Justin Starzyk spent most of the past decade helping United Urology Group grow to roughly 300 physicians across 100 locations before the business was acquired by OneOncology and Cencora. Now he is running a very different kind of healthcare services network: Velocity Clinical Research, which operates more than 70 fully-owned research sites across the U.S. and Europe, has named him CEO. The choice signals that GHO Capital, which acquired Velocity in 2021, is betting that the discipline needed to scale a physician services business translates directly to scaling a site network chasing sponsor volume.
That bet is not obvious on its face. Velocity’s core argument to sponsors is integration: a single organization owning the sites rather than affiliating with them, with centralized technology and data infrastructure built in. Starzyk’s background is in operational scaling within healthcare services, not clinical trial operations, but his earlier years in pharmaceutical R&D at Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie give him at least a working frame for what sponsors actually need from a site partner. Whether that foundation is deep enough to win credibility with clinical operations teams at large pharma will be one of the early tests of this hire.
Paul Evans, who built the network from its incorporation in December 2017 through GHO’s ownership, moves to Chair. The structure is a deliberate continuity play: Evans stays close enough to keep sponsor relationships intact while Starzyk takes the operating reins. GHO’s managing partner Mike Mortimer specifically cited “operating discipline” as the reason for the appointment, which reads as a signal that the next growth phase involves margin management and operational efficiency across the site footprint, not just adding locations.
Starzyk’s stated priority is broadening the range of research and centralized services Velocity offers to sponsors, a natural extension of a network this size if it can standardize execution across sites. The cleaner measure of whether this hire works will show up in sponsor re-engagement rates and the breadth of therapeutic areas Velocity can credibly staff, not in the leadership announcement itself.
Source link: https://velocityclinical.com/velocity-clinical-research-appoints-justin-starzyk-as-chief-executive-officer/
Moe Alsumidaie is Chief Editor of The Clinical Trial Vanguard. Moe holds decades of experience in the clinical trials industry. Moe also serves as Head of Research at CliniBiz and Chief Data Scientist at Annex Clinical Corporation.
