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Dr. I. Steven Udvarhelyi – People to Watch 2017


DR. I. STEVEN UDVARHELYI
PRESIDENT/CEO OF BLUE CROSS AND BLUE SHIELD OF LOUISIANA

Dr. I. Steven Udvarhelyi took over as president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana in 2016. The Baltimore native previously served as executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia, and he will be on the front lines as the new president and Congress launch yet another health insurance overhaul in 2017.

A board-certified internist, Udvarhelyi has almost 25 years of experience in the managed care industry, and is a former member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. He says he enjoys the fact that Baton Rouge is smaller and easier to get around in than Philadelphia—and that he can golf year-round here.


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On what drew him to insurance:

“When I did my residency training in Minnesota, I found that the cardiology fellows were so focused on trying to learn to do procedures, they didn’t pause to think about whether they should be doing them. We had these very high-tech interventions, yet we struggled sometimes to get basic antibiotics to people. The system wasn’t working as well as it should. I decided to shift my focus to what’s driving the system.”

On Blue Cross’ financial future:

“We had to file rate increases this year, but we’re still going to lose money next year on the individual market. Those increases are not going into our coffers; they’re going to pay health care providers for serving members that have much-higher-than-average health care needs. We have to take anybody, but there is not an effective requirement that everybody buy insurance.”


HOW TO:

Be a leader for a large organization

“When you get into a new role, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. The flood was an opportunity to demonstrate that we care about our employees and customers. Our employees knew that the leadership of their organization was looking out for them, which allowed them to give of themselves to look out for our customers.


This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.