INDIANAPOLIS, March 7, 2024 – Northwind has announced the addition of Tony Purkey as Senior Vice President, Client Strategies.
“Demand from our self-funded employer and union clients is driving rapid growth,” said Phillip Berry, CEO. “Tony Purkey joins Northwind at a time when we need high-integrity leaders with expert knowledge in employer-sponsored health and the ability to live our values in building strategic relationships. Tony is such a leader. Rising costs, barriers to access, struggles with quality, and a general sense of frustration, are driving self-funded employers to engage innovators like Northwind to help solve these problems.”
“For many years, I’ve watched Tony help self-funded employers navigate complex healthcare challenges. From evaluating onsite and nearsite health center options, implementing new clinics, advising on clinical programs, and measuring the ongoing success of client health investments, his consultative approach, ability to make the complex simple, and capacity to balance concern for the bottom line with concern for member health have made him a powerful ally for his clients,” added Berry.
Prior to joining Northwind, Tony was the Senior Vice President of National Accounts and Strategic Solutions at Everside Health, a company that implements and operates employer-sponsored health centers. Tony moved to Everside after leaving Aon, where he led the worksite clinic advisory practice. Tony had the important role of implementing the firm’s worksite clinic, health improvement, and measurement consulting strategies, and conveying those strategies and the overall vision to clients and vendors. Before Aon, Tony was the Clinical Operations Director at Cummins, where he managed the global operations of all the Cummins worksite clinics, including the LiveWell Center. The LiveWell Center is a modern primary care facility that offers innovative healthcare services, wellness education, healthy cooking programs, acupuncture, massage therapy, physical therapy, and various exercise classes to Cummins employees and their families. His leadership during the Center’s building and its growth made the facility earn praise from the region’s Assistant Surgeon General as “the most innovative employer-based model currently on the market.”
“Throughout my time as an employer-health strategies advisor, I’ve closely followed the evolution and rapid growth of Northwind’s health stewardship model,” said Purkey. “I truly believe in the company’s values and value proposition for self-funded groups. The fact that Northwind has real client and member data to show how their programs help employers and unions steward their healthcare investment is a huge differentiator. The time is right for a new approach and we’ve got a compelling story to tell.”
Northwind’s Health StewardshipTM model removes healthcare access, cost, and complexity barriers by creating a Nexus of CareTM infrastructure for self-funded plan sponsors. Services include health and pharmacy benefit administration, drug distribution and home delivery pharmacy, Clinical BlueprintsTM for chronic disease management, and RxStewardTM software for analytics, program management, and service support.
