Dr. Lauren Hughes is a pediatrician and founder of Bloom Pediatrics, a practice reimagining pediatric care through a direct primary care model centered on access, trust, and time. Her work challenges the assumptions of insurance-driven medicine by asking what becomes possible when care is designed around relationships rather than volume.

Lauren’s approach is shaped by both personal history and professional experience. Raised in a small-town medical family, she grew up observing a form of care grounded in community, continuity, and responsibility. During residency, she encountered a healthcare system that often limited clinicians’ ability to provide the care patients needed—an experience that prompted her to explore alternative models. A pivotal moment came when she was reprimanded for spending additional time ensuring a child’s safety because the care was not billable.

Bloom Pediatrics operates outside the insurance system using a flat monthly membership, allowing families unlimited visits, direct communication, and proactive care without copays or prior authorizations. This model enables earlier interventions, reduces unnecessary emergency visits, and strengthens long-term relationships between families and clinicians.

In addition to pediatrics, Lauren integrates breastfeeding medicine into primary care. She is actively engaged in the national direct primary care community, collaborating with peers to share resources and expand access to sustainable, relationship-based care.

Theresa Santoro is a healthcare executive and strategist with decades of experience leading mission-driven organizations across home health, hospice, and community-based care. She serves as President and CEO of RVNAhealth, where she oversees care delivery models designed to balance operational sustainability with compassion and access.

Theresa’s work sits at the intersection of care delivery, organizational leadership, and systems transformation. Throughout her career, she has focused on building structures that allow clinicians to deliver high-quality, patient-centered care while navigating the financial and regulatory realities of healthcare. Her leadership emphasizes interdisciplinary teams, community partnerships, and care models that enable patients to remain safely at home.

At RVNAhealth, Theresa has guided strategic growth while expanding services that reduce unnecessary hospital utilization and improve quality of life for patients and families. She is particularly attuned to the challenges facing today’s healthcare organizations, including workforce pressures, reimbursement constraints, and the growing need for integrated, community-based solutions.

Through her work and public conversations, Theresa brings a systems-level perspective grounded in practical experience. She is deeply interested in how alternative care models—such as direct primary care and home-based services—can inform broader efforts to create more humane, effective, and sustainable healthcare systems.