Blue Shield of California appoints first female CEO

Lois Quam has been named the new CEO of Blue Shield of California.

Photo courtesy of Blue Shield of California

Blue Shield of California is undergoing a corporate restructuring, and as part of that effort has tapped Lois Quam to serve as its new chief executive officer. Quam, who joined the company in 2024, becomes the first woman in the health plan's 86-year history to serve as CEO.

Quam said in a statement that she wants California to be a "model for healthcare."

"I am focused on the challenges facing our members in every corner of our state, who gather at their kitchen tables and wrestle with their healthcare decisions and whether they can afford them," she said. "As the only statewide nonprofit health plan, we can help make those conversations – and their lives – better."

Quam came to Blue Shield of California after serving as CEO of Pathfinder, a nonprofit global health organization serving women and girls. Previously, she worked with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the U.S. State Department to lead President Barack Obama's Global Health Initiative serving Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

She also played a role in expanding healthcare access in Minnesota and has served as an executive officer and board member in major healthcare organizations, Blue Shield said.

Susan Mullaney, who joined Blue Shield of California in August as executive vice president, will now serve as chief operating officer of the health plan. Mullaney's experience includes senior roles at Kaiser Permanente and nonprofit hospital systems.

WHAT'S THE IMPACT?

Blue Shield is also restructuring in other ways. A new, nonprofit corporate entity named Ascendiun launched on January 1 as the new parent to the family of organizations that includes Blue Shield of California and its subsidiary, Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan; Altais, a clinical services firm; and Stellarus, a company designed to scale healthcare solutions.

Paul Markovich, Blue Shield of California's CEO for the past 12 years, has been appointed president of Ascendiun and will serve on an interim basis as president of Stellarus.

Stellarus will initially focus on enhancing the capabilities of Blue Shield's existing programs, with the goal of sharing those capabilities with other like-minded health plans in the future. Pharmacy Care Reimagined, for example, was created to help ameliorate the costly practices of traditional pharmacy benefit managers, and has developed a pharmacy model that delivers affordable medications directly from retail pharmacies to members, said Blue Cross.

"Our goal in the restructuring is to better serve our members with less bureaucracy and faster results, while making health care more affordable," said Kristina Leslie, chair of the Blue Shield of California board of directors. "Paul will set up this new exciting venture to help solve problems on behalf of our members, advance healthcare effectiveness and respond to the issues that have plagued the patch-work quilt of health services."

THE LARGER TREND

Last summer, Blue Shield of California's Wellvolution, the insurer's digital health platform, added three new programs to its offerings, which range from behavioral health to diabetes management.

As part of Wellvolution's continued expansion, Ciba, Digbi and Wondr have been added to the platform, and offerings from Dario Health now include diabetes management.

At around the same time, the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) awarded a contract to Blue Shield California, under which it will partner with Included Health, an integrated national care-delivery and navigation company, to provide healthcare, navigation support and personalized service to about 400,000 CalPERS PPO members (250,000 in Basic PPO plans and 150,000 in Medicare Supplemental plans).

This represents about one-third of the 1.5 million CalPERS members who receive healthcare coverage – the others being covered through fully insured HMOs.

Jeff Lagasse is editor of Healthcare Finance News.
Email: jlagasse@himss.org
Healthcare Finance News is a HIMSS Media publication.