When Jessica Turgon, a partner with ECG Management Consultants, was named Global Head of Oncology Consulting for Siemens Healthineers in late 2023, it was a move that satisfied strategic objectives for both organizations. For Siemens, which is expanding its portfolio of oncology solutions and technology, it’s an opportunity to leverage Jessica’s expertise in developing service lines, leading strategic planning, and implementing operations improvement initiatives at comprehensive cancer centers. For ECG, it’s a chance to bring its 50-plus-year consulting expertise to an international market.¹
For Jessica, who continues to co-lead ECG’s Center for Advanced Oncology while collaborating with Siemens Healthineers, the new role is the latest accomplishment in what has been a long career in oncology business consulting. But it’s more than just a career milestone. Like so many of us, she saw at an early age how cancer affects a person and their loved ones. And every step in her career has been a step toward changing that.
A Personal Mission
Cancer is a disease that, inevitably, touches every family. That’s something Jessica learned during her college years at Marymount University, when a close friend’s younger sister was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Jessica followed the girl’s cancer journey during her care at Children’s National Hospital and Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer center and was devastated when the affliction took her life.
But that tragedy became a catalyst of sorts. What Jessica observed during her friend’s care journey ignited her interest in cancer center operations, and the opportunity to meet some of the individuals involved in her care laid the early groundwork for her career. “I was a very young, not world-wise person getting out of school when she passed away,” Jessica says. “I was introduced to a couple of women leaders at Georgetown Hospital and the Lombardi Cancer Center, and they asked if I would like to be a management intern. They’d move me around the cancer center and train me in running it.”
She spent the next several years learning all she could about operating a cancer center before returning to school to get her MBA at the George Washington University. “Working at the cancer center started my interest in the business aspects of the clinical programs,” she explains. “Particularly when you look at academic medicine and the inner workings between the clinical side, the research side, and the education side. How does that all come together to build a comprehensive cancer program?”
After completing her master’s work, Jessica began her first stint in consulting—a job at a small consulting firm called MedTactics, which was ultimately acquired by ECG. It was an opportunity to see how other organizations approached cancer care and ambulatory operations. Before long, though, she was drawn back to the cancer center business. But this time, she wouldn’t be running a cancer program. She’d be building one.
Expanding Cancer Care in Maryland
The University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center is an NCI-designated cancer center with 40 inpatient beds, a 25,000-square-foot outpatient facility, and multidisciplinary clinical programs for all major cancers. A joint entity of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center, it is one of the top cancer treatment and research centers in the country and an essential provider of cancer care in the region.
But back in 2004, the cancer program was still at a formative stage in its growth. Johns Hopkins was the dominant cancer care provider in the area, and the University of Maryland’s smaller program was still trying to gain a foothold. That’s when Dr. Kevin Cullen, a former colleague and the newly appointed cancer center director, called Jessica, knowing her expertise would be invaluable.
“The outpatient clinic was a converted inpatient unit,” she recalls, recognizing the amount of work that needed to be done to put the organization on the path to becoming a destination for cancer care. “Under Dr. Cullen’s leadership, we restructured the entire cancer program—introducing multidisciplinary clinics, creating a transplant program, restructuring the clinical research enterprise, and opening new outpatient clinical and infusion space.” Jessica served in a leadership role throughout the program’s growth, with the inpatient and outpatient services reporting to her.
The Center for Advanced Oncology
When Jessica eventually returned to ECG, she realized that the operational balancing act involved with leading a cancer program translated well to ECG’s growing multidisciplinary service offerings.
“Running a cancer center, it’s a lot of ambulatory operations,” she explains. “And because my industry experience was in academic medicine, it translated well to running physician groups and performance transformation and a lot of the different things that we do at ECG, whether it’s physician compensation, reimbursement, billing, operations optimization, scheduling, workflow—all of that is in a cancer center. We just do it all.” And while that meant could take her consulting career in any number of directions, it was clear where her heart was.
Armed with the knowledge of what it takes to build and run a comprehensive cancer center, it was time to take those lessons national. Along with colleague Matt Sturm, Jessica developed what is now known as ECG’s Center for Advanced Oncology—the nation’s largest dedicated consulting team focused on helping organizations transform and advance cancer care in their communities.
“We have a dedicated team that works for cancer clients all the time,” she says, citing several ongoing, multiyear projects that are underway with oncology programs across the US. She explains that they’ve built the team to reflect the growing demand for cancer expertise in strategy, performance transformation, and financial improvement. “Stephanie Hobbs came from being the clinical administrator at UT Southwestern; she’s led cancer programs before. And we recently hired Elizabeth Liebow, who spent 20 years at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and has built new cancer programs, expanded the Dana Farber brand to other regions, and brings a strategic perspective on how to maintain high-quality programs.”
Members of ECG’s Center for Advanced Oncology gather for a planning retreat.
The need for such expertise reflects an evolving care model. Demand for cancer care is growing as the population ages. At the same time, care pathways have become more complex and providers are in increasingly short supply. Patients’ expectations are changing, too. “Patients are much more sophisticated,” Jessica says. “They’re not going to wait if a doctor tells them there’s something odd on a mammogram or CT scan. 
They expect that their care is going to be timely, it’s going to be coordinated, and they’re going to be connected to the best healthcare providers.”
Her team has helped more than 1,000 community hospitals, AMCs, NCI-designated cancer centers, and oncology practices do exactly that. The battle against cancer takes place on many fronts, after all. Innovative medical technology and cutting-edge treatments technology might grab headlines, but a cancer program’s success depends at least as much on the efficiency and sustainability of its day-to-day operations—and the ease with which its patients can access and navigate care.
Jessica’s experience in that regard is what made her a natural fit when Siemens Healthineers came calling.
A Global Focus
In 2021, Siemens Healthineers completed an acquisition of Varian Medical Systems, the world’s the number one developer of linear accelerators. The move expanded the company’s portfolio of imaging and other diagnostic technology, making the German company a major player in the cancer industry.
What they needed, though, was a better understanding of how to deploy that technology in the global fight against cancer. They turned to Jessica.
“It’s an opportunity develop solutions for cancer programs internationally,” Jessica says. As Global Head of Oncology Consulting, she’s taking the lessons and best practices gleaned from 25-plus years of developing, leading, and guiding top-tier US cancer centers and educating global clients.
“I’m able to lead some of these solutions and share best practices for taking a holistic approach to improving cancer care,” she says. “There’s an opportunity in Dubai that we’re currently pursuing to help address challenges with breast cancer care. There’s opportunity to then take some of those findings and share them in our with our Malaysia team, with our Germany team, and with others across the globe.”
And while more time with Siemens Healthineers might mean a little less time with ECG, her sense of purpose hasn’t changed. “It’s the same thing that motivates me for our US-based clients—how can we help a cancer patient?”
The Journey Continues
That motivation has remained constant throughout Jessica’s career. From interning for a cancer center to serving as Global Head of Oncology Consulting for a massive international organization, her personal and professional ambitions have been intertwined.
“When I think about when I started my career, it was really in a response to a personal connection who was fighting cancer,” she says. “And over the years, more and more of my friends, my family members, people close to me have wrestled with this disease. So when you have the opportunity to make an impact, it’s one area of consulting where you can help improve the performance of a program and know there is a patient on the other end who has a positive experience because of what you recommended.”
Learn More about ECG’s Center for Advanced Oncology
¹ECG is an affiliate of Siemens Healthineers.
Published April 25, 2024
