Homesteaders CEO announces succession plans

Graham J. Cook, president and chairman, Homesteaders, announced that preparations are underway for his transition from day-to-day management of the company.

“As part of the succession plan approved by our board of directors, Steve Lang will become our company’s ninth president following the annual board meeting in February 2014,” Cook said. “Steve and I have worked together to develop a management team that will ensure Homesteaders maintains its market leadership position and will remain on its trajectory of profitable growth.” Lang was also elected to his first term as a member of the Homesteaders board.

Cook, who will remain on the board serving as chairman through 2014, joined the company as a part-time employee in 1966, while attending college. He has worked in some capacity in nearly every functional area at Homesteaders.

Lang was CEO of Forethought Financial Services until 2006, shortly after its parent sold the company.

Lang joined Homesteaders as executive vice president responsible for sales, marketing and customer service in 2008, and was named Homesteaders’ chief operating officer in March 2010.

Cook also announced that Steve W. Pick has been appointed to succeed Glen Hare as CFO effective April 1. Hare, who announced his retirement plans last year, joined Homesteaders in 1977. He will remain with Homesteaders until he retires in December to ensure a successful transition while also overseeing enterprise risk management.

Pick is a veteran financial executive who spent 20 years with Principal Financial Group, with his last 10 years serving as CFO for one of their member companies. His most recent post was CFO of Alliance Commercial Partners in Denver. 

In other industry news:

Independence Blue Cross (IBC), Abington Health and Lumeris collaborated to create an accountable care initiative using Lumeris’ technology and services to improve the coordination of patient care, lower overall health care costs, and increase patient and physician satisfaction.

Through this initiative, Lumeris will aggregate and interpret data from the health insurer and the health system, giving Abington Health and its physicians an unprecedented, comprehensive picture of the care its patients are receiving across the continuum.

Lumeris’ secure cloud-based Accountable Delivery System Platform will combine data from IBC’s Health Informatics – including claims, preauthorizations, hospitalizations and clinical laboratory results – with data from Abington Health’s electronic medical record system. This will give doctors at Abington a 360-degree view of all the care a patient is receiving. Abington’s physicians will see not only their patients’ data from Abington Health’s physicians and specialists, but also services their patients receive from other network physicians, hospitals, and outpatient surgical centers.

In addition, Lumeris will provide consulting services to Abington Health physicians to help identify transformational opportunities for clinical and financial improvement. This includes creating strategies to predict which patients with chronic conditions are at risk of becoming ill, then jointly developing best practices to help those patients and creating resources to better manage their conditions.