Luke Tharasri has over 25 years of healthcare experience, holding executive roles in several organizations across the healthcare delivery continuum including acute care hospitals and health systems, behavioral health, physician groups, and additionally, has served in leadership roles on the health plan side. With a passion for public health, his career has been focused on ensuring the organizations he oversees effectively execute a strategic plan to achieve growth and sustainability, with the objective of providing improved access to high-quality care in an affordable and equitable manner. This was the primary motivation that drove Mr. Tharasri to establish Maximon Ventures (“Maximon”) which focuses on the integration of behavioral health services with primary, acute, and post-acute care, while addressing disparities in accessing care caused by the social determinants of health. Maximon is a portfolio company that includes Maximon Behavioral Health, Mindful Living Centers, and Mindful Specialty Associates.

Maximon Behavioral Health (“MXBH”) works with hospitals and health systems across the country to implement an integrated approach to delivering care across the continuum from inpatient to outpatient settings, recognizing that physical and mental health affect one another and must be treated in a holistic way. MXBH employs evidence-based models that mix a traditional in-person setting with telehealth technology in order to optimize outcomes for the patients and providers. MXBH currently operates in several states and rapidly expanding its reach in an effort to provide much needed services to vulnerable communities and populations experiencing issues that unfortunately have become even more pronounced due to the COVID pandemic.

The pandemic undoubtedly has presented many disruptions in the healthcare delivery system, some negative and actually some positive. Of course, one of the most significant negative disruptions was the widespread necessary lock-down and shelter-in-place orders, leading to decreased ability for patients to access services. However, the positive in this was that there has been growing demand and adoption of telehealth during this time. In response, Mr. Tharasri formed Mindful Specialty Associates in 2020 as a vehicle for medical and behavioral health providers to deliver care via telehealth for both outpatient and inpatient services that would otherwise not be available.

Mr. Tharasri also founded Mindful Living Centers (“MLC”) in 2020 to meet another challenge created during the COVID pandemic, specifically the exacerbation of mental health issues in our communities due to factors such as isolation and loss of income. MLC’s mission is to establish integrated outpatient behavioral health and primary care medical services centered in vulnerable communities across several states in order to “meet patients where they are,” employing a combination of in-person and telehealth, to eliminate barriers to accessing care. MLC takes a whole-person care approach, utilizing a proprietary evidence-based care model developed by MXBH called CARE+ to ensure that patients are getting their needs met in an integrated and holistic way, while taking into account all the social determinants of health. The CARE+ program was recognized by Stanford University Medicine as a promising best practice, earning an incubation grant in 2021.

Mr. Tharasri earned his Bachelors Degree in Psychology with emphasis on pre-medicine from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and his Masters Degree in Health Policy and Management from Harvard University. He also earned a Fellowship in Leadership in Patient Safety from the American Hospital Association.

In addition to his professional endeavors and educational accomplishments, Mr. Tharasri is an active philanthropist. In 2014, Mr. Tharasri started the Mindful Living Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, aimed at improving the health of under-served and under-resourced communities, defining health in a broader public health sense beyond not only medical health, but as the intersection of spiritual, physical, mental, educational, vocational, and financial well-being.