The Lungen Group

Our senior management team is led by the tenured healthcare industry experience and extensive business development knowledge of our founder, Richard Lungen.

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Richard Lungen
Charlie Falcone
Matthew J. Claus
Steve Klingbeil
Ferris W. Taylor, MBA
Barbara Grundy Evans

Richard L. Lungen — President / Founder

Following 16 years of leadership experience within the managed care, Life & Health Insurance and overall healthcare service industries, Richard Lungen founded The Lungen Group as a means to deliver best-practice solutions from leading healthcare service companies to healthcare payers.

Prior to founding The Lungen Group in 2007, Richard was Senior Vice President of Business Development at HealthPlan Services, a leading Business Process Outsourcing firm servicing health plans, Associations and Taft Hartley plans, where he was responsible for record sales. Between 2001 and 2005, Richard held sales and business development leadership positions with MedAvant Healthcare Solutions (previously ProxyMed, PILL: NASDAQ). In this capacity, he was responsible for payer facing solutions related to Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) access, PPO Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), strategic relationships, and EDI clearinghouse services.

During 1998 - 2001, Richard was Vice President of Sales for PlanVista Solutions where he worked with the industry's premier payers and TPAs, and was responsible for top revenue production in each year. In 1993, Richard was an original employee at the launch of National Preferred Provider Network (NPPN), one of the nations largest PPOs, and worked with them through 1998 when the company was sold to HealthPlan Services. At NPPN, Richard was responsible for virtually all original and subsequent large payer sales, strategies and many PPO relationships. From 1992 - 1993, Richard was with Medical Administrators, a full service insurance agency and TPA, which handled small group and individual insurance sales as well as Self-Insured employers.

Richard's tactical and leadership roles have allowed him to develop deep experience and tenured market knowledge related to healthcare payer sales and strategies, service vendors, PPOs, BPO and provider contracting. This knowledge and firsthand experience drives The Lungen Group to provide healthcare payers with innovative solutions that optimize efficiencies and generate new revenue.

Charles J. Falcone — Principal

Charlie is a senior healthcare executive with more than twenty years of experience in managed care, technology, healthcare delivery, pharmaceutical management, and medical device development and distribution.

In April, 2009 Charlie joined The Lungen Group, as a Partner.  The Lungen Group is a strategic and M&A advisory and business development firm that has clients across a broad range of sectors in the healthcare industry. 

From 2000 until 2009, Charlie led Devon Health Services, a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) and national healthcare cost containment company.  He held the title of President from 2004-2009 and the titles of Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer from 2000-2004.  Under Charlie’s leadership, Devon experienced double digit revenue and income growth and established itself as a national presence in the healthcare marketplace. 

While at Devon, Charlie created and managed strategic alliances with some of the largest payers, providers and vendors in the industry.  His experience includes the development and management of fee-for-service and risk bearing networks, marketing, sales, care management and operations for insured individual, small and large group plans; self-funded employer and Taft Hartley plans; workers’ compensation and motor vehicle programs; and various government payer plans.

Charlie’s experience at Devon Health included the development of several start-up entities in the healthcare industry including Supply Marketing, a “point of care” marketing and communications company and Devon Medical, a medical device manufacturing and sourcing company.  Charlie held the title of President for both entities and was instrumental in building and developing these companies.

Prior to 2000, Charlie held various positions at Americare Health Services including Vice President of Sales and Vice President of Network Development.  During that time, Charlie helped to create and develop some of the first risk bearing Provider Sponsored Organizations (PSO) in the northeastern United States.

Charlie is a previous member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee for the American Association of Preferred Provider Organizations, an industry advocacy association; a member of the Board of Directors of GeneSyn IP Ventures, a venture fund and company catalyst organization; a past member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO); and a member of the Advisory Committee for several start-up and established entities in the healthcare technology and service industries.  In 2004, Charlie received the prestigious “40 under Forty” award from the Philadelphia Business Journal.

Matthew J. Claus

Matt is a senior business executive with significant experience in mergers and acquisitions, health care administration and business development practices.  Matt’s strategic business development expertise and business acumen is key to identifying optimal management systems and practices for revenue generation, profit margin expansion and value proposition enhancement. 

Matt brings the ability to anticipate, prepare and deploy business development resource within the health care/employee benefit reform framework. While this framework is currently taking shape, it is clear that business relationships, product positioning and the overall value proposition premises will require significant retooling. Matt’s expertise combined with his access to  resources across a very broad range of health care and benefits thought-leaders and constituencies positions him uniquely for driving the development of strategic partner and distribution channels.

Most recently Matt was with Ceridian as Vice President of Business Development where he successfully managed a portfolio of acquisitions, divestitures and strategic agreements.  In addition,  he was instrumental in  the establishment of initial channel strategy for benefits administration, HR, and payroll technology through service providers such as Group Benefit Brokers and TPA’s.

Prior to Ceridian, Matt worked as Director of Group Benefit Broker Sales for ADP where he created the company’s first national channel sales strategy for benefits technology and services and was directly responsible for the launch and execution of the company’s indirect sales model.  

While Director of Business Development with At Work Technologies, Matt was integral in the creation of the Company’s go-to-market strategy and 5 year business plan to deliver SAAS services for Employee Benefits Administration to mid market clients.  He was directly responsible for the launch and execution of the company’s sales and distribution strategy, which included market analysis, product positioning, pricing programs, partner revenue models, and sales and implementation training programs.

Steve Klingbeil

Steven Klingbeil has 27 years of Business experience leading strategic mergers, acquisitions, system integrations and a variety of other major corporate initiatives. Steve has 19 years of Strategic and Operational Consulting experience.  Steve worked with Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers for ten years in their consulting practices.  Over the last nine years he has continued to work globally with a wide variety of clients.  Prior to his 19 years in consulting he worked with Citicorp and Bank of America for eight years helping to lead strategic projects.

Steve’s degrees in Human Resources & Finance have helped him successfully focus on the issues driving revenue and costs within an organization while at the same time measuring and managing the mission critical human factors. He has significant experience working at all levels of National and Global organizations. He has consistently been able to deliver new business processes and strategies to increase revenue and decrease costs and is a trusted advisor to his many clients who retain him on an annual basis. 

Steve has repeatedly led large-scale global organizational and systems transformations.  These projects were driven by revised corporate strategies and had specific measurable outcomes.  The projects had People, Process and Technology components and were consistently managed to produce optimum results for the organization.

Steve has implemented global shared services in the Human Resources as well as the Accounting & Finance functions.  The goal of these efforts was to provide significant service level improvements to business units around the globe and to reduce operating expenditures.

Steve has extensive experience with Human Resources strategies and tools.  His particular areas of expertise include Benefits Management and Training & Development.  Steve helped lead the team at PricewaterhouseCoopers responsible for the design, development and implementation of a new Global Training model for consulting staff worldwide.  This project included the site selection and design/build of a Global Training Center as well as the creation of a new curriculum and delivery mechanism.

Steve has been responsible for the creation and implementation of multiple new corporate leadership models and structures.  These efforts included the creation and deployment of Corporate Strategies, Job Designs, Compensation Models, Communication Matrices and a wide variety of other tools to successfully meet the demands of new business processes and systems.

Steve helped create the Change Management, Human Resources and Organizational Alignment Methodologies at both Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers.  These methodologies were utilized across a wide variety of projects around the globe.  An important characteristic of the methodologies was the recognition of various cultural differences across regions around the world.  Steve has worked with and is aware of many of the nuances of corporate cultures in NA, EMEA and Asia Pac.  

Ferris W. Taylor, MBA

Ferris Taylor comes to The Lungen Group as a proven healthcare executive in creative marketing, planning, and value-based strategy with extensive experience in health care, high-tech, and consulting services. Applying information and technology to business decisions has been Mr. Taylor’s passion and career, much of which he has focused on developing strategies, positioning and tactics for pricing and market development in health care. He continually integrates strategy, planning, competitive intelligence, predictive modeling, pricing, market research, analytics, decision-support, and customer relationship management for the benefit of his business clients and colleagues.

From 2003 until 2008, Mr. Taylor was Vice President of Strategic Marketing for Ingenix, one of the industry’s largest health information technology companies and part of UnitedHealth Group, where he played a key role in restructuring the company from a product orientation to that of an integrated solutions provider. He led executive-level processes for new product ideation and initiatives to sustain high growth, created and implemented an underwriting solution set business plan, and architected the company’s payer market strategy including a health care market road map, payer market positioning, and priority operational solutions sets.

Previously in his 30-plus-year career, Mr. Taylor was a marketing executive for Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, one of New England’s largest and oldest nationally ranked HMOs. Subsequently he served as VP Marketing and Planning for North Shore Medical Center, a 600-bed community hospital (part of Partners Health Care System, a world-renowned integrated delivery system that includes two of the nation’s top-ten teaching hospitals, Mass General and Brigham & Women’s).

While with Harvard Pilgrim, Mr. Taylor led the development of a cross-functional strategic pricing committee for the $2 billion health care business that integrated finance, sales, marketing, and product planning efforts and was responsible for Board of Director reporting of monthly performance and competitive positioning. Prior to HPHC, he pioneered the development of micro-economic products and consulting services for Data Resources, Inc., now Standard & Poor’s, and Oracle, through their acquisition of Management Decision Systems, to support FORTUNE 500 companies in enhanced executive decision-making to compete more effectively in the global marketplace.

Mr. Taylor has co-founded and served on the boards of three start-up consulting firms specializing in business strategy, analysis, and systems. He chaired a national health care advisory board on customer retention and loyalty and has been the recipient of numerous awards recognizing cost, service, satisfaction, and quality including HCHP’s highest award for excellence, commitment, and effort.

Mr. Taylor has an undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in Nuclear Physics, with a Spanish minor, followed by an MBA with an emphasis in finance and quantitative economics. He pursued additional studies at the University of Missouri as a graduate of the GHAA/AHIP Executive Program in Managed Care. Mr. Taylor has been a guest lecturer at a number of Boston area colleges and has worked extensively with academicians in developing and writing practical case studies to further the educational process in healthcare and value strategy. He has been a frequent presenter at AHIP’s predecessor organizations—AAHP, GHAA, and The HMO Group—as well as with the National Managed Health Care Congress, World Health Care Congress, the Professional Pricing Society, and other industry conferences and client-specific seminars and workshops. He has served on the AAPPO’s Board of Directors and leads strategy and planning for the Managed Care Executive Group Board.  

Barbara Grundy Evans

Barbara brings over fourteen years of healthcare experience in operations, account management, human capital, strategy, project management and marketing to the Lungen Group. 

Barbara began her career in healthcare in a finance position in 1995 with a national rehabilitation company.  In 1997 she joined Devon Health Services, a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) and national healthcare cost containment company.   In 2002, she was promoted to Vice President of Business Services, overseeing diverse departments she had created or worked in, including physician recruiting, provider relations, client services, as well as, the marketing and public relations unit, an offshore call center and a cross functional project management team. 

In 2007, Kopos & Baker, a human capital management and healthcare staffing firm, invited Barb to work for them building both a marketing program and new lines of business focused on onboarding, retention and talent strategy for hospitals across the country.  These programs centered on the idea that hiring, retention and professional development have significant strategic and financial impact on any company's success, and in a healthcare setting can directly impact quality of care. Barbara quickly became a champion of building workplaces that are committed to developing the unique promise of value in every individual.

Barbara was recognized in 2003 with Devon Health Services’ leadership award: one of three to ever receive this honor.  In 2005, she was recognized as a finalist in the American Business Awards Women Executive category.  Barb was part of the 2006 MS Leadership Class and has been recognized with a "Stevie" for Best Executive for 2006, from The American Business Awards.