceted experiences and her ability to navigate multiple options for care. “Having worked in a diverse range of settings has given me the opportunity to work with a diverse range of individuals,” and really learn how to better serve the patient.

Family medicine, she says, gave her the opportunity to “…build the skillset to work in a variety of cases, and provides me the opportunity to work well in the peer to peers, relate to a wide range of experiences, and continue to appreciate new insights.”

The Human Element

Success in spaces like family medicine often stems from the ability to navigate a variety of recommendations from specialists, and provide insightful suggestions to patients on the best approach to their care. “There are unique individuals behind each case, so understanding the individual element to each case is key for successful care.” Equally, in the prior authorization space, understanding the patient’s emotional needs is as important as understanding their medical condition. Fear is a major factor in how patients handle and comply with the demands of care, so helping to ease that fear is an important way to keep patients on the right path to health. As Dr. Huverserian observes: “Everyone [at EviCore} is really invested in the personal element of healthcare.”

What Might the Future Hold?

Ultimately, Dr. Huverserian is looking forward to starting her own family, and the flexibility to have that option while still making an impactful impression on the healthcare space is important to her. As such, she says her future is definitely with EviCore, and that she is excited to grow and continue learning with the team. “Individuals I’ve spoken to [at EviCore] feel that this is the ‘forever’ job; what’s more, and invaluable to my life, I really enjoy coming to work and what I get to do here each day.”

She is excited to see the next advancements that technology will bring, and is always working to understand how they can help her to better serve patients and providers. “I am an advocate for technology augmenting the quality of care...knowledge leads to advancement and so on, so it’s really about continuing to grow the science behind care. Our approach to technology is very healthy and progressive.”  The inevitable advances in technology, she hopes, will continue to help EviCore improve and grow the ways it applies its programs to support the patient’s healthcare journey as well as empower the improvement of healthcare overall.