Three top QualChoice execs announce June 29 retirements

Mike Stock, the president and CEO of QualChoice, and two other executive leaders are retiring effective June 29, the company announced Friday (April 27). Chief Financial Officer Randall Crow will assume Stock’s duties as president and CEO. He has been with the company since 2000.

Stock has served as president and CEO since January 2008 and previously was chief financial officer and chief operating officer. He joined the company in 2002.

The other executives leaving the company are Joni Daniels, vice president of operations, who joined QualChoice in 1994; and B.J. Tatum-Himes, vice president of sales and marketing, who joined the company in 2005. Their positions will be filled internally, the company announced.

QualChoice was founded in 1994 and bought by Catholic Health Initiatives in 2014. The company is affiliated with Soundpath Health, which offers Medicare Advantage plans.

According to CHI’s latest quarterly report, QualChoice had unaudited operating revenues of $268.6 million during the last six months of calendar year 2017, a 14.6% reduction from that time period in 2016, when revenues were $314.5 million.

CHI has been trying to sell all or part of QualChoice since May 2016. On June 29, 2016, CHI made public it was exploring options to sell all or part of the insurer in a quarterly report to bondholders. CHI reported then that QualChoice Health, the holding company for operations in seven states including Arkansas, had lost $96.9 million the previous nine months. During that same period in 2015, it lost $18.9 million.

Stock in 2016 said the company’s three Arkansas-based corporations that sell the QCA Health Plan, QualChoice Life and Health, and the company’s Medicare Advantage plan were not the reason for the losses. He said the company was operating startups in five other states with high initial costs.

In its latest quarterly report, CHI said it was still trying to sell the insurer. Total assets for sale were $161.9 million, while total liabilities for sale were $108.1 million.

“The Corporation entered into a non-binding letter of intent for the Medicare Advantage health insurance operations, with an anticipated sale in fiscal year 2018,” the report said. “Although there has been significant interest in the QualChoice Health commercial operations, the uncertainty surrounding the Affordable Care Act and current political environment has delayed the anticipated sale of this operation to a timeline outside of the Corporation’s control. The Corporation remains committed to selling or otherwise disposing of the QualChoice commercial operations and continues to actively market these operations.”

When it was purchased in 2014, QualChoice in Arkansas insured 67,000 lives, and by 2016 the number rose to 155,000. Part of the growth has occurred through its participation in the health insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. That includes what is now Arkansas Works, the state program that uses federal Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for lower income individuals. Enrollment is Arkansas Works is 37,862 individuals, according to the Arkansas Insurance Department.

CHI operates 100 hospitals along with other types of facilities in 17 states and employs more than 95,000 employees. It has $22 billion in assets, according to its annual report.