About Aurora Health Partners

Richard B. Thompson, MD, MBA, FACS, FACC, FACCP

Founder & Principal

Dr. Richard B. Thompson is a nationally recognized physician executive and turnaround leader with more than two decades of experience at the intersection of medicine, operations, and strategy. He currently serves as president and chief executive of a specialty cardiovascular hospital, where he oversees all aspects of hospital operations while continuing to perform advanced cardiothoracic surgery. Under his leadership, surgical volumes have increased 69%, inpatient admissions are up 50%, and cath lab volumes are up 44%, while over the last two years the organization has gained nine percentage points of inpatient cardiovascular market share.

A proven change agent, Dr. Thompson was appointed interim president of a 260-bed tertiary care center with $300 million in annual revenue. In less than a year, he led a successful turnaround, growing operating room volumes by 25%, increasing inpatient census by 20%, and returning the hospital to profitability for the first time in six years. His leadership also drove record gains in employee engagement and patient satisfaction, underscoring his talent for aligning high-performing teams around a shared mission.

An innovator at heart, Dr. Thompson co-founded Together+Clinic more than a decade ago, helping to pioneer new models of chronic care management through technology. He has also served as a trusted advisor to multiple successful startups, including BasicBlock and Centese, guiding their founders through critical phases of growth and development. In addition, he is an active angel investor with several successful exits across diverse healthcare and technology ventures, bringing both entrepreneurial insight and a deep understanding of how to scale transformative ideas.

As Founder and Principal of Aurora Health Partners, Dr. Thompson has expanded his impact to independent physician practices across the United States. Through a proven multi-step process of revenue growth and operational optimization, Aurora Health Partners helps small and mid-sized primary care groups strengthen their financial performance while benefiting from economies of scale. Just as he has revitalized hospitals, Dr. Thompson is passionate about preserving the legacies of founding physicians, ensuring their practices not only survive but thrive in an increasingly complex healthcare environment.

Christian Free

Director of Clinical Operations

Dr. Christian Free is a well-seasoned business and operations professional, educator and social scientist, who received his Ph.D. from Harvard University after many years working in a wide range of professions, ranging from technical recruiting of high-tech software professionals, to overnight logistics in a boutique meat packing warehouse while (concurrently) teaching and managing of a range of classes at Harvard. He has spent the last several years running numerous operations (referrals, PHO relations, transfer-and-continuity of care, and much more!) in a long-standing, high-volume Primary Care practice in Cape Cod. He prides himself on his work ethic, his relentless curiosity and focus on problem solving, his prioritizing of the patient experience above all else, and his dedication to accelerating the success of everyone with whom he works, and the improvement of every workspace he shares.