This week on the Be Epic podcast, Brent sits down with Curtis Barnett, President and CEO of Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield and a member of the Walton College Dean's Executive Advisory Board. Curtis begins the conversation by sharing the mission of Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is to improve the health, financial security, and peace of mind for members and communities that they serve. They explore the company's significant statewide presence, with Barnett reflecting on his 30 years with the firm and his journey to CEO. The episode also highlights the upcoming Business Forecast Luncheon, where Curtis will serve as the moderator. Throughout the episode listeners will enjoy Curtis' perspective as a healthcare leader and his commitment to community involvement. He offers valuable takeaways for listeners interested in business strategy and healthcare innovation.

Our mission is to improve the health, financial

security and the peace of mind of the members and communities

that we serve.

Welcome to the be epic podcast brought to you

by the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of

Arkansas. I'm your host, Brent Williams. Together, we'll

explore the dynamic landscape of business, and uncover the

strategies, insights and stories that drive business today.

Well, today I have with me Curtis Barnett, and Curtis is

the president and CEO of Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Curtis, thank you for joining me today. Hey, Brent, it's great to

be with you. Well, Curtis, we've known each other for some time,

you serve on the Dean's Executive Advisory Board at the

Sam M. Walton College of Business so thank you for that.

Sure, sure. My pleasure.

And coming up soon you'll be moderating the

college's business forecast luncheon. And I'm really looking

forward to the luncheon on January the 26th.

Yeah I am too Brent, it's quite an honor to be

asked by by you and Mervin to to get to be a part of that

program. I've been a big fan for a number of years I've attended

in the past and certainly watched during the COVID years

as well and have enjoyed the program and know that the people

in Northwest Arkansas in particular, but throughout the

state of Arkansas get a lot of value out of that program as

well.

Absolutely, I think it is one of if not, if

not the largest event that the college puts on each year. And

if you're listening and having attended the business forecast

luncheon in the past it it is it is quite an event. It's people

from all over the state as attendees. But it's a really

great chance to get a perspective on international,

domestic, and local economic issues and trends. And I assume

you've taken value from those in the past?

I have no question. I mean, for me, it

falls almost perfectly for the annual report that I give to my

Absolutely. And the the moderator serves a

board of directors and to our to our members that our annual

really important role in this. And it is it's very intentional,

meeting of members each year. So I take a lot of information that

I gather from that meeting and share it because when we think

that we have a business leader, moderating to be able to help

about the economic environment, as well as the opportunities

that may exist over the next year or two as we look forward.

put it in context, you know, for the audience, and honestly,

probably for the forecasters or the economic economic experts.

Sure, sure. Yeah, as I thought through

trends, I keep finding myself looking at it from from my

vantage point and, and try to make sure that I'm looking at it

more broadly. But also have to remember that you asked me to do

this for a reason. So

that's right.

Hopefully my vantage point brings value to

this as well.

Well, one thing I want us to talk about is what

trends are on your mind. But maybe before that, I'd love for

everyone out there to get to know you a little bit better.

Like I said, I've gotten the chance to know you for for many

years, but you serve as president and CEO of Arkansas

Blue Cross Blue Shield, maybe that'd be a great place to just

start of you know, the organization and and the people

that you serve

And Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, this is

actually our 75th anniversary of the founding of our company,

December 3 to be more precise is when we celebrated that and

we're very honored to have opportunity to serve Arkansans

as well as people from outside the state of Arkansas, we serve

about 2 million members nationally. I think a lot of

people may not be aware of that. A lot of that membership comes

with some of the national account customers that we're

able to help provide services to. We have a little over 3000

employees, have the Corporate Center here in Little Rock, one

in Northwest Arkansas as well in Springdale that we opened nearly

three years ago now as well as welcome centers and regional

offices in seven other parts of our state. So truly are a

statewide company and one that's committed to not only helping

our members, but also we do our absolute best to be ingrained in

the communities that we served as well.

Because your mission I know is to promote

health across the state.

That's right. Our mission is to improve the

health, financial security and the peace of mind of the members

and communities that we serve. And we talk about that often.

And it's something that we take to heart and it's something that

our employees are very proud of serve.

Well thank you for the way you invest in our

state and in the communities around the state. Tell us a

little bit about your career journey because one doesn't just

land in the president and CEO job.

Well, I've been lucky I was elected CEO in 2017.

But this is actually my 30th

wow

with the company as well. So just celebrated 30

years, and it's one that never necessarily expected but it's

flown by the blink of an eyes. It's move that quickly. And

fortunately, you know, throughout my career, I was able

to work in a lot of different parts of our company and started

out working in communities working closely with large

employers, primary care physicians, hospital

administrators, mainly in rural parts of our state, throw in a

product at the time that we had called the primary care network

product. And I worked in about eight different cities in

Northeast Arkansas, Southwest Arkansas, and would meet with

these groups of individuals, large employers, again primary

care doctors and, and hospital administrators and work on ways

that we can help manage cost and provide good quality health care

in those local communities and towns like Osceola, towns like

Batesville, which you're familiar with, town Ashdown,

DeQueen places lock that in. And it really gave me a love not

only for our business, but I love and even greater

appreciation for the people of our state, and the challenges

that they deal with every day to provide good affordable health,

health care in those communities.

You know, one thing you said there that I

think it's interesting that many might not think about, you know,

for a company like Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, is that

you're working with not only your members, but you're working

with hospital systems, providers, community

stakeholders, there's a lot of stakeholders with what you do.

Oh, no question about that. And, and we're so

dependent on one another, that you really the success overall,

is how well that you can work together and how well you can

collaborate together. And that doesn't always show through. And

in many cases, you know, we find ourselves at odds on different

types of issues. But at the end of the day, when we're sitting

down with hospital leaders, physician leaders, we find

ourselves much more often than not working toward a common

goal.

So you worked in rural areas of the state. And

then I assumed that continued to evolve?

I do,

and was struggling with that, and the

I did and, and was promoted from there worked

in our product development area for a period of time, got to be

the business lead in our pharmacy division, mass pharmacy

division. And that was a period of time when you really saw

direct-to-consumer advertising began to take off in the

company asked me if I would take that division over, and in maybe

pharmaceutical industry. So a lot of demand for prescription

drugs at that time. So we were trying to manage the demand for

those drugs with with the cost implications of that as well.

And how do we go about doing that. So that was a fascinating

period of time. And then in the late 1990s, around 2000, we had

a part of our business that was going through a systems

conversion, getting ready for y2k, you remember when that was

a big deal.

help be involved with turning that around. And that was really

a turning point for my career. And it was a turning point in

many ways, for my life as well, because that was the first

opportunity, I had to lead a large group of people. So I had

about 125 or so people who reported up to me at that time,

which seemed very large, especially at that time, and we

were going through a difficult time. But it was long days, a

lot of hours. But it was one of those that was so rewarding,

because we turned it around and we made that organization even

better than what had had been before and really set it on a on

a path to be successful in the future. And that was a great

time.

And that sort of launched you into the next phase

of your career?

It did, it did I continue to be involved with the

operations part of our company, which when you think of a payer,

a health plan like ours, that's a lot of claims processing,

customer service, membership support, a lot of our

information systems and technology areas. So at one

point before I became CEO I had had over half of our 3000

employees reported up to me so really have been involved in the

people side of our business, the technology side as well, but

very much grounded in the people side of our business throughout

my career, which has been very rewarding.

Yeah. Well, you know, in getting to interact

with you, I think probably every time that I've talked with you

one on one, I hear you talk about your people, and how

important that is to you as a leader.

Absolutely, as you should be, well, congratulations,

Oh, there's no question. And I mean, it really

is everything to our company. I mean, we talk every day about

the human side of healthcare. Certainly technology is

Thank you.

important and we want to be best in class in technology and

Well, as you you know, think about moderating and

aspire to be as good as we possibly can. But at the end of

think about, you know, the audience that typically attends,

the day, the human side of healthcare is what makes the

difference. And so we stress that on an ongoing basis. You

know, we love our members we think our employees are key to

to serving our members effectively. Employee engagement

is a big part of one of the biggest metrics we look at we've

been very lucky over the years to build a culture that really

reinforces employee engagement. And we just got our results back

matter-of-fact in the last couple of weeks and once again,

with the benchmarks that we do, we finished among the top 10% of

employers nationally in employee engagement scores. And that's

something we're very proud of.

you know, our business forecast lunch, and again, businesses

from throughout the state. You know, I'd love to pick your

brain a little bit about, you know, some of the things that

you're thinking about maybe don't have fully informed

opinions on or fully developed opinions on, I should say, and

maybe I'll just start with healthcare, you know, it's the

area that you're focused in very, very important to

Arkansans, just as you're looking at the state of

healthcare, and what's coming, any anything on your mind?

Well, I think when you look at health care,

probably the biggest challenge we face today is around shortage

of providers, you know, we're seeing it in physicians and

nurses and other professionals as well. So, you know, are we

doing the things that we need to be doing at this point to really

shore up our, our supply of providers going forward,

especially when you look out over the next five or 10 years,

the pandemic took a took a huge toll on employee participation

rates in those areas. And it's one that we've got to continue

to, to shore up and improve as we look to the future,

especially when you think about health care going forward, aging

population, when you look at the health status, that

unfortunately, if it's not getting worse, it's sort of not

getting any better, either. And so we're going to need a robust

workforce going forward in healthcare in order to be

successful. So that's one area I'd like to spend a little bit

of time. I think another area is, you know, we recently a lot

of attention paid to the lithium deposits in South Arkansas,

lithium extraction and Exxon Mobil's their their announcement

in the last couple of weeks. And when you think about Arkansas,

you think about what's been going on in Northwest Arkansas

for really last many years with the boom that's occurred there,

and the economic strength of that region, Northeast Arkansas,

with steel industry and Mississippi County, in

particular. Fort Smith, you know, which has been improving

over the last several years, but now is ready, I think, to even

take another big jump with a pilot training program that's

going to be offered through the through the with the Air Force

and all in that community. And now South Arkansas, I think a

lot of people are describing that, that we're in that we

could be in a golden age of economic development here in the

State. And I'd like for us to maybe spend a little bit of time

talking about that. And do our panelists agree that we are in

that golden age? And if we or even if especially if we aren't,

what are a couple of actions that we can take to make sure

that we do continue to move forward the way that we can and

take advantage of this momentum?

Yeah, you know, I agree that Arkansas seems

really well positioned across the state in many ways. You

know, you mentioned all of those different areas. You know, we

also see tourism and outdoor recreation growing. We see the

arts growing. So it is an interesting time in Arkansas.

It is it is and then what conversation wouldn't

complete be complete in this day and age without talking about

AI? To some extent, I think we're now we're just a little

bit over a year since chat GPT, you know, was released. And so

you think about the attention that AI and especially

generative aI have gotten over the last year. And I'd like for

our panelists to talk a little bit about how they see that

really impacting our economy, and then which industries they

feel like are best positioned at this point to really maximize

and optimize productivity as it relates to AI.

Yeah, I think that will be an interesting

discussion. And particularly, you know, there's always this

balance, right of productivity and potential job loss. I know,

you know, I have my own thoughts about the way that technology

tends to disrupt, but it tends to grow, you know, the economy,

but certainly, there's different views and opinions on that.

That's right. That's right. I think you and I

have talked before and it's something that we talk again

about within our company at Arkansas Blue Cross, how do we

find that harmony, you know that harmony between, again, being

human focused, and then technology and I think with with

AI and the potential that it brings, it's going to be even

more incumbent upon us to find that sweet spot and then balance

that you're talking about.

I suspect one thing that we will hear at least

something about is what's happening with inflation and the

way that you know, maybe it's slowed down, but certainly it's

something I'm sure you've been paying attention to.

We have, you know, very closely and when you

look at, you know, the job market still tends to be very

strong right now, we do see inflation, I think continuing to

come down, you know, economic growth tends to continue to be

positive. But, you know, there are a lot of indicators out

there, that would give you some cause for concern. And

certainly, for those companies that are in the transportation

industry, they've seen, you know, freight recession, we've

heard that quite a bit referenced over the last six to

nine months. And if you think of that as a leading indicator,

then what does that mean for the general economy at some point?

Yeah, that's that is exactly right. You know,

I think also interest rates will probably come up if I had to

guess.

That's something we can all identify with. And

exactly, I think it will no question and just the the

overall tightening of the money supply, and what does that mean

for economic activity going forward?

Yeah. And certainly, I assume there will

be some discussion about, you know, predicting the Feds next

moves, which many, many like to do, can be a little hard to

predict. But certainly, that's clearly, have having an effect

and will continue to have

No question, as well as I mean, just think about

the geopolitical situation around the world right now. We

have two wars that are being fought, you know, we've got our

challenges, certainly in our relationship with China, between

China and the United States. And so how is that going, you know,

here recently, we've had some maybe attempts to follow that

relationship, we'll see if those are beginning to take hold. And

then it really you think about coming out of the pandemic, and

a lot of countries United States included, really took a more

proactive view of industrial policies. So again, how can you

build a more resilient economy within your own country and be

able to produce more things there? And we certainly are

seeing that in the US with the semiconductor industry funds

going there. And so what has been the impact of that not only

in our country, but also globally as well. So I think

there's plenty to talk about. And I don't know that there's

ever been a more time, when you think about economic conditions

and issues, as well as the political environment, where

these things come together in such an impactful way.

Yeah, that's right. You know, there's a lot

happening out there, right. And and disentangling those things

is not always easy, and maybe not even always possible,

because they do interact with one another. But, you know, if

you think about, you know, we've talked about inflation, we've

talked about interest rates, they've been moving. You just

mentioned geopolitically, you know, lots of things happening

across the world that have both short and long term impacts to

them. And then I suspect, you know, it'll be January 2024,

we're in an election cycle next year, domestically, right. So

you put put that all together.

Well not only do you have what's our own election

here in the United States, but it seems like I read recently,

two thirds of the democratic nations of the world will be

going through an election in 2024. So we're going to see a

lot of political activity, again, that's going to influence

things economically throughout the world during this time

period.

Curtis as a, as a CEO, you know, when you think

about right, these are broad issues that are happening across

the world. And this is this is why this moderator's role is so

important. How did how does the how does the CEO leader of an

Arkansas company, how do you distill that and think about,

and then how do you bring it, you know, into your company? And

either use it actually, or communicate it, you know,

correctly to the organization?

Yeah, that's a great question, Brent. And it's

something that, that I feel like is one of the most important

jobs of a CEO is to really be that link to the outside world,

the external world and to take this information. And certainly

you always need, you know, good, good support from your, your

leadership team to be able to do this, but to take that

information, and to begin to distill it in such a way that it

can be of value within your organization. You know, we spent

quite a bit of time just as an example, earlier this year,

watching, obviously, very closely, the Congress and where

they approve a budget, you know, going forward, what are the

implications for our business? And we have to be thinking about

that, you know, in healthcare, what happens if certain types of

payments gets suspended or other issues began to take shape? What

does that do? You know, we have an investment portfolio, you

know, that we rely upon for for income. And so what happens to

that so you begin, you know, modeling and thinking through

all those issues, and again, it's an important part of my

job, I feel like is okay, what is, you know, where do we really

focus when there are so many different things out there that

that could distract you if you're not careful.

So, Curtis, you know, as CEO, I know you

spending some of your time thinking, you know, you've got

to manage to the quarter and and annually, you're thinking 5, 10

years out? How do you kind of balance that in your role?

Yeah, Brent, that's a great question. And you

know, what I try to do is, is balance is a great way to say

it, and it probably is a little bit seasonal as well, and

especially first quarter of the year, again, thinking much more

longer term at that point, and not just looking at the rest of

the year. But again, that three to 5, 10 year time period, spend

quite a bit of time other parts of the year as well, thinking

through that we have our board, we bring them together for

dedicated retreat session in the summer spend a lot of time

getting ready for that as well. So if I had to ballpark it on

time, I'd say probably, I don't know, 40% or so of my time is

really spent thinking out in the future like that.

Well, one thing I really liked about the

forecast luncheon is there's some there's some near term

information. And then there's certainly some longer term

information. And so you kind of get a, you get a view,

geographically local, domestic international, but then you also

get it over time horizons as well.

That's right. You know, one thing I've enjoyed

doing is I get the, again, I do provide each March a really

actually required through our bylaws to provide a annual

report to our members and to our directors. And so as I'm working

on the one for this year, I always go back and look at the

previous years. So how right was basically. And I'm pretty good

Pretty good forecaster.

I wouldn't say that I'm great, but I'm pretty

good. I hit it more times than not. And, and it's amazing, when

you look at that. And in sometimes it's just a matter of

degree things that you really thought were gonna be, you know,

significant issues, they turned out to be an issue, but not

quite as much as you thought, but then those that kind of

sneak up on you as well. So it's always interesting and helpful

to go through that exercise and that process, because, again, my

role is to help interpret that for the rest of our

organization, it is so important.

Yeah, that's right. And I think that that's

so much of the value that really comes out of the business

forecast luncheon. And, you know, another thing that I think

we'll we'll get to see is there, there's some real localized

issues that we'll discuss, one of which, you know, in Northwest

Arkansas, particularly, is housing and availability of

housing and affordability of housing. And I think probably

that affordability is is something that stretches across

every region of Arkansas.

That's right, there's no question and, you

know, not only are we in statewide employer, I mean, we

have a significant employee presence in Northwest Arkansas.

So we hear that from our employees, we'd like to have

even more employees up in Northwest Arkansas as well. But

one of the challenges that we do run into is affordable housing.

So we know that the business leadership, the Northwest

Arkansas Council, others have made housing a priority. You

know, we're certainly supportive of that and glad to play any

role that we can to help make that happen. But that is one

that's going to be critical. We think in order for that region

to continue to grow the way that it has and really be all that it

can be going forward.

Absolutely. Well, Curtis, thank you for

agreeing to be our moderator. I know you'll do a fantastic job.

And I really look forward to getting to hear the

international perspective. The domestic perspective, I'm a

little biased, the statewide perspective with Mervin is

usually my favorite he tends to be one of the most entertaining.

Well, Mervin is quite the talent, there's no

question so so Brent I again, I'm looking forward to it. Thank

you again so much for for allowing me to to serve in that

capacity. And and I can't wait,

me either.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. On behalf of the Walton College

thank you for joining us for this captivating conversation to

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