MINNETONKA, Minn., May 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Leaders at Medica, Minnesota’s largest HMO and PPO, were named today as the 2004 HealthLeaders Top Leadership Team in Healthcare for Health Plans.
During the past two years, Medica’s current leadership team helped the non-profit regional health plan bounce back from extraordinary stresses that included disassociation from its parent company, infrastructure problems, years of decline and wholesale and repeated leadership turnover. The plan now has 1.25 million members and 24,000 providers.
“The senior leadership team at Medica did more than set a new course. They had to reinvent the entire company,” said Scott McQuigg, president and publisher of HealthLeaders, an award-winning monthly magazine for senior-level healthcare executives. “The focused teamwork demonstrated by Medica’s senior leaders during a very turbulent time in the company’s history is truly outstanding.”
The senior leadership team at Medica includes David Tilford, president and CEO; Aaron Reynolds, executive vice president, chief administrative officer and chief financial officer; Charles Fazio, M.D., chief medical officer and senior vice president; Scott Booher, senior vice president and chief information officer; Tom Henke, senior vice president, commercial markets; Deb Knutson: senior vice president, human resources, learning and facilities; Jana L. Johnson, senior vice president, operations; Jim Jacobson, senior vice president and general counsel; Robert Longendyke; senior vice president, marketing and communications, and Glenn E. Andis, senior vice president, government programs.
Also included on the Medica senior leadership team are Mark W. Owen, vice president and general manager, Center for Health Aging and individual business; Rich Sykora, vice president and general manager, small group and administrators; Ted Loftness, M.D., vice president and medical director of provider relations; Mark Baird: vice president, health care economics and market business segment finance; Mike Lenz: vice president, contracting and network management; Mary Zilinski: vice president and deputy counsel, and Sharon Schmid, vice president, compliance and privacy.
“Our success at Medica is very much a testament to teamwork, to the ability of a group to accomplish more than would be possible for any one individual,” Tilford said. “There is a special satisfaction in this award because it honors teamwork in the face of great challenges. In times of crisis, some teams break. Others tap into their fundamental strengths, bond together and get it done.”
The Top Leadership Team in Healthcare award was based on the outstanding teamwork exhibited by Medica’s senior leaders that led to them achieving their stated operational goals and objectives, McQuigg said. A panel of judges considered how the senior leadership team worked together to overcome challenges and barriers to meet its goals and objectives.
The judges selected Medica from among three health plan finalists in HealthLeaders’ search for the 2004 Top Leadership Teams in Healthcare. The other finalists were HealthChoice Arizona in Tempe, Ariz., and QualCare Inc. in Piscataway, N.J.
“The judges had a difficult task in selecting the Top Leadership Team among health plans,” McQuigg said. “However, the teamwork exhibited by the senior leaders at Medica is more than worthy of this honor.”
In addition to the Health Plan category, HealthLeaders named Baton Rouge General Hospital in Baton Rouge, La., as the Top Leadership Team for Large Hospitals, with 170 beds or more, and Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Walnut Ridge, Ark., as the Top Leadership Team for Small Hospitals, with less than 170 beds.
Other finalists in the Large Hospital category were leaders at NYU Medical Center in New York and University of Colorado Hospital in Denver. In the Small Hospital category, other finalists were the leaders at Odessa Regional Hospital, Odessa, Texas, and Spring Harbor Hospital, Westbrook, Maine.
HealthLeaders will feature the nation’s top healthcare leadership teams in a future issue, and they will receive worldwide exposure on http://www.healthleaders.com/ .
HealthLeaders Inc. ( http://www.healthleaders.com/ ) is an integrated healthcare media and business information company comprised of HealthLeaders, a 40,000 circulation monthly magazine which provides senior-level healthcare executives with solution-focused ideas to help leadership teams improve business operations, HealthLeaders Online News and HealthLeaders Research, a leading provider of in-depth state-level and local data and analysis on 850 health plans, as well as analysis of healthcare developments in 75 major metropolitan markets.
HealthLeaders Inc.
CONTACT: Tom Gillem, Communications Manager of HealthLeaders Inc.,+1-615-369-4806, or tom.gillem@healthleaders.com
Web site: http://www.healthleaders.com/
