Blue Cross CEO leaving

• By TED GRIGGS
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Aug 12, 2008 - Page: 1D - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Blue Cross President and Chief Executive Officer Gery J. Barry is resigning to take a job as chief strategy officer for Aetna Inc., where he will guide the company’s domestic and international strategy.

“It’s a big loss for Blue Cross and for the state. Big gain for Aetna,” said Alan Levine, secretary of the state Department of Health and Hospitals. “Gery Barry’s a forward-thinking guy. He is a visionary. The position of chief strategy officer is just perfect for him, and I can’t imagine anybody better for it. It was a great get for Aetna.”

Blue Cross said it plans to launch a national search for Barry’s replacement, while also considering in-house candidates.

Barry said he will be helping put an interim management structure in place, and the team will probably be announced during the last week of August.

Barry’s first day with Aetna, unofficially, is Aug. 29. He will continue helping with the Blue Cross transition after that as needed, Barry said.

Barry said he was “deeply personally and emotionally invested” in Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana when Aetna approached him two or three months ago.

“This was not an easy decision. It was not something at all I anticipated,” Barry said. “I was by no means looking for a position. I was kind of reluctant in fact to even take the call or even consider it.”

But gradually Barry realized that the Aetna job would allow him to concentrate on the things he loves and has been spending his personal time doing since Hurricane Katrina: changing health care and making fundamental improvements to the system.

Barry had been involved in a number of health-care reform efforts in Louisiana, serving on the board of the Louisiana Recovery Authority Public Health and Healthcare Task Force following Hurricane Katrina, as vice chairman of the Louisiana Health Care Redesign Collaborative and on the board of the Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum.

Levine said Barry would be missed.

“Gary was always the guy that we knew we could count on to collaborate with other organizations, even his own competitors, if it was in the best interest of state policy,” Levine said.

Barry’s health-care redesign efforts also required him to spend a fair amount of time in Washington, D.C., working with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid and other government agencies on health quality and quality improvement issues.

“This is an opportunity to continue to be involved but clearly at a very national level with a very large, prominent organization that just has outstanding values,” Barry said.