Medicaid Who’s Who Interview: Roger Gunter

Roger is the Chief Executive Officer for Virginia Medicaid at Aetna. Check out his LinkedIn profile here. 

1. Which segment of the industry are you currently involved?

A:  Medicaid Managed Care-In Virginia we manage TANF, CHIP, Foster Care, ABD, Dual Eligible, Waivered, and now Expansion

2. How many years have you been in the Medicaid industry?

A: I have been in the Medicaid industry since 1994, 24 years

3. What is your focus/passion? (Industry related or not)

A:My focus and passion for work is to eliminate roadblocks for those that I work with and those that we have the honor to serve. We want to be customer obsessed in order to create an experience that changes our members’ lives forever. Our vision is to focus on life transitions, providing solutions for each stage in our member’s life journey, by providing services in the community where a member lives. For non-work related passions; they are my wife and children.

4. What is the top item on your “bucket list?”

A: Coach my future grandkids football team

5. What do you enjoy doing most with your personal time?

A: Sitting on the beach watching for the green flash, listening for the sizzle at sunset, grilling tuna with my family. I enjoy playing golf.

6. Who is your favorite historical figure and why?

A: Jesus Christ, because He died for the sins of mankind

7. What is your favorite junk food?

A: Pizza

8. Of what accomplishment are you most proud?

A: Being the husband of a wife I don’t deserve, the father of 3 wonderful boys, and with Aetna here in Virginia achieving exponential growth to $862 million from $180 million by winning two RFPs across the entire commonwealth, which increased span of control by 560%. Increased FTEs to 433

9. For what one thing do you wish you could get a mulligan?

A:  I wish I would have been known more about managing playing football and studying pre-med while at the University of Colorado

10. What are the top 1-3 issues that you think will be important in Medicaid during the next 6 months?

A:

  1. To start to figure out how to truly integrate Physical and Behavioral health care
  2. Figure out how to implement expansion waiver services in an efficient manner
  3. Manage all the necessary resources to handle all the implementations and responses