Our Speakers

Maria K. Todd, MHA, PhD, is the president of The Council on Global Integration of Health Care.  She has taken active roles in different functions in both the travel and healthcare industries since the 1970s.
In 1977, Maria began her career as a senior travel counselor for the East Florida Division of the American Automobile Association.

Maria completed her MHA in 1987, and began to work in the field full time as a practice administrator and then a hospital business office manager.  She was recruited to the position of COO of a vascular imaging business that operated 50-clinics in Florida.

Maria began consulting full time, first in Florida and later in Colorado, where she became the provider relations coordinator for a large HMO. She was later recruited by a seminar company to deliver educational programs, while continuing her consultancy to, physicians, hospitals and other integrated health delivery systems.

Her seminars became hugely popular. She managed a pace of an average of 270 days travel on the road and sustained that pace for 5 years between speaking and consulting engagements.  During the period of 1993 to 1999, more than 50,000 seminar attendees attended more than 2,400 classes on managed care, physician employment contracting and integrated health delivery system development.  She built more than 60 IPAs, PHOs and MSOs and assisted many that were built by others in their redesign, and contract negotations with payers.

In 1996, her book, Managed Care Contracting Handbook, was published by McGraw Hill which went to fourth printing and broke sales records for a trade book. In 1997, she authored IPA, PHO, MSO Development Strategies: Building Successful Provider Alliances. In 1999, McGraw Hill requested yet another title and she authored the Physician Employment Contract Handbook: A Guide to Structuring Equitable Arrangements.

In 2001 Maria received her PhD in Health Administration. She continued to consult and teach through various nonprofit associations. She has authored hundreds of journal articles, and been an interviewed for articles, radio talk shows and moderated many panel discussions.

She has consulted to more than twenty-five other projects in international healthcare and medical tourism in over fifteen countries.  She has also assisted numerous facilitators in the development of their business, reviewing facilitator agreements, critiquing checklists, policies, procedures, and explaining the medical aspect of the surgeries, the anatomy and physiology concerns associated with medical travel, and helping foreign hospitals with program design, accreditation preparation, and network and service line development.