Straight from the CEO: Scaling “Remarkable”

• By:  David Holmberg
• Posted:  May 12, 2026
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Five years ago, a health plan member who twisted a knee or strained their back would have to find a physical therapist they could get to, then fit several weeks of onsite appointments into their schedule. Now, they can go to the My Highmark app on their phone and in minutes sign up for Virtual Joint Health — which combines online access to a joint health specialist, a personalized plan, and real-time body sensor feedback on exercises to ensure effectiveness. The program can be done at home, at work, while traveling — anywhere and any time that’s convenient.

Five years ago, a member seeking mental health support would often wait weeks or months to get an appointment. Choice would be limited, especially in rural areas; if the provider they found wasn’t a good fit, more weeks would pass without care before they got in to see someone else. Now, the My Highmark app can connect them to Mental Well-Being, an in-network platform powered by Spring Health that offers access to thousands of psychiatrists, therapists and health coaches, helps find an individual’s best matches, and secures appointments, on average, in less than two days.

Those are examples of what’s “better now” thanks to the first five years of building out our Living Health model. Simpler bill paying, Member Engagement Guides and coordinated case management support, integrated social care, new and updated care facilities — we have a long list of “better now.” And that list will continue to grow, because our new five-year business strategy, taking us to 2030, is even more focused on building and scaling Living Health to set a new standard for health care, and for health itself.

Growing our capacity to deliver on our mission

In March, we released our 2025 year-end financials and Annual Report. Strong headwinds across our industry took their toll: Our enterprise, health plan and stop-loss businesses all had operating losses.

But we also had plenty of positive news, including a stunning $237 million margin turnaround at AHN, and a fifth consecutive year of revenue growth for Highmark Health — from $18 billion in 2020 to $32.4 billion as of year-end 2025.

Good news, and growth, continued in April when we officially completed an affiliation with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, making Highmark the third largest Blue-affiliated organization in the U.S. On the provider side, an affiliation with Heritage Valley Health System is working through approvals — when that closes, AHN will grow to include two more hospitals and 600 additional physicians.

As a purpose-driven organization, our goal isn’t just revenue growth or becoming larger, it’s growing our capacity to deliver on our mission: to create a remarkable health experience, freeing people to be their best.

In the first five years of the Living Health strategy, we invested in the talent, technology, research and infrastructure to create remarkable health experiences like those I mentioned at the start of the article. Looking ahead, we want to scale the success of Living Health and deliver remarkable health experiences more often and to more people. That includes affiliations like Blue KC — which adds a million health plan members and extends Living Health to a new market. But it is just as important to continue scaling our capabilities — developing safe, effective uses of AI, advancing precision medicine, tackling prescription drug challenges, expanding digital health solutions, and much more.

As I noted in an earlier article, this is a challenging time to pursue growth and invest in the bold systemic changes needed to make “remarkable” the standard for everyone we serve. But think about the first five years of Living Health. We successfully advanced our strategy through a pandemic and unprecedented economic shutdown. Through post-COVID supply chain and labor disruptions. And through all the industry headwinds and uncertainties of recent years. We have been put to the test again and again — and we keep proving that we can stay focused on our values, be innovative, and do the hard work to move Living Health forward.

Living Health: The road to “remarkable”

Before I became CEO of Highmark Health in 2014, much of my leadership experience was in retail, including building a diversified business with hundreds of retail eyewear stores nationwide. In retail, you succeed by being relentlessly focused on understanding and providing what your consumers want — and adapting quickly as wants and market conditions change.

In health care, I saw many smart, highly motivated individuals doing inspiring work, but the industry wasn’t giving consumers what they wanted and it wasn’t adapting. Health experiences were often complicated, frustrating, expensive…and sometimes health outcomes were disappointing as well. There was finger pointing — payers and providers blaming each other, this policymaker blaming that policymaker, everyone blaming pharma. But from my perspective, problems were less about any one bad actor and more about how fragmented and siloed health care had become. Each stakeholder had developed a model and made investments that worked for them in their area, but no one was focused on the individual’s health journey across the whole ecosystem.

That was the challenge we took on: Let’s map those consumer health journeys and understand what’s causing friction and getting in the way. Let’s figure out how to deliver a simpler, more personalized, proactive health experience, and connect more of the surrounding ecosystem through closer collaboration, shared data and decision-making, and leveraging the latest technology. Let’s take the extra steps to help people understand their health choices and give them the information and tools to be engaged and achieve their health goals.

Eventually that all came together as our Living Health strategy. The point of Living Health is to reimagine and rebuild the system around a person’s health — as I wrote a couple years ago, it’s a model built for you, not us. Instead of a health insurance business here, and care providers over here, and point solutions all over the place, we start with health at the center. Health requires coverage, it requires access to high-quality care, it requires digital solutions, and community support — and it also requires connecting those areas so a person gets what they need when they need it.

In western Pennsylvania, where Highmark Health owns both the largest health insurer and a large regional health system, we have been able to connect the system around a person’s health in some unique ways. After the decision was made in 2013 to acquire and operate what is now Allegheny Health Network, we brought our clinicians to the table to help shape insurance decisions, and we got our insurance people into meetings to help improve access and delivery of care. That approach, which now includes a value-based economic model with a shared population of more than 350,000 people, has proven that working more closely together with aligned goals and processes can improve quality, satisfaction, and affordability.

Sometimes when I speak at an insurance event, someone will say, you know, the way you’re talking, you sound an awful lot like a hospital person. And then I will be speaking at another event, and someone will say, you know, you talk like an insurance person. I take both as compliments — but what I really am is a health person.

Similarly, Living Health isn’t just an insurance model or a provider model, it’s a health model.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re competing and growing as an insurer, and in western Pennsylvania we compete and grow as a provider system, but in every business area we bring the focus back to health — how can we help an individual be engaged, understand and make choices, and have remarkable health experiences?

The next leg of the journey

We have always been clear that the kind of industry transformation we are driving toward requires long-term, sustained commitment. Our structure as a nonprofit, our strategy, and our culture, all revolve around a mindset of constant learning and continuous evolution. As I said in a Wall Street Journal interview for the Deloitte CEO Perspectives series, “Organizations making the biggest impact today are generally those that are mission-driven, take a long-term perspective, and understand that today’s decisions may have significant impacts over the next 10 to 20 years.”

The first five years of Living Health put down a strong foundation and began creating some remarkable health experiences — and we’re proud of that. But we also know that much work remains as we strive to be remarkable for more individuals across more moments of each health journey.

You’ll continue hearing from me and other leaders as we scale Living Health, introduce further innovations, and report on measurable results in health outcomes, experience and affordability. In particular, I want to mention Karen Hanlon, who took on the role of president of Highmark Health last year. Karen has overseen development of the Living Health strategy from day one, and I encourage you to check out her Forbes Council industry thought leadership articles throughout 2026.

There are significant challenges in U.S. health care right now — but also a tremendous opportunity to shift toward transformation and move away from past models and assumptions that aren’t working. Living Health is one of the most promising models of that transformation, improving health, experience and affordability for the people we serve while ensuring our organization’s sustainability so we can be here for generations to come.