This is a profile image of Stephanie Carlton

Stephanie Carlton

PartnerDallas

Focuses on health system strategic growth and performance, including tech-enabled workforce and talent excellence

Stephanie has worked with a range of health systems on strategic growth and performance, including academic health systems, rural health systems, integrated delivery networks, and children’s hospitals across the United States. She is a leader in McKinsey’s Provider Performance Improvement and Operations Practices, focusing on tech-enablement of workforce excellence, talent retention/recruitment, and care delivery. She has also served as the leader of McKinsey’s Center for US Health System Reform and a leader in the Medicare Domain.

Recent experience includes:

  • advising a top-tier, academic children’s hospital on growth and performance strategies (including digitizing growth and patient engagement)
  • building a two-year performance transformation program for an academic health system
  • assessing integration of a health system, health science center, and academic campus
  • running operations during leadership transitions and an integrated delivery system turnaround
  • leading rural health system work around performance and growth, focusing on workforce excellence, “system-ness”, and telehealth access
  • Designing and launching a new product tailored to populations with behavioral health needs
  • evaluating the potential for technology-driven disruption in healthcare, including the integration of longitudinal health records, artificial intelligence, and real-time patient monitoring and cognitive engagement.

Prior to McKinsey & Company, Stephanie was the top Republican advisor for Medicare Advantage and Medicaid on the US Senate Finance Committee and completed a fellowship in perinatal nursing at Georgetown University Hospital. She has served on the Boards of the Health Care Cost Institute, Ignite Health, and the University of Texas McCombs Alumni Advisory Board.

Published Work

The end of the COVID-19 public health emergency: What’s next?,” McKinsey & Company, May 2023

Looking ahead to the next decade of accountability for care delivery,” McKinsey & Company, November 2022

Insights into the 2022 individual health insurance market,” McKinsey & Company, August 2022

New Stars ratings for Medicare Advantage prioritize customer experiences,” McKinsey & Company, October 2020

"Supplemental benefit changes in Medicare Advantage increase options for those with chronic conditions,” McKinsey & Company, August 2020

The exciting news in Medicare is happening at the kitchen table—not on the debate stage,” McKinsey & Company, December 2019

"Assessing the Medicare Advantage Star Ratings,” McKinsey & Company, July 2018

"What can states do to change key parameters of Medicaid?,” McKinsey & Company, April 2017

"What can states do to change key parameters of the individual market?,” McKinsey & Company, April 2017

Past experience

Harvard Kennedy School
Resident Fellow, Fall 2022

US Senate Finance Committee
Health policy advisor

Georgetown University Hospital
Registered nurse

Education

McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin
MBA