Brainerd is going to have a particularly busy 2007. HealthPartners is sui generis in Minnesota—a major health-plan provider that also owns clinics and a hospital, Regions in St. Paul, which is now undergoing a major expansion. But that’s not the only way HealthPartners is growing.
“A lot of people still think of us as a metropolitan area–based organization,” Brainerd says. “In fact, over the past year or two, we’ve expanded across Minnesota; we’ve expanded the contracting of our health plan into Wisconsin, and we’re now writing business in Wisconsin—that’s new. And we’re completing negotiations with doctors and hospitals across North Dakota, and in South Dakota as well.” Through a new partnership with Connecticut-based insurer Cigna, HealthPartners will also provide health coverage for companies and their employees in other parts of the country.
Brainerd expects to spend time front and center on the issue of health insurance for all Minnesotans, too. “The percentage of Minnesotans who are going without health care coverage is increasing,” she says. “We see the impact of that change in our emergency room in the hospital when people show up for care when their conditions have deteriorated, when their illnesses are more progressed.”
