Hartford-based Aetna Inc. plans to lay off 80 Connecticut workers as part of a larger 160-employee cutback, company spokeswoman Cynthia Michener said today.
Michener said the layoffs have been in the works since Aetna’s “Innovation, Technology, and Service Operations” underwent a redesign this summer “to become more consumer-centric and to more effectively and efficiently serve our customers.”
She added that the redesign began by reducing “management layers” for a total reduction of 160 employees, in job cuts that started in August.
“The departures are staggered over the remainder of the year and some into early 2013,” Michener said.
Aetna is providing support services and severance benefits, she said.
Michener didn’t break down layoff figures for Aetna’s Hartford and Windsor offices.
She also did not say whether the job cuts are related to Aetna’s $7.3 billion acquisition of Coventry Health Care Inc., a Maryland-based Medicare and Medicaid servicing business. Aetna said that the acquisition, announced in August, would involve “cost efficiencies,” which in many such buyouts involves job cuts.
The company did not provide an estimate of the number or location of the anticipated job cuts that will follow the acquisition.
Aetna has more than 33,000 employees overall, with more than 6,000 in Connecticut.
Today’s cuts follow by exactly a year last October’s elimination of more than 1,700 Aetna
employees, including 400 in Connecticut, through an early retirement offer.
In the August buyout announcement, Aetna said the deal will add nearly 4 million medical
members and 1.5 million Medicare Part D members to Aetna’s membership roles.
Aetna Chairman, CEO, and President Mark T. Bertolini also said the Coventry transaction
increases the share of revenues Aetna receives from government business to more than 30 percent from 23 percent, Bertolini said.
Bertolini added that Aetna expects to finance the cash portion of the transaction with a combination of cash on hand and by issuing about $2.5 billion of new debt.