Hu­mana CEO Bruce Brous­sard is step­ping down next year

(This sto­ry is from our new Health Tech newslet­ter. If you’d like to sign-up, just click here.)

Health in­sur­ance gi­ant Hu­mana’s CEO Bruce Brous­sard is step­ping down in the lat­ter half of 2024. His suc­ces­sor will be Jim Rechtin, the cur­rent chief ex­ec­u­tive of physi­cian staffing firm En­vi­sion Health­care.

Jim Rechtin

Rechtin, 52, will step up as Hu­mana’s pres­i­dent and chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer start­ing Jan­u­ary, ac­cord­ing to a com­pa­ny an­nounce­ment Wednes­day. Brous­sard, 61, who’s served in the CEO po­si­tion since 2013, will re­main as an ad­vi­sor in­to 2025.

Un­der Brous­sard’s lead­er­ship, Hu­mana tripled its Medicare Ad­van­tage mem­ber­ship since 2012 to over 5 mil­lion to­day, grow­ing in­to the sec­ond-largest Med­ic­aid Ad­van­tage in­sur­er in the na­tion be­hind Unit­ed­Health. Brous­sard told In­sid­er in an in­ter­view that Rechtin’s ex­ten­sive back­ground in health­care and ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing with Medicare Ad­van­tage made him a good fit to run Hu­mana, which has been com­bin­ing its in­sur­ance busi­ness with care de­liv­ery.

“He’s re­al­ly done a great job of tak­ing some­thing that was very com­plex, nav­i­gat­ing through it, keep­ing and mo­ti­vat­ing the physi­cians and clin­i­cians, while at the same time tak­ing care of the busi­ness prob­lems that were there be­fore­hand,” Brous­sard told In­sid­er.

Rechtin joined En­vi­sion as chief ex­ec­u­tive in 2020. The com­pa­ny was bought by pri­vate eq­ui­ty gi­ant KKR in 2018 and faced con­gres­sion­al scruti­ny and pub­lic back­lash for its sur­prise billing prac­tices. En­vi­sion filed for bank­rupt­cy in May amid ris­ing la­bor costs, pay­ment de­lays by in­sur­ers and reg­u­la­to­ry hur­dles.

Be­fore join­ing En­vi­sion, Rechtin served as the pres­i­dent of Unit­ed­Health’s Op­tum­Care and held se­nior roles at dial­y­sis provider DaVi­ta Med­ical Group. He al­so spent 14 years at con­sult­ing firm Bain & Com­pa­ny do­ing work with the health­care sec­tor.

“Jim brings a strong com­bi­na­tion of op­er­a­tional, in­dus­try and CEO ex­per­tise,” Hu­mana board chair­man Kurt Hilzinger said in a state­ment. “His first-hand ex­pe­ri­ence lead­ing through chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties of a chang­ing health care ser­vices con­tin­u­um will help ac­cel­er­ate our in­te­grat­ed care strat­e­gy at pace.”