Stephen Wood is a Senior Vice President in OptumInsight and leads in the Government Programs Management and Strategy practice. His work in senior markets dates to the mid 1980s when he worked with hospitals to implement DRG payments by Medicare. Since that time, he has worked with ensuring organizations to review and develop strategies, conduct new product feasibility assessments, improve performance and implement new programs.

Mr. Wood has experience in managed care, governmental programs, senior markets and strategic consulting in the health insurance industry. Recently, he has worked with health care reform, Medicare payment reform and Medicaid expansion; Medicare Advantage and PDP market and business strategies; operational gap assessments; and disease management programs. He has performed feasibility assessments and implementations for Medicare Advantage and Part D, and Medicare supplement product evaluation and development. He has also worked with PPO feasibility and demonstration application assistance, and institutionalized Medicare product evaluations. Additionally, Mr. Wood has experience in development of Medicaid managed care programs and RFP assistance and management.

In addition to his consulting experience, Mr. Wood has held positions in capital finance at the American Hospital Association as well as serving as finance director and director of patient accounts at a medical group practice.

Mr. Wood has written several articles, has co-authored two books on Medicare managed care products, and has given many presentations. He gave the Keynote Address, titled “Anticipating Health Care Changes Under the New Administration,” at the 2009 Taft-Hartley Benefits Summit. He also gave a presentation titled “Evaluating Your HCC Risk Process” at the Medicare HCC Managed Care Summit. Mr. Wood presented “SNPs 2010 — Market Overview” to SNP Alliance, and gave two presentations on May 14, 2009, to the 3rd Annual Medicare Advantage Summit. The titles of the presentations are “The End of Private-Fee-For-Service: How to Capitalize on New Market Opportunities,” and “Implications of the 2010 Call Letter.” He also presented “The Obama Health Reform Proposal: Impact on Payers” at the Towers Perrin Healthcare Conference.

Mr. Wood graduated from the University of Chicago and holds a master’s degree from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. This year Mr. Wood was named one of Consulting Magazine’s Top 25 consultants.