As the Chief Executive Officer of the National Physician Enterprise at Surround Care and Executive Vice President at Navvis, Craig Samitt, MD, MBA, leads efforts to expand and scale the company’s work with and support for physician enterprises. Craig will lead the company’s national footprint expansion of physician enterprises through partnerships, joint ventures, and acquisitions, allowing physician groups to thrive on their journey to delivering transformative care. He will also support Navvis’ growth and expansion, furthering the company’s in-market partnership model of working with health systems, physician enterprises, and health plans.
Prior to Surround Care, Craig served as the President and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (BCBSMN), the first Blue plan in the nation and Minnesota’s largest managed care company, serving more than 3 million members. During his tenure at BCBSMN, Craig drove a transformation of the organization’s strategy, operational performance, and culture, aimed at reinventing healthcare in the U.S. and becoming one of the best Blue plans in the nation. His work focused on forging groundbreaking, value-based partnerships with health systems and independent physician practices, pivoting the health plan’s resources and capabilities toward population health, data/analytics and care-delivery, and driving an intensive focus on cultural transformation, diversity and inclusion, and racial and health equity.
Prior to his tenure at BCBSMN, Craig served as President of the diversified business group for Anthem, Inc., a Fortune 30 company and the nation’s largest Blue plan. In this capacity, he unified and aligned Anthem’s diversified businesses including AIM, CareMore, HealthCore, and Data/Analytics, and drove the acquisition of Aspire Health. During much of his tenure at Anthem, Craig served concurrently as Chief Clinical Officer, where he led the company’s medical management, healthcare analytics, provider collaboration, payment innovation, total cost of care, and quality divisions.
Previously, Craig served as Partner and Global Provider Practice Leader of Oliver Wyman’s Health and Life Sciences division; President and CEO for HealthCare Partners, a subsidiary of DaVita HealthCare, one of the largest physician-centric delivery systems in the U.S.; and President and CEO of Dean Health System, one of the largest integrated health systems in the Midwest. He also held senior leadership roles at Fallon Clinic (now Reliant Medical Group), Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Harvard Community Health Plan (now Atrius Health).
A nationally recognized expert and thought leader on the transformation of U.S. healthcare, Craig serves as a strategic advisor to federal and state agencies, national and regional health plans, and various digital health corporations and care delivery start-ups. From 2012 to 2018, Craig served as a Commissioner on MedPAC, an influential, independent congressional agency established to advise Congress on policies related to payments to private health plans participating in Medicare and health care providers serving Medicare beneficiaries.
Craig holds board and advisory roles with Vori Health, Seminal Healthcare at SEMCAP, Waymark Health, NCQA, NIH Clinical Center, and Hennepin Healthcare Foundation. In the past, Craig served on the boards of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, National Institute of Healthcare Management (NIHCM), Prime Therapeutics, and Healthcare Payment Learning and Action Network (HCP-LAN). He was named as one of the 50 Most Influential Physician Executives and Leaders by Modern Healthcare.
Craig serves as an annual faculty lecturer at the Wharton School of Business. He earned his medical degree from Columbia University, completed his medical residency in Internal Medicine at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and received his MBA in Health Care Management from the Wharton School of Business.
