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Blue Cross and Blue Shield executives visit Alomere Health.

Alomere's CEO, Carl Vaagenes, and BCBS' president and CEO, Dana Erickson discuss the health of rural healthcare.

23 leaders from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota’s executive leadership team and the company’s board of directors took a charter bus from Blue Cross’ headquarters in the Twin Cities up to Alexandria, where they spent the day visiting Alomere for a “listening tour”.
Blue Cross has a tradition of meeting with community leaders to have constructive dialogues about how it can work more collaboratively on the future of healthcare. The purpose of this visit was to listen and to learn about what’s working and where change may be needed. The executive leaders and board of directors toured the facility and facilitated conversations centered on the healthcare needs of our communities and others like them outside of the Twin Cities.

“We appreciated the very unique opportunity to meet with the Board of Directors and Executive leadership of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.” said Carl Vaagenes, CEO at Alomere. “We both share a common mission to strengthen and nurture health and wellbeing to help people achieve their healthiest life, and were grateful to have been given this platform to showcase our organization and the great team here at Alomere Health as we discussed some of the challenges we face as a rural independent health system. Through transparency and open dialogue, like we were able to have, we are more likely to find ways we can work together to better align the financing and care delivery of healthcare for the benefit of the patients we both have the privilege to serve.”

It was a privilege to visit west central Minnesota and speak directly with so many dedicated healthcare professionals and Blue Cross members who really care about the health of their communities. This trip was a great opportunity to listen, learn and collaborate on ways that all of us can work to make the region even healthier. I think these conversations can serve as a model for similar trips Blue Cross would like to take to other parts of the state.

Dana Erickson, President and CEO
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota

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