I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, where my father did factory work for General Electric and Westinghouse. My mother was a nurse. We never starved, but we didn’t have a lot. We were just a middle-class, fundamentally stable family. And the expectation in our home always was: If you wanted more, you had to do more.
At age 14, I went to work at a McDonald’s, but the law said that a person had to be at least 16 to do so, and the franchise owner explained that to me. I said, “Give me 30 days and, if I’m not better than the older kids who work here, you don’t have to pay me.” I ended up working there for three years.
Early in life, I learned the importance of discipline. I was expected to carry my own weight and get things done. And over time, I came to embrace a strategy of taking calculated risks. I had to understand the upside and downside of any action because if I understood the downside and could absorb it, I would be free to be more aggressive and do things that others couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
My father was 17 years old when he shipped off to the South Pacific to fight in World War II. He grew up in a generation that believed in responding when your number was called. My mother taught me to be compassionate, and that has been especially important given the role that I have today as president and chief executive officer of Highmark Health. My mom had a warm heart and made sure that my brother, my sister, and I were raised with good values and could clearly tell the difference between right and wrong. She also made sure that we understood that there was more to life than just what was in it for us.
I studied at The Ohio State University and the University of Texas, where I received my MBA. I also attended the Advanced Management School at Harvard University and landed my first job in an unconventional way.
When my great-grandmother passed away, we learned that she had bequeathed her wedding ring to my mother, the first one she ever had, but it needed some repair. So, she took it to a jewelry store and had it fixed. Thirty days later, the diamond fell out, and my mother was terribly upset. I asked her to “let me deal with them.” So, I went to the store and told the jeweler, “You just fixed this ring, and the diamond has already fallen out. It’s your responsibility to replace it.” After thinking for a bit, the jeweler said, “How about we split it, 50-50?” I responded, “If you can prove that my mother caused the diamond to fall out, I’ll let this go. But if you can’t, then you’ll have to take care of this, 100 percent.” The jeweler studied the ring for about 10 minutes and finally said, “I don’t believe that your mother had anything to do with this. We’ll take care of it.” Then he continued: “How about you come and work for us at Christmas time?” I started working part time and discovered that I was good at sales. And so began the first half of my career.
After managing several jewelry stores and, ultimately, an entire region, I had the opportunity to join the Zales Corporation in 1994 as part of a team that was tasked with turning the company’s business around. There, I had the opportunity to work with tens of thousands of customers selling them a product they didn’t necessarily need. I learned a lot about working with people who wanted something versus people who needed something. It became clear that if I learned what motivated people to buy things, I could do a better job of selling.
Not wanting to be tagged as just a “jewelry man,” I transitioned to the optical business, landing at Cole National in Cleveland, which owned Pearle Vision and managed the optical departments at Sears, Target and other retail chains. Cole National was a retail business, which was right up my alley, but it also had manufacturing operations for lenses and eyewear, and an insurance business.
All of this enabled me to apply my business and management capabilities to a complex business — and I love complex challenges.Over time, I discovered that if you possessed the fundamental business ingredients and mixed them properly, you could be successful. In other words, you had to do what was best for your customers by selling them products and services that met their needs.
My experience in the optical business led me to join Highmark in 2007 to launch Visionworks, leveraging its vertically integrated optical operations and wholesale eyewear brand business. During my tenure, we built Visionworks into a remarkably successful company and, ultimately, sold it in 2016 for $1.6 billion. That sale generated the money necessary to fund the transformation of the Allegheny Health Network (AHN), which was nearing bankruptcy when Highmark acquired it in 2013.
Thirty years ago, most hospitals in this region took care of accidents and infections, primarily. Today, the focus is on chronic diseases and how to manage them, which requires a different level of engagement and a different level of care.
Highmark Health is a national blended health organization that includes one of the largest Blue Cross Blue Shield insurers in the U.S. and a growing regional hospital and physician network in AHN. Its integrated structure has enabled us to leverage both sides of the healthcare system to improve the quality of care, to improve access and affordability, and to offer people more choices and options. What that means is, in the world of chronic disease — diabetes, congestive heart failure, COPD, etc. — if we enable people to be more proactive on the front end, we can reduce the number of acute events and the cost of healthcare. We accept the risks associated with the people we care for, so if we can help them to stay healthy, that’s good for them, good for us, and good for all of Highmark’s 7 million members.
When it comes to healthcare, typically people purchase it — insurance and medical services — without many choices or options. Whereas, in the jewelry business, if we don’t have the ring you want, you’ll simply walk out the door and go to the next place. My experience has been that, if you give people more choices and options, they’ll choose you, and this has changed the dynamic of how our organization works.
At Highmark Health, we’re doing things differently than what we had historically. We’ve built a half-dozen health and wellness pavilions around the region that have changed the ways in which people access their clinicians and services. Through the pavilions, regional consumers can get all the healthcare they need or want at one location. We also began to reestablish a chain of hospitals and invested heavily in “MyChart” and data analytics. If it’s 11 p.m. and your test results are available, as long as you’ve signed off that you’re OK with it, we’ll provide the results to you immediately, even though you may see them before your doctor does. You become an informed individual, which is what we want to inspire.
When building our first pavilion in Wexford and our other facilities, we used human-centered design, which is a fancy term for saying that when you walk in and look around, what’s intuitive for the average person who doesn’t know anything about healthcare? How should we design the hallways? The signage? What do we want the experience to be when a person goes behind closed doors to see a doctor?
As for the hiring of clinicians, we always aim for healthcare professionals who are exceptional at what they do, and who also understand that they’re dealing with human beings. To be sure, clinicians have a difficult job because their disciplines are based on science, but the practice of healthcare is an art. You must combine the two to really give people the best care possible, and the best experience. What we’re doing is using all the horsepower of Highmark and AHN, and all the data that we have, to help inform the science and thus give our clinicians a better view of what’s going on regarding the health of their patients. But, at the same time, we want clinicians who are inquisitive and seek to understand how their patients are living their lives at home, work, and play.
Today, Highmark Health is a $29 billion organization and employs 44,000 people. AHN is a $5 billion health system composed of 14 hospitals. And while my background wasn’t in health insurance or healthcare services, through the years I had purchased a lot of both for the people who worked with me. The way I always thought about it was, how would I want my family to be cared for? What is important to the people we serve? What’s missing in the marketplace that we could deliver on? All in all, I had confidence that the people in this region who needed and wanted healthcare, if given choices and options, would do what’s right for themselves.
Job performance is important, but it can’t be all about business. It’s got to be about our mission, about the people we serve. And we must do business in a way that is valued by consumers who will then pay for what we offer.
Mine is a seven-day-a-week job, and I think about our mission all the time. How do we leave the next generation with a better healthcare experience than the one we have now? We must figure out how to make sure that these people have more flexibility, and more choices and options when it comes to their well-being. With that, they will be able to make informed decisions about what they need and want in the way of healthcare.
Jeff is an award-winning independent filmmaker and writer who specializes in defining the cultural significance of American people, places, things and events.
