During his days as a Nittany Lion lacrosse player, Marshall Maran ’91 H&HD spent plenty of time in an orthopedist’s office. Those interactions sparked the health policy and administration major’s interest in health care services.

Maran worked for more than 20 years with venture-backed health care companies, including a retail health care company that became Walgreen’s Clinics, a disease management company, and a surgical center development company now part of Optum Health. In 2015, he founded Muve Health, a tech-enabled health care delivery organization that develops, owns, and operates a network of surgical facilities for total joint replacement. In 2021, he started M2 Orthopedics, a practice management company that frees orthopedists from day-to-day business management so that they can focus on patient care. “Physicians didn’t go to medical school to learn how to operate more complex business enterprises,” Maran says.

Among the across-the-board challenges faced by the health care industry, of which orthopedic medicine is a substantial segment, are the mounting administrative responsibilities that are contributing to physicians leaving medicine. “That’s really problematic,” Maran says. “From a mission perspective, what we’re trying to do is create a sustainable future for the practice of medicine, especially the private practice of medicine.”

Maran co-founded M2O with Michael Meneghini, a board- certified orthopedic surgeon. By combining expertise in orthopedics with a focus on long-term physician partnerships, M2O works with private practices to enhance management capabilities and access to capital. The company currently backs clinics in Virginia and Indiana. —Steve Neumann