Consulting practice will strive for answers on rising health-care costs
Richard Blomquist, who sold the preferred provider organization (PPO) Associates for Health Care (AHC) in June 2001 to an international firm, is resigning as president and CEO of AHC effective March 31. Blomquist sold AHC to a division of Montreal-based BCE Emergis for $30 million.
AHC, based in Brookfield, is the largest PPO in Wisconsin with 500,000 enrollees. Blomquist’s deal with BCE Emergis pays him $10 million each year for three years.
Blomquist has been a vocal critic of the health-care system in Wisconsin and remains determined to find solutions to the myriad of problems that have caused double-digit cost increases over the past few years. He will self-fund his consulting practice as he searches for those solutions.
"If I can be in a benefit-plan consulting role and come up with solutions that will work best for the various parties — the payers, providers and patients — then we can potentially bring to the table some solutions that, at that point, I could bring to the corporate community and get paid for (the work)," Blomquist said.
But in order to get to the bottom of the health-care cost problem, Blomquist said he needed to step out of his role as the head of a preferred provider organization to get "different answers than the ones I’ve gotten in the past."
"One of the things that I need to do is step back from the kinds of relationships that I’ve maintained over the last three years, which is really one of negotiating rates with doctors and hospitals on behalf of our corporate clients to make sure the PPO works," he said. "I need to step back and try to get input from the medical community on what they feel would be the solution for the health-care problem. I’m not sure that we’ve asked that question enough. (We also have) to make sure that we understand what patients need.
"I think I know the answers to those questions, but I want to make sure I’ve got the complete answer."
Blomquist’s as-yet-to-be-named consulting practice will be based in Milwaukee.
Richard Nemitz, chief operating officer at AHC, was named Blomquist’s replacement as president and CEO.
March 15, 2002 Small Business Times, Milwaukee
