Teladoc Health has appointed David Sides its chief operating officer, filling a seven-month vacancy, the telemedicine provider said Wednesday.
Sides joins Teladoc from revenue cycle management company Streamline Health, a company he's led as CEO for the past four years. He previously served as CEO of global clinical information systems provider iMDsoft and as senior vice president of worldwide consulting at Cerner Corp.
"It's rare, quite frankly, to find a healthcare executive who has global experience, because most of the healthcare professionals in the U.S. tend to be focused on the U.S. market," said Jason Gorevic, Teladoc's CEO. "David's mix of domestic and international experience was ideally suited for this role."
About a quarter of Teladoc's business is international, Gorevic said.
Teladoc has been taking steps to expand its international presence this year, entering into an agreement to acquire a Paris-based telemedicine provider and rolling out a virtual-care service in Canada. In 2018, the company completed its purchase of Advance Medical, a virtual-care provider with a footprint in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Teladoc's former COO and chief financial officer, Mark Hirschhorn, resigned late last year. The company named Mala Murthy, former CFO of American Express' global commercial services segment, to its CFO post in June.
Gorevic said the company decided to separate the COO and CFO roles as Teladoc has "grown in scale and complexity."
"Mark was a member of the team for many years," he said. "We're in a place now where it makes sense to separate the roles."
Hirschhorn resigned from his posts as COO and CFO in December after investors sued the company, alleging he and another employee engaged in insider trading. The suit came after allegations emerged that Hirschhorn had an affair with another Teladoc employee, and that the two had traded company stock together.
Teladoc at the time denied the years-old allegations made in the lawsuit, saying the relationship violated only the company's workplace relationship policy. The company also said the report that had initially brought the allegations to light, which was published by the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation, contained "several factual inaccuracies."
Peter McClennen, Teladoc's president, took the helm as the company's interim COO after Hirschhorn's resignation, while Gabriel Cappucci, Teladoc's chief accounting officer, coordinated the company's finance activity during the period.
Teladoc, which posted $128.6 million in revenue for the first quarter, expects to be cash-flow positive for the first time later this year, Cappucci said in April.
