For self-insured employer and union health benefit plans,
Dr. Esselstyn and Patient Value, LLC deliver a customized, new
and voluntary health benefit option to reverse, halt and prevent
chronic diseases like heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity
and others using plant based nutrition.
Leadership Team
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr.
Caldwell received his B.A. from Yale University and his M.D. from Western Reserve University. He practiced at the Cleveland Clinic from 1968 to his retirement from full time practice in 2001. At the Clinic, he has served as President of the Staff, a member of the Board of Governors, chaired the Clinic’s Breast Cancer Task Force and headed its Section of Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery. He has been the Director of the Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Reversal Program at the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute from 2009 to present.
His interest in treating patients with plant based nutrition began in 1985. He followed 18 of his first patient for 12 years, and published in 1999 one of the longest longitudinal studies of its type. These 18 patients had 49 cardiac events before coming to him. After 12 years, the 17 compliant patients had no more coronary evets.
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In 2007, he published Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease on the science and his clinical experience over 25 years using a nutrition program to halt and often reverse severely ill patients with coronary artery disease, sometimes with co-morbidities like diabetes and other chronic conditions. He has published numerous articles of the subject, including a study of 198 patients with similar outcomes in the Journal of Family Practice (July 2014).
In July 2015, he became a member of American College of Cardiology newly formed Nutrition Work Group.
He was trained as a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic and at St. George’s Hospital in London. In 1968, as an Army surgeon in Vietnam, he was awarded the Bronze Star. “The Best Doctors in America” 1994-1995 cited Dr. Esselstyn’s surgical expertise in endocrine and breast disease. In 1991, Dr. Esselstyn served as President of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons. In April, 2005, Dr. Esselstyn became the first recipient of the Benjamin Spock Award for Compassion in Medicine, and received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Cleveland Clinic Alumni Association in 2009. In 2013, he received the Yale University Athletic Department’s George H.W. Bush Lifetime of Achievement Award. His scientific publications number over 150.
In 1956, he won a gold medal at the Olympic Games as a member of the victorious United States rowing team.
Peter Osenar
Peter spent 33 years in banking at Ameritrust, retiring as Group Executive Vice President. Earlier when he was Senior Vice President for Personnel, he implemented one of the first self-insured employee health benefit programs in the financial services industry. In 1983 he implemented one of the first operating PPOs in the country for Ameritrust’s self-insured employee health benefits program. That’s when he first met Chuck Weller, who was his lawyer for implementing the PPO at Jones Day.
He later was Chief Executive Officer of The Emerald Health Network, Inc. and President, PPO Division of The Parker Group, which contracted with over 2,000 hospitals, 292,000 physicians and 41,000 ancillary providers. He earned a degree in Finance from Cleveland State University.
Charles (“Chuck”) Weller
Chuck has 42 years legal experience in self-insured health benefit law, health care and antitrust in private law firms (Jones Day, Baker & Hostetler) and the Antitrust Division of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, and five years experience as an entrepreneur. He represented General Motors for 10 years on health benefit matters, including contracting with third party administrators for the nationwide implementation of PPOs added in the 1984 collective bargaining agreement with the UAW. He has also represented Walmart, EDS, Newport News Shipbuilding, Eaton Corporation, Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals of Cleveland, and Medical Mutual of Ohio. He has a BA in Mathematics from Yale University in 1966 and a JD from Case Western Reserve University in 1973. He was a Peace Corps teacher in Malaysia and Peace Corps staff 1966-1970.