Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1424600
87 87 PRACTICE MANAGEMENT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP We're 3.5 million people. at's a lot of people. And so I think we have a real challenge given our scale there. [Continues on page 87] I think the other for us is we are full every day, regardless of the pan- demic. And so as a regional referral center, we receive the highest level of complex cases. And that's what we thrive on. We are con- stantly working to be able to say "yes" to every one of those transfers. ey're calling us because they know that we have an expert in that very specific thing, and they want to send us that patient from near and far. And so we're working on our ability to say yes every single time, by expanding with renovations to add more patient beds. We have started construction of a $1.2 billion campus in Irvine that will expand our capacities dramatically in that location. A challenge going forward is how we manage until we get that open. n Evernorth CEO: 'We have such an opportunity to meaningfully change healthcare' By Lauren Jensik E ric Palmer is the newly appointed CEO of Evernorth, succeeding Tim Wentworth on Sept. 23. Mr. Palmer, who joined Cigna in 1998, played an integral role in Evernorth's September 2020 launch. The platform is a rebranding of Cigna's health services division. Mr. Palmer spoke to Becker's about his new position on Sept. 30. Editor's note: This interview was edited lightly for length and clarity. Question: What are you most excited about regarding your new CEO role, and how have your 20 years at Cig- na prepared you for the role? Eric Palmer: In terms of what I'm most excited about, we launched Evernorth a year ago with a really big purpose: to meaningfully change healthcare.I think that excitement car- ries through across my last role and into this one. We have such an opportunity to meaningfully change healthcare. We can build on the strength of our already existing, really strong assets in the pharmacy management space and our specialty pharmacy and we've got such an opportunity to leverage and build the things of the future around how we better deploy virtual care, how we better deploy and bring to life solutions to help people manage their health at home and the like, so those are really exciting for me. In terms of my experiences, I've had the the good fortune of having the chance to work in a variety of different roles in the Cigna businesses over the last 20 years that have given me perspective on the needs of our customers, perspective on the needs of our provider partners and perspective on the needs of our clients. And so I think bringing all of that perspective together will give me a good starting point in helping to build Evernorth to meet the needs of our clients and of the ecosystem overall. Q: You were at the helm of the Express Scripts and Cigna merger, and you helped launch Evernorth. How would you say flexibility and finding new solutions has played into patient and member satisfaction? EP: So at Evernorth, we're really focused on being a part- ner of choice. We use that phrase often. It's an important element of how we seek to work with others. When we can be a partner of choice to an employer or to a health plan or to whoever is our payer, we can get the best solutions for them, which helps to best meet the needs of our customers. We brought Cigna and Express Scripts together and then ultimately launched Evernorth. We did so with a view of hav- ing capabilities that can help get patients the right care at the right time, whether that's in the drug space or in the home setting or what have you. So bringing together all of those capabilities to get to a better customer experience and one that's affordable is really the priority. The state of the art is changing in terms of what's possible with virtu- al technologies. What's possible to be done in the home are things that we wouldn't have even dreamed of 10 years ago, and so it's pretty exciting to have all of the resources we've got to be able to deliver that for our patients. Q: What are your biggest projects and priorities for your first year as CEO? EP: Evernorth is set up around four different capabilities: to manage our clients' benefits through benefits plus solu- tions; provide the necessary medications through our phar- macy plus solutions; working to enable and empower care through our care plus solutions, and having a developing actionable intelligence to help our clients improve their performance all throughout the solutions. In terms of priorities specifically, I think it comes down to re- ally a couple of specific categories. The first is continuing to build on the already strong foundation we have in regards to our core pharmacy operations; continuing to strengthen them and continuing to build on that. The second is to ex- pand and really help with the affordability problems that are presented in the specialty pharmacy space. Specialty drug spending continues to grow rapidly. The Accredo pharmacy that we own is the leading specialty pharmacy and is really positioned well to help our clients manage specialty costs with the number of new therapies coming in and the biosimilars on the horizon, we're posi- tioned to really help our customers and our patients navi- gate through that landscape. So making sure we're ready for that is a real priority. And then the third would be around developing and exe- cuting on the growth plans for the connectivity that we can create across all of our capabilities, such as building and deeply integrating MDLive and building on our care solu- tions to help ensure that we've got all of the pieces effec- tively connected across our portfolio. Maybe the last one I'd add is just working on continued innovation. We've got a great track record of building solutions, and we've got to work to continue to innovate and bring new solutions to market and bring new in- sights to our clients to help them get the most from their healthcare dollar. n