Major HMOs Announce Senior Management Changes

PacifiCare Health Systems on Monday announced the unexpected retirement of one of its co-founders and top executives, and the return of a key executive who two months ago defected to a big Midwest health care company.

In an unrelated management change at another Southern California health maintenance organization, Glendale-based Cigna HealthCare of California said President Mark Wagar resigned just seven months after he was named to that post. A Cigna spokesman said Wagar resigned to “pursue other business interests.”

Cigna had announced to customers last month that Wagar had been granted a personal leave of absence. The company said his resignation, announced late Friday, was effective Dec. 2. Cigna spokesman Jim Hill said the leave of absence was not for health reasons, but he declined to elaborate.

Cigna, which has 650,000 members in California, said Wagar’s position will be filled temporarily by chief counsel Leslie Margolin. The company has begun searching for a permanent replacement, Hill said.

Wagar, who joined Cigna in 1992, was named president of the company’s California operations in May. He succeeded Bert Wagener, who was promoted to a senior executive post with Cigna in Chicago.

*

Meanwhile, PacifiCare announced that co-founder and Executive Vice President Richard Lipeles will retire in November, 1995. Lipeles, 41, who helped found PacifiCare in 1978, will remain a consultant and director after his retirement.

The Cypress-based HMO also said that former executive Jeffrey Folick, who was lured away by Minneapolis-based United Healthcare in November, has decided to return to the company. Folick, former president and chief executive of PacifiCare’s California operations, will become executive vice president and chief operating officer of the parent company.

Folick, 47, will oversee PacifiCare’s national business operations for its commercial, Medicare and Medicaid health plans beginning Jan. 3, the company said.

“Leaving Southern California and leaving PacifiCare was more difficult than I expected it to be,” said Folick, a longtime resident of Southern California. He said the new job is attractive because it offers him broader responsibilities at PacifiCare, which has 1.4 million members in six states.

“While we will be sorry to see Rich Lipeles retire from PacifiCare, we are very pleased that Jeff Folick has decided to remain in Southern California and assume this important position with our company,” said Alan Hoops, PacifiCare’s president and chief executive.

Folick’s former job as president and chief executive of PacifiCare of California and head of the company’s Western region will be filled by Jon Wampler, the firm’s top executive in Texas, the company said. Those duties had been filled on an interim basis by Lipeles.