Cigna has been working with data and analytics for many years. Throughout our careers we have provided periodic counsel and have known Cigna to do interesting, ambitious work to use data and analytics to improve their business. But now Cigna is taking data and analytics to a new level. The giant global health services company—ranked #13 in the 2020 Fortune 500, with over $153 billion in 2019 revenues—acquired the pharmacy benefits manager ExpressScripts at the end of 2018. In that same year Cigna established its first Global Data and Analytics organization, and appointed Gina Papush into the role of Chief Global Data and Analytics Officer. Papush and her colleagues are in the middle of an ambitious journey to create a leading data and analytics capability in one of the most data- and analytics-oriented industries in the world, and to transform the business of healthcare.
Both the original Cigna health insurance business and ExpressScripts—now the Health Services Division of Cigna—had strong orientations to data and analytics. Over the years we’ve observed Cigna to do excellent work in experimental design, a “know your customer” initiative, and care management analytics. Tom wrote about ExpressScripts’ innovative work in AI in his book The AI Advantage, including a “drug utilization review” service that evaluates the compatibility of a patient’s prescriptions, and sensors and AI within an asthma inhaler that makes recommendations about medication use.
Papush, who is originally from Ukraine, previously headed data and analytics at the Australia-based insurer QBE. She also worked for several years in the Decision Management group at Citibank. That organization was a distributed but closely-networked community of practice, and Papush is establishing a similar structure at Cigna to better connect the thousands of employees who do some form of analytical work.
The firm already has a collection of data and analytics groups supporting multiple business units. In addition to linking them more closely together, the target state for Global Data and Analytics (GD&A) is to become more disruptive and innovative, and to lead in generating value for customers, employers, provider partners, and in internal business operations. According to Papush, that will require both more analytics capability and a greater focus on “augmented intelligence,” the term that Cigna uses for AI. The company has a philosophy that intelligent technologies won’t replace human workers, but rather augment them.
Working Across Multiple Fronts
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Befitting the large organization and ambitious objectives of the GD&A organization, there are multiple groups and initiatives within it. Multiple teams enable data and analytics for specific business units; for example, there are groups for Health Plan Analytics, co-led by Glenn Gerhard and Anthony Matteo (in which Cigna partners with employers and a network of over a million provider organizations), and Pharmacy and Specialty Solutions Analytics, led by Matt McGinnis. Clinical and Customer Analytics team is led by Doug Melton, focused on population health, health economics, and clinical studies. The Government Business Segment Analytics group focuses on analytics enabling Cigna’s Medicare and Individual/Family Plans businesses. Cigna’s International Markets unit is supported by analytics teams across multiple geographical regions. And the Health Services unit—formerly ExpressScripts—has several analytics groups that are partnering closely with GD&A under the leadership of Dr. Glen Stettin, Cigna’s Chief Innovation Officer.
Source: Forbes
