It’s official: James E. Purcell, who took over as acting president and CEO of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island in May after the embattled Ronald Battista’s dismissal, has gotten the job permanently, chosen after a national search by a professional firm.
The choice of Purcell, the company said in a news release, is a reaffirmation of its board of directors’ “determined efforts to reform” Blue Cross.
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Purcell, 59, has been chief operating officer at Blue Cross since 2000. Since replacing Battista, he has instituted a new company ethics code, worked to improve relations with the health care community and government, and tried to boost employee morale.
“I pledge to the board, to all Blue Cross employees, and most of all, to our members, that I will continue to implement the reforms embraced by our board of directors,” Purcell said in the news release. “My goal will be to lead Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island by example.”
“Jim has been an exceptional leader,” chairman Frank Montanaro said. “He stepped into the presidency under very difficult circumstances and immediately began the healing process. The level of competition for the position was intense. But, without question, we are satisfied that Jim is the right man for the job.”
Purcell’s salary was set at $500,000 per year, which the company said is “competitive with the salaries of health plan CEOs nationally,” based on a compensation study done for Blue Cross. Since becoming acting CEO, Purcell had earned the equivalent of $478,000 a year.
An upstate New York native, graduate of Cornell University and Vietnam veteran, Purcell was a founding partner of the Providence law firm Partridge Snow & Hahn. He had served as outside counsel to Blue Cross before becoming COO. He lives with his wife, Kelly, in Barrington, where he has chaired the Barrington Republican Town Committee and served on the town’s zoning board. He is a trustee of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce and is on the Advisory Council of the Roger Williams University School of Law.
Temperamentally, Purcell is about as different from Battista as they come: mild-mannered and conciliatory, an advocate of “collaborative” decision-making and problem-solving, and friendly and approachable with the rank and file.
But Purcell is tough in his own way, as he’s shown in his decision to fight the state’s choice of competitor UnitedHealthcare of New England to cover some 52,000 workers, retirees and their dependents – a big blow to Blue Cross, which now covers that population.
Purcell also stood his ground at contentious hearings over his company’s request for a 16.9-percent rate increase for subscribers who buy their own insurance; the state Department of Business Regulation rejected it nonetheless, but Blue Cross is preparing to appeal.
And earlier this year, Purcell stirred up controversy after he testified before legislators that the main reason for Rhode Island’s fast-rising health insurance rates is that people don’t have healthy lifestyles and overuse the health care system. Asked recently about that remark, he was unapologetic, saying to claim otherwise “is to put your head in the sand.”
Purcell is also adamant about separating complaints about his predecessor’s style, which he makes clear he doesn’t embrace, from allegations of outright malfeasance. Other than a recently uncovered $10,000 gift that paid for bricks honoring Battista’s parents, which the former CEO was ordered to repay, Purcell stressed in a recent interview, “nothing that has happened… was illegal, criminal. It was completely disclosed, it was approved, and it was filed with the regulators.”
Still, Purcell has made a point of leading Blue Cross in a different direction. In a newspaper article last month, he wrote that the company must be “an efficient, well-organized, cost-effective business,” but its “social mission” can never be subverted for business interests.
“We cannot ever forget that our community-based, nonprofit charitable essence is what differentiates Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island from its fiercest competitors,” he wrote. “Regardless of the ups and downs of our business fortunes, we will embrace that essence wholeheartedly and in ways that will be unmistakable to the community we serve.”
