We are passionate about improving healthcare for everyone.
We believe that accessing healthcare should be safe, simple and low cost without compromising quality. Our team is committed to helping people have delightful healthcare experiences.
Who We Are
Patrick Spain
CO-FOUNDER, BOARD CHAIRMAN AND CEO
Patrick started First Stop Health because of his own unsatisfactory experience with the healthcare system and his desire to improve that experience for others. He is a serial entrepreneur who has founded or co-founded four Internet-based companies.
After graduating from law school, Patrick worked for Extel Corporation, a manufacturer of telecommunications and computer equipment, first as a lawyer then as a business executive. Extel was sequentially owned by Dow Jones, Rolls Royce and JWP from 1979-1990.
Co-founder and long-time chairman and CEO of Hoover’s, Patrick led the company from a small book publisher in 1992 to a profitable, publicly traded online business information services company with $31 million in revenue in 2001 with a sale to D&B in 2003 for $119 million.
Patrick was also the founder, CEO and Chairman of HighBeam Research, which he started in 2002 and sold to Cengage Learning in December 2008. He also co-founded and serves as executive chairman of Newser, a news filtering and summarization service with an audience of over three million readers each month.
Patrick serves as a board member of Owler, a Silicon Valley-based company information service that uses crowdsourcing and AI to revolutionize data collection, quality and delivery. He also serves on the board of Occasion, a Chicago-based calendaring and payment platform for small merchants.
Patrick is a member of the Library Council at the University of Chicago and is a member of the Board of Governors of Opportunity International, the largest and best capitalized micro-lender in the world. He has worked in the technology industry since 1979 and has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in Ancient Roman History and a law degree from Boston University.
Mark L. Friedman, MD FACEP FACP
Co-Founder, Board Director
and Chief Medical Officer
Mark is a nationally recognized expert in emergency medicine, quality assurance and medical cost containment. He has served as an adviser to medical insurers and government agencies on medical billing, fraud and abuse. He is a member of the Telemedicine Committee of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Mark co-founded First Stop Health out of a desire to help solve the problems of healthcare. He oversees the doctor network and is responsible for quality assurance, doctor and member education, and clinical content.
Mark has been associate professor of emergency medicine at the Frank Netter School of Medicine, chief of emergency medicine at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital of Boston, assistant professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at the University of Illinois and adjunct professor of public health at Benedictine University. He has also served as president of The Brighton Group, a medical billing and consulting company, and as CEO of National Medical Claims Analysts.
Mark is a graduate of the Pritzker School of Medicine of the University of Chicago and the Kron Scholar Program of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan Flagler School of Business. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and a life fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
In his spare time, Mark rows, skis and races sailboats.
Blaine Barnett
President
Blaine is a senior management executive, trusted advisor and personal mentor with over 20 years of global experience in achieving revenue, profit and business growth objectives. He has been a key leader at companies including Life Fitness, Restaurant Depot, CS Recruiting, AFN and Arrive Logistics. Most recently, Blaine joined First Stop Health as president with the primary goal of enabling sustainable, scalable growth.
Blaine builds relationships, resolves issues and delivers on commitments no matter the obstacles. He has grown, led and motivated dispersed and diverse teams and businesses ranging up to more than 1,000 people. Team members and clients know him as a results-oriented, energetic and a highly-respected professional.
Blaine has a strong academic grounding in math methods, economics, finance, and leadership development from Northwestern University, University of Chicago Booth School of Business and The Stagen Leadership Institute.
Blaine played four years of Division 1 college soccer, remains active physically and is very competitive. He loves chasing, coaching and watching his two daughters and son alongside his wife at their many activities and events. He lives in Deerfield, Illinois.
Robyn Docherty
Chief Financial Officer
Robyn is a proven finance leader who has experience in industries from car sales and kiwifruit distribution in her native New Zealand, to online travel booking and content management since moving to the U.S. 20 years ago.
Robyn loves the startup environment for the energy it brings to the finance role. She leads First Stop Health’s HR efforts, developing and maintaining a motivating and rewarding professional environment for its rapidly growing team.
Robyn’s first experience in a startup environment was at HighBeam Research, a subscription based digital content provider, led by Patrick Spain. She helped launch and spin off Newser, a news aggregation site, before going to Cengage Learning when it acquired Highbeam in 2008. After four years, Robyn returned to the startup world with Hireology, a dynamic online recruitment tool that helps employers hire great teams. When First Stop Health gained traction, Robyn took the chance to work with Patrick again. She is proud to see First Stop Health help people have better healthcare experiences every day.
Robyn has a bachelor of management studies (accounting and finance) from Waikato University in Hamilton, New Zealand. She is also a retired member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand.
Robyn loves to ride bikes and has twice ridden across Iowa with 15,000 of her closest friends. She has the best (non-medical) vocabulary on the First Stop Health executive team, and been told that she gets credit for 10 additional IQ points because of her accent.
Maria Opdycke
Chief Operating Officer
Opdycke comes to First Stop Health from Chicago-based myFootpath.com, a provider of innovative enrollment solutions for higher education institutions. There, she most recently served as vice president of strategic development and previously as vice president of operations. Prior to her experience at myFootpath.com, Opdycke was a co-founder of Malia Designs, a mission-driven, fashion accessories business where she sourced internationally-produced products, developed domestic distribution channels and managed daily operations was the co-founder of a mission-driven fashion served as senior economist at Griffin, Kubik, Stephens & Thompson, a Chicago-based investment dealer that specialized in debt securities, including municipal bonds.
Opdycke earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio and an MBA in finance and entrepreneurship from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.
Teira Gunlock
Vice President of Client Success
Teira is a well-versed, collaborative leader who loves finding new ways to help clients, benefits consultants and patients.
Teira ensures that First Stop Health clients receive great results and have an experience worth bragging about. From overseeing account management to deploying data-driven employee engagement, she never has a quiet day. The most rewarding part of her job comes from knowing that she's helping patients have better healthcare experiences.
Teira comes to First Stop Health with extensive healthcare experience and a passion for service. She spent her early career with Professional Research Consultants, Inc. (PRC), a national leader in healthcare market research, and consulted with leading health systems across the country to help them better use data to improve care.
Teira graduated from the University of Missouri with her bachelor's degree in philosophy and master's degree in health administration. Her interest In telemedicine was cultivated during this time while she conducted research in how to use telemedicine to decrease specialist visits for inpatient rehab patients.
Teira loves spending time with her family and spunky toddler, practicing yoga, traveling, pretending to be helpful on her family's farm in Missouri and making terrible puns (prepare your groans).
Ben McInturff
Vice President of Technology
Ben is a technology leader with more than 14 years of experience in leading development teams to achieve amazing results with minimal resources. He’s led the development team at FSH since 2012, providing the functionality to support First Stop Health's amazing service. He is responsible for all technical aspects of the First Stop Health system and integrating and managing all third-party resources.
Ben has experience in both open source and proprietary technologies such as .NET, and has led several successful migrations of systems. With experience developing systems in the news and financial verticals, he brings mobile development, design, project leadership and security capabilities to developing and maintaining First Stop Health’s secure real-time healthcare services platform.
Ben obtained a BS in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology and his MBA from Stuart School of Business and is a member of its Beta Gamma Sigma chapter. Ben enjoys restoring his classic truck and competing in triathlons in his spare time.
Nick Severino
Vice President of Marketing
Nick is an accomplished leader, who has more than 20 years of professional marketing and communications experience. He has extensive experience in the healthcare industry, working in the carrier, brokerage and TPA segments.
Nick leads the First Stop Health brand to the marketplace and helps create awareness, generate leads and engage existing contacts. The most rewarding part of his role is seeing the surprise on people’s faces when he shares the FSH value proposition with them at conferences and events.
Nick has thorough knowledge of the B2B and B2B2C channels. He has helped lead numerous organizations by aligning their marketing and sales strategies to routinely exceed goals.
Nick graduated from Dominican University with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and holds his master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University.
Nick enjoys spending his free time with his family, and watching one of his three daughters participate in their many sporting and extracurricular activities. He loves golfing, running and most of all, making homemade wine (cheers).
Steve Vivian
Board Director
Stephen Vivian is a Principal & Founder of Kestrel Capital Group and has spent over 20 years financing and investing in growth-oriented companies. He has deep experience as a principal investor across all stages of an enterprise’s life cycle, including start-ups. Prior to co-founding Kestrel in 2011, Vivian spent 15 years at Prism Capital, having joined as Prism’s second full-time professional in 1999. Prism invested in 40 companies across two (one start-up and one mezzanine) funds.
Vivian has been an active industry leader, having served as a past Chairman of the Small Business Investors Alliance, or SBIA (formerly known as NASBIC). He was also active in the inception of the Illinois Venture Capital Association and serves on the President’s Leadership Council of the Chicago Field Museum. Steve received both an MBA and a BS in General Engineering from the University of Illinois and has been a frequent speaker on the Urbana / Champaign campus, as well as at other colleges and universities. He also serves on the faculty of the Venture Capital Institute and has served on the board of numerous other not-for-profit entities.
Rich Gallun
Board Director
Rich Gallun is an entrepreneur and business leader with extensive experience in the healthcare and employee benefits space. Gallun co-founded and served as CEO of bswift from 2000-2015; bswift was acquired by Aetna in 2014. bswift provides cloud-based technology and services for benefits enrollment and administration. He currently is serving as a Board Director for several organizations, including First Stop Health, Positive Coaching Alliance and Evanston Soccer Association.
Gallun’s prior experience includes various sales, consulting and management positions at A.T. Kearney, IBM, Sachs Group and Health Partners.
Gallun earned his MBA from Harvard University, and holds undergraduate degrees in economics and history from Williams College.
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