Patrick Conway

Across the blue system,

We insure 105 million lives.

So with the other blue CEOs, we've been having a lot of discussions about how we partner better together on capabilities and other aspects to deliver better care to people.

I think the keys are trust, clear delineation of roles and responsibilities, a focus on long-term partnerships, and that often means

potentially with less partners and vendors and others.

There's some things we say we should build ourselves because we think we have that capability and can do it.

But there are many things where we say if we can deliver better value to our customers through a partner, then let's proceed through a partnership model.

So a lot of our work at Blue Cross North Carolina is done through partners.

I am a practicing pediatrician.

I take care of children who get hospitalized.

I do it because I love it.

I think it's an honor to care for those patients and families.

Most of the children I care for and their families have multiple chronic conditions, many of them on Medicaid.

That allows you to see the good and the bad of our health system.

And so the good news is I think providers on a whole are very focused on better patient care.

The bad news is the system doesn't always support them and patients and families with addressing all the health care needs.

In this country, we still have large gaps in things like food insecurity, transportation, housing, aspects that we know drive better health outcomes and lower costs, but we haven't built a system to address those social determinants of health, to give an example.

Another thing I learned in going through the process for this role, apparently there's no physician leading a health plan of this size, and there's no practicing physician that has ever led a health plan of this size in the U.S.

The recruiter told me, so don't mess it up.

So I'm trying not to mess it up.