Excellus BlueCross BlueShield will remain a regional company with work forces in various areas of New York, according to the CEO-elect of the health plan and its parent company. “We believe the local employment is good for our company,” says Christopher Booth, who is currently the president of Excellus, Central New York’s largest health insurer. […]
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Excellus BlueCross BlueShield will remain a regional company with work forces in various areas of New York, according to the CEO-elect of the health plan and its parent company.
“We believe the local employment is good for our company,” says Christopher Booth, who is currently the president of Excellus, Central New York’s largest health insurer. “People like to do business with their neighbors. I think it is the right thing to do for communities, and I think it is the right thing to do for our company.”
The Lifetime Healthcare Companies, which is the Rochester–based parent of Excellus, announced at the beginning of April that Booth will be its next CEO and the next CEO of Excellus. Booth will assume the CEO role after the not-for-profit group’s current CEO, David Klein, retires at the end of the year.
Excellus currently employs 950 people in Central New York. It employs 400 people in Utica and 30 in the Southern Tier. The Lifetime Healthcare Companies has more than 6,500 employees.
Booth first joined the Lifetime Healthcare Companies in 2004 as chief administrative officer and general counsel. He has also held the roles of executive vice president for commercial markets and health-care affairs as well as executive vice president and COO.
However, he was familiar with the company before joining it. Booth spent nearly two decades at Hinman Straub P.C., which is the Lifetime Healthcare Companies’ outside legal counsel in Albany.
Booth worked closely with the health insurer while at Hinman Straub. The chairman of the Lifetime Healthcare Companies board of directors, Randall Clark, called Booth the “architect of our entire corporation” in a statement announcing Booth’s selection as CEO in waiting.
“I was the person that sort of put together the mergers of the Blue plans from Syracuse, Utica, and Rochester, both from a legal structure and a regulatory-approval process,” Booth says. “And then I worked with the company on how it should operate. Both it and its subsidiaries.”
Booth says he will have to refresh his knowledge of some of the Lifetime Healthcare Companies’ subsidiaries as he prepares to take over as CEO, which will make him responsible for those subsidiaries. Currently, he is responsible solely for Excellus.
The Lifetime Healthcare Companies’ other subsidiaries include MedAmerica, which provides long-term care insurance to more than 122,000 national policyholders; Lifetime Health Medical Group, a provider of direct medical care for over 80,000 patients in the Buffalo and Rochester areas; and Lifetime Care Home Care and Hospice, which serves 22,000 people a year. Other subsidiaries include Sibley Nursing Personnel Services, which helps home-care patients and temporary medical-staffing clients in 31 New York counties; EBS-RMSCO, which offers employee-benefits and risk-management services for 4,000 U.S. employers; and Support Services Alliance, which offers employee-benefits services for 6,000 businesses and acts as a general agent for over 300 brokers.
“Some of those subsidiaries reported to me in the past,” Booth says. “I’m familiar with them, and I’ve had responsibility for them in the past.”
Excellus is reviewing its subsidiaries and their operations, Booth says. He declined to discuss specific plans for the future, however.
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the federal health-reform law, will be the main issue for the Excellus health plan moving forward, Booth says. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on that law’s constitutionality in June.
“We don’t know what the court’s going to do,” Booth says. “Our assumption is that the law is going to be in effect, and we have to be ready.”
Excellus is preparing to engage consumers in the new state health-insurance exchange called for in the federal law, Booth says. It is also trying to work with hospital systems and doctors to keep down health-care costs.
“People are very dissatisfied with the [price] increases year-to-year,” he says. “That needs to be the priority going forward. Some of that work we need to do as an insurance company. Some of that work providers need to do. Some of it needs to be done between insurance providers and community leaders.”
The Lifetime Healthcare Companies is a $6.2 billion not-for-profit organization that provides health insurance to more than 1.8 million people and sells long-term care coverage in all 50 states.
