The president of CVS Health Corp.’s healthcare delivery group is preparing to leave the company 18 months after coming aboard with the Oak Street Health organization he co-founded.
In a statement, Rhode Island-based CVS said Mike Pykosz—who launched Oak Street in 2012 with Griffin Myers and Geoff Price—had said earlier this year he planned to move on and has helped plan a transition. On the heels of CVS paying nearly $10 billion for Medicare-focused Oak Street (as well as more than $7 billion for Signify Health) in the spring of 2023, Pykosz was tapped to lead the company’s newly constituted care delivery assets, which also include the MinuteClinic locations in CVS’ stores.
Pykosz’s planned departure comes on the heels of new President and CEO David Joyner reshaping other parts of his leadership team, which has included recruiting former UnitedHealth Group and ChenMed leader Steve Nelson to lead CVS’ Aetna insurance business and naming Prem Shah group president for the CVS Caremark pharmacy benefit manager, the company’s pharmacies and the healthcare delivery group.
Stepping into Pykosz’s role as head of care delivery is Sree Chaguturu, CVS’ chief medical officer since May 2022. Chaguturu will retain that role, which he took after two-and-a-half years of being CVS Caremark’s CMO. Prior to joining CVS, he was chief population health officer at Mass General Brigham.
Word of Pykosz’s departure comes just days after Joyner lauded the business model at Oak Street—which has grown to more than 230 locations from 177 in mid-2023—and said Signify has the potential to grow well beyond its core in-home health assessments. Both businesses have put up nice numbers when it comes to bringing on Aetna members and integrating CVS’ various business lines: Oak Street now counts four times as many Aetna members as when it was acquired and Signify has doubled the number of Aetna members it works with.
“Health Care Delivery connects the dots for the people we care for,” Chaguturu said in CVS’ statement. “As we succeed in our work, it means more than 185 million people in our country live better lives.”
CVS’ Pykosz news came a day after the company announced that its board of directors had appointed four new members after talks with activist investment firm Glenview Capital Management, which has built a stake in CVS of nearly 1 percent. The four additions, which include Glenview founder Larry Robbins, grow CVS’ board to 16 people.
Also joining the ranks of directors are:
Leslie Norwalk, an acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the administration of George W. Bush and now a strategic advisor to healthcare ventures
Guy Sansone, chairman and CEO of rehabilitation and staffing firm H2 Health and longtime executive at consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal
Doug Shulman, chairman of OneMain Holdings and a former Internal Revenue Service commissioner as well as senior executive at financial services giant BNY Mellon
Glenview has been regularly active in the affairs of several prominent healthcare companies, including hospital firms Tenet Healthcare Corp. and Community Health Systems Inc. and Health Management Associates Inc., which CHS bought in 2014.
Shares of CVS (Ticker: CVS) were down nearly 1 percent and changing hands around $55.70 on the afternoon of Nov. 19, the day the company announced Pykosz’s planned departure. They have fallen about 3 percent over the past six months, which has trimmed CVS’ market capitalization to about $70 billion.
