Doug Hock Joins Tennr as a Strategic Advisor for Health Systems

After four decades helping lead some of the nation’s foremost children’s health systems, Doug Hock is joining Tennr as a strategic advisor.

Doug has held senior leadership roles at Texas Children’s Hospital, Children’s Health in Dallas, and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), where he most recently served as EVP and System Chief Operating Officer. Throughout his career, he has helped shape organizational strategy, led complex clinical operations, and championed major initiatives addressing revenue cycle performance, digital transformation, and financial resilience.

Central to Doug’s leadership philosophy is the belief that strong financial performance enables non-profit health systems to fulfill their mission to serving their communities.

That philosophy is particularly relevant today. Health systems face mounting financial and operational pressures, including labor shortages, rising costs, increasingly complex patient needs, capacity constraints, and a challenging reimbursement environment. At the same time, they must find ways to improve access, enhance the patient experience, and reduce administrative burden on clinicians and staff.

We sat down with Doug to talk about the factors shaping healthcare delivery in 2026, and why he sees technology like Tennr as being critical to helping providers serve patients and build sustainable finances.

The following has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

TENNR: You spent much of your career in children’s health. What drew you to pediatrics?

DOUG HOCK: I started my career in public accounting, where a number of my clients were health systems. I was fascinated by their size and complexity, but even more so by the impact they had on their communities. That interest eventually led me to Texas Children's Hospital, where my connection to the mission became much more personal.

I still remember my first Halloween at Texas Children's. I dressed up in costume and joined my colleagues for a parade through the inpatient units. It was a wonderful reminder that even as we cared for children with complex medical conditions, we couldn't lose sight of the fact that kids still needed to be kids. Having fun and maintaining some sense of normalcy were important parts of their care.

As I started a family of my own, that connection to the mission grew even stronger. I came to appreciate just how important children's hospitals are to the families and communities they serve, and I knew this was where I wanted to spend my career.

You’ve written extensively about the importance of balancing mission and margin. How has that become harder?

Advances in medicine, like cell and gene therapies, are creating extraordinary opportunities to improve patients’ lives but often at significant cost. At the same time, health systems are contending with rising labor costs, reimbursement pressures, and growing demands for their services.

What makes this particularly challenging is the pace of change. Since the pandemic, I’ve felt like we’re on a treadmill that keeps getting faster. If we were running 6 mph a few years ago, it now feels like 10, with no indication it’s going to slow down.

That’s why I believe financial stewardship is more important than ever. I’ve always viewed mission and margin as mutually reinforcing, not competing priorities. Strong financial performance gives health systems the ability to sustain essential programs that can’t support themselves financially, invest in new capabilities, and continue serving their communities.

What opportunities in care delivery excite you most?

I'm particularly excited about the opportunities to make care more personalized, accessible, and convenient for patients and their families.

We have more data and better tools than ever before. We can take a critical look at the patient journey and ask some fundamental questions. Is this patient being cared for in the most appropriate setting? Could we achieve the same or better outcomes in a setting that's more convenient and less disruptive to the patient and family?

When we can safely move care from the hospital to an outpatient setting, or from an outpatient facility into the home, everyone can benefit. Patients and families have a better experience, and health systems can use their resources more effectively.

I'm also excited about the potential for technology to reduce the administrative burden on clinicians and staff. Too much of their time is consumed by processes that don't directly contribute to patient care.

What drew you to Tennr?

Two things really stood out to me: the opportunity to transform how patients are triaged and connected to care, and the potential to address longstanding challenges in revenue cycle management.

Throughout my career, capacity constraints have been a persistent challenge. We've spent decades talking about how to ensure patients get to the right provider at the right time. What excites me about Tennr is the opportunity to move beyond traditional first-in-first-out processes and take a more intelligent approach to triage, one that considers clinical urgency, patient complexity, and the most appropriate care setting.

That has tremendous potential to improve patient access while helping health systems make better use of their limited capacity. And when we can accomplish both, we're advancing the mission and improving financial performance.

The second opportunity is revenue cycle. I've spent a significant portion of my career focused on this area, including leading revenue cycle at Texas Children's and working closely with the team at CHOP.

Revenue cycle is extraordinarily complex. Every payer has different requirements, and in a large health system, hundreds of people may be involved in some aspect of the process. Much of that work is labor-intensive, and too often we're fixing problems on the back end that could have been prevented on the front end.

Think about how many claims are denied because of something that wasn't addressed before the patient was seen: inactive coverage, a missing authorization, or documentation that didn't meet the payer's requirements. By identifying and resolving these issues earlier, Tennr has the potential to reduce denials, eliminate unnecessary rework, and allow staff to focus on higher-value activities.

Where do you hope to contribute as a strategic advisor?

In the near term, a big part of my focus will be helping Tennr build relationships with health system leaders who recognize the importance of improving both mission and margin.

Having spent four decades in healthcare, I understand how complex decision-making can be in these organizations. There are multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, and legitimate concerns about introducing new technology into already complicated environments. And the bar for adopting new technology should be high.

I hope to help Tennr navigate that environment, connect with the right leaders, and communicate its value in ways that resonate with the people responsible for delivering care and managing health systems.

Over time, I'm also looking forward to working with the product team, bringing the perspective of someone who has spent much of his career trying to solve the very problems Tennr is addressing. There's a big difference between developing a promising technology and successfully implementing it in a complex health system. I hope my experience can help bridge that gap.

What excites me most is the potential to make a meaningful difference for patients, clinicians, and the people who support them. If we can help patients get to care faster, reduce administrative burdens, and improve financial performance, that's a pretty compelling combination.