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Jean Bisio

New Position: Chief executive, Green Ribbon Health, Tampa. Previous Position: Executive vice president, Matria Healthcare, Atlanta

By Times Staff Writer
Published October 24, 2005

As a former emergency room nurse, Jean Bisio is used to challenges. Now she takes on the challenge of launching a pilot program designed to improve the quality of life of chronically ill Medicare beneficiaries.

Bisio is the newly appointed chief executive of Green Ribbon Health, a joint venture between Humana and Pfizer Health Solutions. The company was formed to provide free services, including personal nurses, social workers and health education, to eligible beneficiaries under the Medicare Health Support program, Bisio said.

Green Ribbon will offer guidance on self-care and support to participants in the three-year program. "We'll help them manage their health, adhere to their physician's plan of care and know more about what causes health issues for them as it relates to their health condition," she said.

The program initially will enroll up to 20,000 beneficiaries with complex diabetes and/or congestive heart failure in nine Florida counties, including Pinellas and Hillsborough. Enrollment begins Nov. 1.

One of the key benefits for participants will be having access to a registered nurse around the clock for consultation, "so if the beneficiary has a health issue in the middle of the night, (they) have a nurse to help them," Bisio said.

The program is one of eight Medicare support programs in the United States and the only one in Florida, Bisio said. She said one of her responsibilities will be to make the program and its services more widely known. Bisio said she is responsible "for the success of the operation from a clinical perspective, a financial perspective and obviously an employee perspective."

Bisio said she is especially excited about the opportunity to reach "the underserved. I feel very strongly about that," she said. "(The program) is also to bring health care back to the community, back to the patient so that the patient is in charge and is aware and educated about their own health - the right care at the right time in the right place."

Bisio, who began her career as a registered nurse, said she likes "to make sure people are empowered. I'm motivated by being able to create and develop and grow organizations such as Green Ribbon Health that have a very specific mission and a mission that's right in terms of people."

A native of Memphis, Bisio earned a bachelor's degree in nursing from Vanderbilt University in Nashville in 1982. She began her nursing career in Fort Worth, Texas, where she worked for nine years in a hospital emergency room, eventually being promoted to administrative positions. She then took a position in the emergency room at a hospital in Huntsville, Ala., where she held more administrative roles until 1990. That year, she joined Crawford & Co., an international third-party administrator in Atlanta, as a consultant, then grew into various positions from branch manager to regional director of operations to senior vice president.

Bisio left that position in 2001 to join Matria Health Care in Atlanta as senior vice president of disease management.

Bisio, 45, and her husband, Tony, have two children, both in college. The Bisios are moving to Safety Harbor, which has become home base for exploring the state in search of antiques, she said. "I very much like to explore antique malls," she said, "but I'm not an educated consumer."

[Last modified October 20, 2005, 19:14:02]