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Healthcare organizations face pressure from all sides: rising costs, shifting regulations, and daily cybersecurity threats. Insurers, providers, policymakers, and patients all want solutions to increasingly complex questions.
For Lou Patalano, Chief Legal Officer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana( Louisiana Blue), working in this environment means leading a legal function that goes beyond traditional risk management. Lou’ s responsibilities cover legal, compliance, privacy, audit, enterprise risk, government relations, and cybersecurity, so he’ s right at the center of decisions shaping the company’ s future.
Lou doesn’ t see legal as just a department that reacts to problems. He makes it part of the business itself.“ We are strategic business partners who happen to be lawyers, not the other way around. If you’ re looking at it from a business lens and you really learn and understand where the business wants to head, then you can be a better lawyer, and strategic risk partner for the business,” he says.
His collaborative philosophy sits at the center of a career that has crossed government service, healthcare providers, health plans, private practice, and executive leadership. He now shapes his work at Louisiana Blue, a nonprofit insurer serving individuals, employers, Medicare beneficiaries, Medicaid members, and state and local government employees across Louisiana.
Finding the path
Pursuing a career in healthcare law was never in question for Lou. What followed was a career that moved through courtrooms, boardrooms, health systems, insurers, and private practice before bringing him to Louisiana Blue:“ The one thing I knew I wanted to do was practice healthcare law,” he reflects.
The son of a US Army serviceman, Lou spent his childhood moving between states and countries, including Germany and Korea. This
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