Good morning.
“If we don’t have radical change in the health care system, we will falter and we will fail.”
Those aren’t the words of a radical activist. Instead, they were spoken by the woman who runs one of the largest players in the U.S. health care system—CVS Health. CEO Karen Lynch was the opening night speaker at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit last night, interviewed by editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell. And though Lynch has reached the pinnacle of corporate power—no other woman has ever run a company as large as hers—her goal is anything but status quo. Since becoming CEO of a company that was already a mash up of drug stores and an insurance company, she has spent $8 billion to acquire home health care company Signify Health and $10.6 billion to acquire primary care provider Oak Street Health. An excerpt from her comments:
“Our vision and our strategy is really about building connections in health care. We are driving at value-based care versus volume-based care. We’re driving at consumer connections and personal engagement by using technology so that people can be connected to their health care. And we are driving at community convenience, because health care isn’t just about going to the doctor, its about being in the community and having transportation to the doctor. It's about being in the home and having access to healthy nutrition. So essentially, our strategy in a nutshell is connecting all the dots for someone on their health care journey. And so we will be in the community, we will be in the home, and we will be digitally connected.”
Also speaking at last night’s dinner was the newest member of the U.S. Senate—Laphonza Butler, who was named by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the seat left vacant by Dianne Feinstein’s death. Sen. Butler told how her 9-year-old daughter chose to miss her mother’s swearing in ceremony in order to go on a previously planned camping trip.
“I said to her, ‘Mama’s got this thing going on.’ And as I usually do, I said, ‘Do you want to do this or do you want to go on your camping trip.’ And she said, ‘Oh no, Mama, I’m going camping.’ And I said, ‘Well, the vice president is going to be there.’ And she said, ‘Tell her I said hi.’”
I’ll report more from the MPW summit tomorrow. And while we are on the subject of powerful women, check out Maria Aspan’s Fortune piece on Under Armour CEO Stephanie Linnartz, who left the security of Marriott to take on a turn-around job. "I believe in taking calculated risks," she told Aspan.
Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
