Laura McNamara began her career in the healthcare industry as a front desk receptionist, a job that would serve as the first of many stepping stones, paving the path of her healthcare compliance journey.
Early in her career, tasked with scheduling patient MRIs and surgeries, McNamara learned about diagnosis codes and procedural codes necessary for obtaining insurance authorizations.
“This got me really interested in how reimbursement works in the business of healthcare,” she said. It interested her enough that she obtained her medical coding certification through AAPC.
Later, as lead compliance auditor at a multi-disciplinary physician group in Oregon, McNamara cultivated her billing compliance expertise further by standing up the organization’s “train the trainer” program, educating coders and billing staff on how to present coding and compliance information effectively to providers and clinicians, among other responsibilities.
However, it was at the University of Washington (UW) School of Medicine where McNamara said she really became “professionally consumed by all aspects of healthcare compliance.” Here, McNamara quickly moved up the ranks, from a billing compliance specialist to assistant director of compliance. In the nearly three years McNamara spent at UW Medicine, she learned about the seven elements of a compliance program, conflicts of interest, fraud, waste, and abuse prevention, and other healthcare compliance-related matters.
Many other stepping stones followed over the course of her 20-plus-year career in the healthcare industry. Other successive roles have included compliance officer at Sutter Health, director of billing compliance at Boston Medical Center, and compliance and privacy officer at Stony Brook Medicine, where she built out its compliance and privacy program.
All of these stepping stones ultimately led McNamara to what she described as her “dream job” as vice president and chief compliance and privacy officer at University of Vermont Health (UVM Health), which was seeking a change agent to build out its compliance program. It was an offer she could not refuse.
McNamara’s passion for the job clearly shines through in everything that she does.
“Laura’s impact as a compliance expert and mentor has been far-reaching since she joined UVM Health in May 2025,” said Lynn Combs, network director of program and research integrity, who nominated McNamara for the Compliance Mentor of the Year award.
“She led a major restructuring of UVM Health’s compliance and privacy functions, building a system-wide program that emphasized a collaborative and efficient approach, designed to ensure wide-ranging institutional input and buy-in,” Combs added.
Before the restructuring, as UVM Health grew and evolved organically over the years, its compliance operations grew with it, but it lacked a centralized and systemized compliance and privacy reporting structure among the many partner sites across its two states of operation—Vermont and New York.
Under McNamara’s leadership, one of her first orders of business was to assign one director to oversee research billing and privacy and program integrity, another director to oversee program operations and billing compliance, and another director who also serves as privacy officer. Additionally, internal audit and enterprise risk management now report into the newly rebranded Office of Compliance, Privacy, and Internal Audit.
Another major restructuring effort involved standing up a single, system-wide compliance committee to replace the six separate compliance committees that previously existed.
Because many of these committees shared the same members, an effort was undertaken to survey current members to get a pulse on who wanted to remain a member of the new compliance committee, McNamara explained.
Of the more than 50 members on those six committees, “we have a strong committee today of over 30 members,” McNamara said. “I was floored. I thought there would be maybe a dozen people who were still in.”
She said it’s a testament to how much the organization believes in a culture of ethics and compliance, and is willing to carve out time to support the cause.
The compliance committee has “full audience participation,” McNamara continued. Days before the committee meets, she sends out meeting minutes so that members can review the agenda and come prepared to bounce ideas off one another.
Combs shared that colleagues describe McNamara as someone who is deeply committed to empowering others, and it shows.
“Laura’s mentorship is rooted in the belief that strong compliance programs grow from strong people, and she invests in emerging leaders with the same care and intentionality she brings to her enterprise-wide responsibilities,” she said.
McNamara makes it a point to regularly visit UVM Health’s partner sites, including its six main hospitals, and makes it a point to post a schedule of all her planned site visits beforehand. Calling it a “perpetual roadshow,” McNamara noted, “I drum up a lot of business just being in the cafeteria, visiting with folks, asking to get on agendas with any leadership meetings that are taking place while I’m there.”
Much is gained through those site visits. One benefit is compliance optics, ensuring staff members literally see the compliance department as a business partner. Also, being onsite and talking to employees face-to-face is an effective way to gather real-life, scenario-based vignettes that can be incorporated into micro-learning to ensure employee training stays relevant, she said.
McNamara said she also carries with her a laminated sign that she posts while on her site visits that includes her contact information, as well as the contact information of the reporting helpline and UVM Health’s privacy and billing compliance departments.
“She has worked tirelessly to build partnerships throughout the organization and has quickly become one of its most trusted advisors,” Combs said of McNamara’s leadership style. “She also listens deeply, asks incisive questions, and takes a solution-oriented approach to compliance. Her team members and colleagues seek her guidance because she creates a safe space to test ideas, admit uncertainty, and learn without fear.”
McNamara said of her own leadership style that she does not believe in gatekeeping. “I send the elevator back down. I lift people up.”
When asked what advice she’d give to others who have an interest in mentoring, she stressed that it starts with having a mentor. “I could not be a good mentor if I was not mentored myself,” she said.
She credits the late Kim Greene, former chief compliance officer at Boston Medical Center, as being one of her closest mentors.
“She taught me how to be a leader in compliance,” McNamara said. “She was my professional idol and a dear friend post-retirement.”
McNamara said she has other mentors whom she meets with monthly for their wisdom and sage advice.
“There’s something really important about being perpetually mentored,” she said. It’s the gift of being able to pass on wisdom that “isn’t just coming from me, but those before me, and those ahead of me.”
