Former AHN CEO is leaving Highmark at end of 2023
Former Allegheny Health Network CEO Cynthia Hundorfean is leaving corporate parent Highmark at the end of 2023.
Ms. Hundorfean was the second of three CEOs at AHN since the system was acquired by the health insurance giant in 2013, directing the health system for six years until the end of 2022. Since then, she moved over to Highmark, where she serves as chief Living Health Development officer.
“I absolutely loved everything about my job at AHN,” Ms. Hundorfean said Thursday. “I’ll be forever grateful for being able to work with David Holmberg and the others at Highmark.”
AHN spokesman Dan Laurent praised Ms. Hundorfean as “chief architect of the health system’s considerable growth and success over the past several years,” executing nearly $2 billion in capital investment.
Her departure comes as losses pile up at the 14-hospital system; Ms. Hundorfean declined to discuss AHN’s finances. She is the latest high-ranking employee to leave Highmark and its AHN subsidiary in the past year or so. The exits have included eight executives.
The system has sustained escalating operating losses since 2020, most recently finishing the quarter ending Sept. 30 in the red by $144.1 million. The last time AHN had an operating gain was 2019, which was $19.1 million.
Seeking an end to state Insurance Department conditions
In an unrelated financial matter, the blended insurer and hospital network is seeking to get out from under conditions that were imposed in 2013 by the state Insurance Department on Highmark’s acquisition of what was then called the West Penn Allegheny Health System.
The Insurance Department conditioned the takeover to protect competition in the region’s health care market, a goal Highmark said has been accomplished after 10 years of monitoring. The cost of compliance, which has included paying for studies of how the creation of Highmark Health has affected the marketplace, have totaled more than $20 million, according to the company, which it called an “excessing burden on the enterprise.”
In May, Washington, D.C.-based consultant
Compass Lexecon found that Highmark’s acquisition of West Penn Allegheny had not harmed the region’s health care market.
“Our assessment finds no indication that the 2013 order has had an adverse effect on health care insurance, health care delivery or the equality of care and variety of plans available to Highmark members or other consumers in Western Pennsylvania,” Compass Lexecon wrote.
Among the conditions Highmark said were no longer needed was the requirement to create a strategy to support community hospitals, which Highmark said “unnecessarily constrains” the company from “designing and offering products that would be in the best interest of policyholders and subscribers.” Details of the products were not available.
“After 10 years, the community hospitals have had sufficient time to adjust to the market dynamics of a Highmark Inc./AHN affiliation,” the company wrote. “The order served its purpose and any competitive effects it sought to address have been remedied.”
Public comment on Highmark’s petition to end oversight from the 2013 order will be received until Jan. 15. Written comments can be emailed to kimsheaffe@pa.gov.