Aetna and Sutter Health have chosen Steve Wigginton to lead their joint venture, the organizations announced Tuesday.
Wigginton, who most recently served as CEO of Valence Health, is tasked with building the joint venture's management team, securing necessary regulatory approvals, finalizing product offerings, refining the sales strategy and developing a long-term strategy.
Hartford, Conn.-based insurer Aetna and Sutter, a 24-hospital not-for-profit system based in Sacramento, Calif., formed a 50-50 joint venture last year to launch a health plan designed to lower healthcare costs for self-insured employers and their employees. They will begin to sell coverage to employers in California's greater Sacramento, Central Valley and Bay Area communities on April 1, with plans to expand next year.
Aetna and Sutter are following the lead of other insurer-provider partnerships that aim to combine insurer and provider data to better coordinate care. Aetna has formed similar relationships with Allina Health, Texas Health Resources, Inova Health System and Banner Health.
The Aetna-Banner accountable care organization, which began in 2012, has led to a 24% decrease in surgery admissions, a 4% increase in generic prescribing and more than $2.6 million in fully insured savings in 2015, the companies said.
In these partnerships, health plans provide incentives to keep patients within the health system's narrow network of hospitals and doctors that are expected to deliver better quality care at lower costs. Otherwise, patients will have to pay for most or all of their care out of pocket if they receive care outside the network.
Aetna and Sutter's combined network includes more than 1,500 primary-care doctors, 7,800 specialists and 30 hospitals in Northern California.
At Valence Health, Wigginton was responsible for driving revenue growth, scaling operations and leading the cultural and operational integration of the business when Evolent Health acquired Valence in 2016. Prior to Valence, Wigginton served as the founding CEO of Medley Health, as president of Health Integrated and as executive vice president of Neoforma.