(Utica, NY – Feb. 2013) Excellus BlueCross BlueShield has appointed Wheeler G. Coleman to be senior vice president and chief information officer for the nonprofit health insurer and its parent organization, The Lifetime Healthcare Companies.
“Information technology is critically important to our success, and Wheeler is the right person in the right position,” said Christopher Booth, CEO of The Lifetime Healthcare Companies.
Coleman has nearly 30 years of experience in information technology with Health Care Service Corp. (HCSC), the country’s largest customer-owned health insurer and fourth largest health insurer overall. HCSC has more than 13 million members in its Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in Illinois, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
With HCSC, Coleman led the consolidation and optimization of multiple information technology platforms and was responsible for IT strategy, enterprise architecture, technology standards, IT portfolio investments, resource and vendor management, the IT budget and merger/acquisition integration.
Coleman, who began his new position Feb. 4, will report directly to Barry Thornton, Senior Vice President of Customer Satisfaction and Business Technology.
“Wheeler has significant experience in leading an organization through changes in people, process and systems,” said Thornton. “I’m very excited about his addition to our company and team.”
Coleman earned an MBA from the University of Notre Dame and a Bachelor of Science degree in applied data processing from Northern Illinois University. He and his wife, Sharon Johnson Coleman, have two children.