Humana Inc. said health-care industry veteran James Rechtin will take over as chief executive officer of the insurer in the second half of 2024, when Bruce Broussard will step down from the role.
(Bloomberg) — Humana Inc. said health-care industry veteran James Rechtin will take over as chief executive officer of the insurer in the second half of 2024, when Bruce Broussard will step down from the role.
Rechtin, currently CEO of Envision Healthcare Corp., will become Humana’s president and chief operating officer on Jan. 8, according to a statement Wednesday, while Broussard will remain as a strategic adviser to the company into 2025.
Broussard, 61, has been CEO for more than a decade, and Humana tripled membership in Medicare Advantage plans, its core business, during his tenure. The company more recently expanded its care delivery business under the new CenterWell brand. Rechtin, 52, held senior roles in several medical groups, including a brief turn as president of UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s Optum Care division.
Humana shares have gained more than 600% since the beginning of 2013, when Broussard took the helm. They fell 1.5% before US markets opened.
The company and its rivals are increasingly broadening their business beyond insurance to clinics, in-home care, pharmacy services and other elements of health-care delivery.
Rechtin’s experience “will help accelerate our integrated care strategy at pace,” Humana Chairman Kurt Hilzinger said in a news release.
Envision, a large medical group that supplies clinicians for hospital emergency departments, operating rooms and other services, was acquired by private equity giant KKR in 2018 in a $9.9 billion deal.
The company had faced criticism over its billing practices for years before Rechtin became CEO in February 2020, in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Struggling under its debt load and disruptions to hospital care, Envision filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May.
Prior to Envision, Rechtin had senior roles at dialysis provider DaVita Medical Group, a large physician practice that the dialysis company DaVita sold to UnitedHealth in 2019. He spent 14 years at Bain & Co. in the company’s health care practice.
Rechtin’s time working with clinicians “will help support our growing clinical footprint and continuing evolution as a health care company,” Broussard said in the release.
The company said the transition was long planned and part of a multi-year succession process.
(Updates with additional details starting in sixth paragraph)
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