Tellez

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Cora M. Tellez

President and Chair

Prudential Health Care Plan of California Inc.

Exactly a year ago this week, Cora M. Tellez joined Prudential as head of the insurance giant’s Western operations, which encompass California, Colorado and Arizona.

“It has been an extraordinary year,” devoted primarily to “rebuilding an organization,” she said in a prepared statement.

Prudential earlier this year recorded its first quarterly operating profit since 1994. Contributing to Prudential’s strong first-quarter performance was a 7 percent increase in Southern California membership, to 212,000 HMO enrollees and 69,000 point-of-service plan members.

At the same time, the plan’s medical loss ratio the percentage of revenues spent on providing medical services dropped from 83.6 percent to 81.9 percent. The lower that ratio, the more efficient the plan is perceived to be, because it means a greater portion of revenues is available for administrative expenses and profits. (While keeping administrative costs down is also viewed as a measure of efficiency, keeping medical costs down carries greater weight in evaluating efficiency because it constitutes such a large portion of HMOs’ overall costs.)

In addition to boosting membership and cost efficiencies, Tellez is credited with smoothly managing Prudential’s consolidation of 40 member-service sites and 20 claims-processing units into just four National Service Centers nationwide. Tellez heads one of those four centers.

Upon relocating some 1,400 employees to the National Service Center in downtown L.A., Tellez was cited by Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan for helping revitalize that area.

Prior to joining Prudential, she served a four-year stint as senior vice president and the Bay Area’s regional CEO at Blue Shield of California. Prior to that, she managed the Hawaii region for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from California State University at Hayward.

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