36 Modern Healthcare | August 12, 2019
‘We are a health
solutions company’
MH: Can you talk about the
transition you’ve made at
Florida Blue and GuideWell
over the years as GuideWell
has become a more diversified
company?Geraghty: One of the things
that I believe and our board
believes strongly, is that
we are a health solutions
company, insurance being
a part of what we do, but we
really have a broader role.
We think about a lot
of things that impact the
people we serve. We’re in
business to take care of our
members. So we started by
reframing our mission. And
our mission is to help people
in communities achieve
better health.
We established GuideWell
as the holding company,
with Florida Blue as the
principal asset under
GuideWell. But we also have
GuideWell Health, which is
our direct delivery of care
with primary-care offices,
with 32 of them now acrossthe state in partnership
with Sanitas, a partner that
we built primary medical
clinics with. We also
have emergency medical
facilities, three of those with
another partner, Crucial
Care. And we have two
staff-model HMOs, one in
the Daytona area and one
in Tallahassee. So we have
delivery of care in both of
those settings. We also have
a multispecialty practice
in Tampa.
As we thought through
that greater mission,
we also acquired
PopHealthCare, which is a
company that principally
visits chronically ill
patients in the home. If you
look how we were thinking
about this, it was not to
just be a passive receiver
of claims being generated
in a healthcare system, but
to be actively involved in
improving the health of
the people we serve and
supplying services and
answers as people werenavigating the healthcare
system.MH: What’s different about
your ability to provide
a comprehensive care
package to members in that
construct versus what you
were traditionally doing as
an insurer working with a
provider?Geraghty: None of this
is detached and on its
own. It all gets integrated
through our system. We
have value-based deals. We
have the largest patient-
centered medical home
in our state, covering over
400,000 people. We have
roughly 22 accountable
care organizations. It comes
together and works hand in
glove. Look at the Sanitas
acquisition. Those medical
groups operate inside of a
larger product portfolio that
we deliver.
We have retail centers
where people can buy
individual insuranceproducts. They can have
customer service done
face to face, or they can
visit with a nurse who
will do a baseline health
risk assessment or tailor
a health and wellness
program for that individual.
Many of our clinics are co-
located with primary-care
offices.
All of it is complementar y
to trying to put a better
system in place for the
people we serve. Some of
the proof in the pudding
would be, we have around
1.2 million people we serve
in the Affordable Care
Act population, which
is the largest single state
enrollment in the ACA. We
operate in all 67 counties
in Florida with products
inside the ACA and have
been able to do that each
year of the ACA operating
in the black every single
one of those years.MH: How has expanding your
operations changed your
relationship with providers?Geraghty: We’ve act ua lly
been fairly successful at
navigating through that
change in the relationship.
We have broad networks
that are still in place and
serve many of our membersPatrick Geraghty joined Florida Blue in 2012 and quickly set out to transform the
company. In 2014, Geraghty ushered in GuideWell, a holding company that would allow
the insurer to grow into new lines of business, including direct patient care. Geraghty
serves as president and CEO of both GuideWell and Florida Blue. GuideWell’s revenue
last year hit $19 billion. Geraghty, who formerly led Blue Cross Minnesota, views the
integration of payer and provider functions as central to becoming a “health solutions”
company. He spoke with Modern Healthcare Managing Editor Matthew Weinstock. The
following is an edited transcript.