Halvorson Named as Kaiser’s Next CEO

Kaiser Permanente, California’s largest health maintenance organization and the pioneer of thrifty medical care, said Thursday that it has chosen George C. Halvorson as its next chairman and chief executive. Halvorson is president and CEO of HealthPartners, one of Minnesota’s largest health plans, and a recognized leader in health-care reform.

It’s a big step up for Halvorson, 55, who will take the job in May. He will move from an HMO with an enrollment of 700,000 to take on the nation’s largest nonprofit health-care organization with 8.3million members in nine states and the District of Columbia.

Oakland-based Kaiser has 29 medical centers, 423 medical offices and 90,000 employees. It has 6.3 million enrollees throughout the state and about 3.1 million in Southern California.

Kaiser has fared well in the tumultuous health-care industry with an operating income of $714 million on revenue of $19.7 billion for 2001. Membership grew by 122,000 in 2001.

Halvorson’s biggest challenge will be to deliver quality health care amid rapidly rising costs, a task Halvorson said he was eager to tackle.

“There are immense opportunities [for savings] in the management of preventive care and chronic care in California,” Halvorson said. “We can model for the world an optimal delivery system for medical care.”

Halvorson said new technology, though expensive, is considerably less costly than the emergency medical care it can prevent.

In Minnesota, for example, HealthPartners incorporated a body-weight scale for home use that, among other things, notifies doctors electronically if a patient has a sudden increase in weight.

Halvorson said HealthPartners managed an 80% reduction in expensive acute care for congestive heart failure patients through the use of such scales and better communication between doctors and patients about steps they could take to improve their fitness.

Halvorson blamed the health-care system for failing to communicate with patients. “Patients get more [communication] about the needs of their dogs than they do about managing their own blood sugar levels,” he said.

Halvorson led the formation of HealthPartners by completing the merger of Group Health Inc. and MedCenters Health Plan in 1992.