Medwise Partners Always a good decision

Health plans hire us
when the numbers
have to change.

Medwise Partners places people who have already held the job — CEO, CFO, head of underwriting — inside health plans that need one now. We also advise boards and investors who need an honest read on a plan's numbers before they commit.

Start a conversation What we do
Plan types
Commercial, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid managed care, Marketplace, self-funded
Organizations
Regional insurers, provider-sponsored plans, TPAs, integrated delivery systems, investors
Reach
Engagements nationwide.
Sunrise over the Mazatzal Mountain Range, Arizona

What we do

Three kinds of work, and they tend to overlap.

Most engagements start with one problem and widen once we're inside. Scope and the measure of success get agreed in writing before we begin.

01

Sitting in the seat

Interim CEO, CFO, COO and functional leadership while you run a search, absorb a departure, or work through a restructuring. Richard has taken interim CFO mandates at plans ranging from 20,000 to more than 500,000 members, and served as CEO of a provider-sponsored plan through a license surrender and wind-down.

02

Fixing the economics

Margin recovery, medical cost management, reserve adequacy, and underwriting discipline across fully insured and self-funded books. This includes rebuilding rating structures and risk tools, auditing case-level pricing decisions, and training the underwriters who have to apply them.

03

Diligence and transactions

Buy-side and sell-side work for investors, acquirers and boards: reserves, pricing integrity, membership quality, integration risk. Richard has led a health plan divestiture end to end, from strategic plan and offering document through management presentations to the purchase agreement.

Also regularly: product development and pricing for Medicare Advantage and commercial lines, operational assessments across enrollment, claims and billing, regulatory filings and corrective action plans, and outsourced underwriting run as a standing function.

Morning sunrise with rain over the Arizona desert

The premise

Nobody learns your business on your engagement.

Health plans in trouble get offered a lot of frameworks. What they usually need is someone who has already carried the P&L, already sat across from a regulator, and already made the call you're about to make.

That is the whole idea behind the firm. We have served as CEOs, CFOs and functional heads at commercial insurers, regional and provider-sponsored plans, and Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care organizations across the country. When we tell you something is fixable, it's because we have fixed it. When we tell you it isn't, that matters too — one of our engagements was leading a plan through an orderly surrender of its insurance license, because that was the right answer.

We work alongside your leadership team and report to your board. We say plainly what we find.

Founded & led by
Richard Swift, 30+ years in health plans and provider organizations
Interim mandates
Plans from 20,000 to 500,000+ members
Most recent operating role
President & CEO, Health New England, 2021–2025
Engagement model
Scoped tightly, measured against agreed financial and operational targets

Who we are

The person you meet is the person who does the work.

Richard Swift

Richard Swift

Founder & President

Thirty years with health plans and provider organizations around the country. From 2021 to 2025 he was full-time President and CEO of Health New England, a provider-owned plan in western Massachusetts covering Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, commercial and self-funded members. Before consulting he was CFO at several provider-owned HMOs and a regional CFO for a national managed care company.

B.S., Mercer University. MBA in Health Care Administration, University of Miami.

Full biography (PDF)
Nanette Penz-Reuter

Nanette Penz-Reuter, CLU, HIA, FLMI

Vice President

A key partner in the firm with more than three decades in underwriting and operational leadership at regional plans and national carriers. She has held interim VP and AVP of Underwriting roles, built medical underwriting departments from nothing for provider-owned plans, and restores underwriting discipline in fully insured and self-funded programs — process, risk tools and pricing accuracy together.

B.A. in Finance, University of Notre Dame. MBA, Butler University.

Full biography (PDF)

Contact

Tell us where your plan stands.

If we're the wrong firm for it, we'll say so and point you somewhere better. Conversations are confidential and carry no obligation.

Not quite

Answered by a principal, usually within one business day.