HARTFORD, Conn., January 21, 2011 - Aetna (NYSE: AET) today announced the appointment of Dr. Charles E. Saunders, M.D., as head of Strategic Diversification. He will report to Senior Executive Vice President and CFO Joseph M. Zubretsky. His appointment is effective on January 31, 2011.
"We have stated that continued growth for Aetna will include strategic diversification of our products, services and global opportunities," Zubretsky said. "We are delighted to add Dr. Saunders to help us achieve these goals. With his extraordinary accomplishments in both health care and business, Charles is the ideal person to help us identify new growth opportunities and develop market strategies that can help Aetna profitably manage quality and cost for our customers."
Dr. Saunders is a physician and an accomplished business executive with expertise in health care services, information technology and business operations. He was most recently an executive in residence for Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm, where he provided strategic leadership on assessing and pursuing growth opportunities. Before that, he was the chairman and CEO of Broadlane, Inc., a technology-enabled health care services company that specializes in hospital supply chain and clinical workforce management.
He has held a number of other significant leadership positions during his career, including president of EDS Healthcare Global Industry Solutions, chief medical officer of Healtheon/WebMD, principal of A.T. Kearney and executive director of San Francisco General Hospital Managed Care Programs and has served as an ED and EMS medical director. He received a B.S. in biological sciences from the University of Southern California and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University and is boarded in Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine. He has served on the faculty of several Universities, including the University of California, San Francisco and Vanderbilt University, has authored papers and articles in emergency medicine and was the editor of several additions of the widely-circulated textbook, Current Emergency Diagnosis and Treatment.
About Aetna
Aetna is one of the nation's leading diversified health care benefits companies, serving approximately 35.4 million people with information and resources to help them make better informed decisions about their health care. Aetna offers a broad range of traditional and consumer-directed health insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmacy, dental, behavioral health, group life and disability plans, and medical management capabilities and health care management services for Medicaid plans. Our customers include employer groups, individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans, governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups and expatriates. For more information, see www.aetna.com. To learn more about Aetna's innovative online tools, visit www.aetnatools.com.