Consultant to Be President of National Health

National Health Care Systems Inc., operator of the 235,000-member DentiCare prepaid dental plan, has created the new position of president and chief operating officer and has named Stephen R. Casey to fill it.

Casey had been working as a consultant to National Health since September and was named to the new position Jan. 1. He will take over some day-to-day duties from Dr. Carl E. Bozzo, board chairman and chief executive officer, who will retain those titles.

“I’m pleased with the opportunity here,” Casey said. “I want to work on building a team here, so as a team we can pull off what we want for expansion.”

Casey said he wants to double enrollment in three to five years in DentiCare, which is the seventh largest of 41 prepaid dental plans in the state. Also, he hopes to increase the company’s revenue from $14 million to at least $20 million.

He is a certified public accountant and a former vice president of Maxicare Health Plans Inc. of Los Angeles. In 1975, as a regulator for the California Department of Corporations, Casey helped establish the state’s licensing division for health maintenance organizations and dental plans.

Casey, who lives with his family in Huntington Beach, traveled the country setting up four HMOs for Maxicare before leaving the struggling company in 1989 to begin consulting. He said National Health has no plans to expand outside California.

The company, which employs 70 people, posted a loss of $58,000 during the first nine months of 1990, in contrast with net income of $229,000 in the first nine months of 1989. Revenue rose 49% to $10 million from $6.7 million.

The company attributed its losses to the termination of its indemnity product lines and said the rise in revenue was from increased enrollment.