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SANDRA VAN TREASE, president and CEO, UNICARE |
CPA MOTHER’S WAY
VAN TREASE INNOVATES AT UNICARE
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By Kevin Kipp
Before there was a take-your-daughters-to-work day, Sandra Van Trease’s
mother did it anyway.
“One of the things that shaped my approach to life and business,”
said Van Trease, president and CEO at UNICARE Life & Health Insurance
Company, “was that my mother was an executive assistant to the head
of a family-owned business for many years. Sometimes I spent Saturday
in the office with her. It gave me a sense of what it meant to have
a focus on getting something done the right way.”
Van Trease grew up to become a CPA, graduating from UMSL in 1982
and going to work for Price Waterhouse straight away. Eventually,
she also earned an MBA from Washington University. Working with
small companies, she moved from auditing to consulting. By 1994,
she said, “I was helping companies access capital and financing”:
She helped clients go public.
“RightCHOICE was going to go public and needed expertise in that
area,” she said. “That’s how I became introduced to the company,
as vice president of finance which then turned into CFO which turned
into COO and ultimately president.”
But there was a challenge, she explained, in that publicly traded
RightCHOICE owned non-profit Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri.
“The attorney general, on behalf of the state, maintained that the
value of the non-profit organization needed to inure to the people
of the State. Ultimately, working with state regulators, we succeeded
in creating the Missouri Foundation for Health, which makes grants
to health-related organizations across the state.”
According to its website, the foundation anticipates that it will
award $35 million in 2003.
In January 2002, California-based WellPoint Health Networks merged
with RightCHOICE. The merger and related transactions resulted in
the creation of WellPoint Central Region, of which John O’Rourke
is president and CEO. The region’s constituent parts are insurer
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri, managed care network Health
Link and—with Van Trease leading since February 2002—UNICARE.
“As a result of the transaction,” she said, “I was asked to pull
together diverse management systems and have it under a single accountable
person.”
O’Rourke was CEO at RightCHOICE during Van Trease’s term as president
there. He credits her with “helping the company generate revenue
growth, improving service levels and lowering core operating overhead.”
And Van Trease credits O’Rourke’s arrival at RightCHOICE for breaking
a logjam in the Missouri Foundation for Health negotiations with
state regulators.
O’Rourke is also pleased with the “new products and other initiatives
UNICARE has launched in multiple states under Sandra’s leadership.”
Van Trease says, “We have members in 50 states, Puerto Rico and
Guam. But our key geographies are the Midwest and the East Coast,
with the greatest portion of our members in Texas, Illinois, Indiana
and Massachusetts.”
The sweet spot in UNICARE’s market niches, Van Trease says, is “individual
and small group health plans up to 100 people. In addition we have
a strong presence and capabilities in larger companies, up to 5000
employees.”
UNICARE, with $2 billion in annual revenue, works with even larger
companies and can offer “standard products.” But Van Trease is enthused
by the innovative products that she says distinguishes her business
from much of the competition.
“We continually probe and listen to customers,” she said. “They’re
interested in providing ever-changing health benefits. The employees
want it. And we have creative ways to provide it.”
She cites for example UNICARE’s Complete Choice program. “In essence,
it’s three health plans rolled into one,” she said. “It creates
a fund of money for in-patient coverage and a fund of money for
what’s not covered—a deductible. Wrapped around it is an access
plan to choose whatever participating doctors you want. And you
can go outside the group at slightly less favorable terms.”
Generically, “consumer directed programs” allow members to allocate
higher funding from their compensation package to different components
of their employer’s health plan.
A special feature of Complete Choice is that resources that are
not used one year are rolled into the next. Details vary by company
but the upshot, she says: “It empowers associates to manage their
own health care benefits, to make appropriate choices from an access
perspective and to care about the cost of their care.”
Van Trease grants, “Some of our initiatives may not sound so avant-garde,
but we’re excited about leveraging technologies to improve work
flow processes, ranging from imaging to customer service work stations.”
UNICARE also offers a full menu of insurance programs—life, dental,
disability, COBRA—to employers, and Van Trease has focused on improving
“linkages in distribution, so that we have the right skill sets
to sell other products, too.”
Van Trease applauds innovation across the board. “As health care
costs increase at significant rates, you have to continue to improve
everything, to leverage technologies, to figure out ways to serve
customers better and do it for less money.”
It’s a lesson in business every mother could love.
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services and
community relations firm.
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