The Massachusetts Covid Reopening Advisory Board

Hey Charlie Baker, Who is Girish Navani?

One Covid issue has been nagging me for years. Who is Girish Navani?

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was touted as the model for the nation in Covid response. In June 2021, more than a year into the Covid era, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts led the nation and the world in purported Covid deaths per population, not quite the model response other states should aspire to replicate.

On April 28, 2020, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announced that a Covid Reopening Advisory Board would be formed. The board was comprised of public officials, executives of local businesses and a university, and a medical doctor who was President & CEO of a health plan company.¹

One of the executives on the board is Girish Navani, listed as CEO and Co-Founder of eClinicalWorks in business since 1999. Back in 2020 and 2021, when I looked at their website, it was under construction and would not allow me past the homepage. That’s interesting because they were in business for 20 years by then. I found a legal backdoor into the site. It was not nearly put together in any useful way. Now, in September 2024, the eClinicalWorks website is fully functional. They sell an AI software product that manages patient records and connections to pharmacies, labs, and supply chains. According to their website, eclinicalworks.com, 850,000+ Healthcare professionals are using eClinicalWorks.²

One of the pages on their website claims, “The Most Widely Used Telehealth Solution … Over 56,000 physicians using healow TeleVisits.”³ The governor of Massachusetts chose the CEO of a company that stood to gain millions of dollars on telemedicine as one of the advisors to decide whether the Governor should reopen the state economy. Put another way, Navani stood to make millions of dollars to keep the economy closed and was advising Governor Baker on whether to keep the economy closed.

The telemedicine market more than doubled from 2019 to 2020 due to Covid, ebbed in each of years 2021 and 2022, then rose again in 2023, which was US$94.44 billion, still more than double 2019.⁴ There is no doubt that Covid shutdowns spawned the telemedicine market boom. In other words, Covid was a multimillion dollar windfall for Navani.

In 2020 and 2021, when I looked up Navani on LinkedIn, his profile was scrubbed. There was not much there at all. eClinicalWorks headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts now has a profile on LinkedIn, but a profile for Girish Navani still cannot be found.

A current web search for “Girish Navani” yields a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs from May 31, 2017. The story states that eClinicalWorks had to pay $155 million to resolve a False Claims Act violation for certain misrepresentations about its products. Three of the founders, including Navani, were jointly and severally liable to pay $154.92 million to the United States.⁵

On February 2, 2022, a public records request (state FOIA) was made to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH). Some of the information requested included: who nominated Navani for the board, what credentials Navani held to be qualified for the board, the services or products his companies marketed, any conflicts of interest disclosures filed with the Governor’s office or the Reopening Advisory Board related to a conflict of interest with his appointment to the board.

On February 16, 2022, the DPH provided a response letter. The response letter states, “After a comprehensive search, DPH has not identified any records in its custody and control which are responsive to your request. DPH now considers this Public Records Request closed.”

We are left with questions — Why was Girish Navani appointed to Governor Baker’s Reopening Advisory Board in 2020? How much did Navani make from this deal? How many public officials are invested in Navani’s company?

Is there any corner of the government’s Covid narrative that is truthful and not filled with malfeasance, greed, and lies?

Footnotes

1. (2024). Reopening Advisory Board. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. mass.gov. Found here https://www.mass.gov/orgs/reopening-advisory-board on September 19, 2024.

2. (2024). eClinicalWorks. Found here https://www.eclinicalworks.com on September 19, 2024.

3. (2024). healow: The Most Widely Used Telehealth Solution. eClinicalWorks. Found here https://www.eclinicalworks.com/products-services/patient-engagement/televisits/ on September 19, 2024.

4. (September 02, 2024). Telemedicine Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Type (Products and Services), By Modality (Store-and-forward (Asynchronous), Real-time (Synchronous), and Others), By Application (Teleradiology, Telepathology, Teledermatology, Telecardiology, Telepsychiatry, and Others), By End-User (Healthcare Facilities, Homecare, and Others), and Regional Forecast, 2023-2030. Fortune Business Insights. Found here https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/telemedicine-market-101067 on September 19, 2024.

5. (May 31, 2017). Press Release. Electronic Health Records Vendor to Pay $155 Million to Settle False Claims Act Allegations. Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice. Found here https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/electronic-health-records-vendor-pay-155-million-settle-false-claims-act-allegations on September 19, 2024.