In the winter of 1991, Karen Lynch sat by her Aunt Millie’s hospital bed. Lynch wasn’t the eldest of her family’s four siblings, but in the 16 years since their mother’s death, the 28-year-old had become Millie’s primary caretaker. When a priest arrived to deliver Millie’s last rites, Lynch was the only family member present. Hospital staff escorted her out of the room for the ceremony but brought her back in when Millie, fiery to her last days, protested.
For more than two years, Lynch had lived in western Massachusetts with Millie, the woman who had raised her since she was 12 years old. Lynch left behind her life as a public accountant at Ernst & Young’s Boston office after Millie’s diagnosis, getting transferred to an office closer to home to be with her aunt as she saw doctor after doctor about her progressing breast and lung cancer.
Millie was covered by Medicare, so it wasn’t medical expenses that kept Lynch up late at night—although she didn’t fully understand the bills that kept streaming in. Instead, she obsessed over the cancer itself, researching the disease in an attempt to grasp what was happening to her aunt.
“Everything was unfamiliar. It was confusing, it wasn’t logical,” Lynch recalls. “When her doctors would talk to me, I wouldn’t understand the medication terminology or the discharge instructions. I didn’t know what each prescription was for. And I didn’t know what kinds of questions to ask or where to get help.”
In 1991, with Millie still battling her illness, Lynch took her first job in the health care sector, a position in health plan financial reporting at Cigna. The move was, in part, inspired by her struggle to care for her aunt. “I was lost in the system,” says Lynch. “I didn’t want other people to not know how to navigate it.”
Three decades later, Lynch, now 58, finds herself in a rare position to change the experiences of some of those who are struggling in much the same way she was when she sat at Millie’s side. On Feb. 1, she took over as president and CEO of CVS Health, a chain of more than 9,900 pharmacy locations that is in the midst of a multiyear effort to transform itself from retailer to health care company.
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