From experience, I can tell you that most CEO’s cannot fathom the idea of giving away a profitable company. In the world of start-ups, private equity, and venture capital firms, the ideal exit strategy is one that yields the highest payoff for the founder(s). I could have led Ventegra down that path. But Ventegra has never been about following the status quo.

Ventegra is predicated on the core belief that healthcare in the U.S. should be a societal good, as it is in most developed countries. This is not our reality today. Healthcare in the U.S. is often treated as an economic good which has fostered a complex paradigm and greatly rewarded investor-owned, for-profit organizations that provide health services.

So Ventegra’s success was never assured, and we often encountered painful learning experiences in our first 20 years. Changing a complex paradigm is much harder than launching a business rooted in the status quo. Yet, we have persevered, developing a new business model that delivers integrity, transparency, and compliance for the ultimate buyers and sellers of healthcare products and services.

The uniqueness of our business model was recognized by the pharmaceutical industry as something beyond a traditional pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) -- a more efficient channel for the delivery of healthcare that can provide administrative simplification, lower costs, and increased quality of care. This led to the creation of a new Class of Trade (COT) and Ventegra was designated as the first Medical Benefit Manager, nearly 40 years after the pharmaceutical industry established the PBM COT.

Ventegra’s success over these first 20 years caused me to reflect on the future of the company. Ventegra could have continued as a for-profit, single shareholder company but that didn’t feel right. Too many good companies have been destroyed through mergers and acquisitions, and I did not want to subject our clients, employees, and stakeholders to this possibility. I wanted to ensure a continued commitment to all of our stakeholders in future generations, and I knew the Ventegra leadership team would agree.

We set about crafting a 100-year strategy to affirm our commitment to our clinical mission and serving our community, free from obligations to shareholder earnings and immune to the risks associated with private equity acquisition or buyouts by larger corporations. After carefully examining many different models, to determine the best vehicle to move ahead with our 100-year strategy, Ventegra Foundation has been formed as a California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation, and I intend to transfer all of Ventegra’s assets and intellectual property into Ventegra Foundation.

With this structure in place, our strategy to guide us, and oversight from a Board consisting of a triumvirate of Stakeholders, Ventegra Employees and the Taketomo Family, Ventegra will ensure that any profits are returned to the community that we serve, that payors for healthcare will see most of their funds going to providers of healthcare, and total cost of care and clinical effectiveness will remain at the forefront of our decisions, not revenue and shareholder earnings. Ventegra’s success will depend on the community understanding and adopting this direction for healthcare. I have no doubt that, given such community support, Ventegra can deliver on this promise of healthcare as a societal good!

Robert T. Taketomo, PharmD, MBA
President/CEO and Chairman of the Board