Group Health Cooperative and UnitedHealthcare Recognized by NBCH for Programs that Improve Health and Health Care
Group Health Cooperative and UnitedHealthcare recognized by NBCH for programs that improve health and health care.
Phoenix, AZ and Washington (Vocus) November 10, 2009 –-
The National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH), a non-profit organization of employer-based health coalitions, honored two health plans with the 2009 eValue8 Health Plan Innovation Awards yesterday at its annual conference. Group Health Cooperative was acknowledged for the use of technology to improve health and UnitedHealthcare was recognized for its use of incentives to improve health. The awards, sponsored by Novo Nordisk Inc, identify and recognize the innovative and creative work of plans developing and implementing programs that address critical health care issues.
”These two programs represent the kind of innovations that become significant drivers of health status,” said Dennis White, senior vice president, Value Based Purchasing, NBCH. “Purchasers are very interested in innovations like these that align incentives, restructure care delivery and provide tools that keep beneficiaries healthy, at work and productive.”
The programs were selected from over 100 proposals submitted with each plan’s eValue8 response. Criteria used in judging the proposals include clearly stated and realistic goals with markers for success; transportability to other populations, organizations or communities; meaningful impact on a significant percent of plan members; measurement of results in terms of return on investment or effectiveness; uniqueness; and impact on the health and well being of the community.
2009 eValue8 Health Plan Innovation Award winners
– Group Health Cooperative
Based in Seattle, Group Health Cooperative is a consumer-governed, nonprofit health care system that coordinates care and coverage that was selected for creating a comprehensive health risk assessment, called the Health Profile, which is integrated into care delivery. When a member takes the Health Profile, it is pre-populated with discrete elements from the medical record, such as weight, cholesterol, and more. This improves accuracy and completeness of the assessment. In addition, upon completion of the assessment, results are integrated back into the medical record, including discrete elements where appropriate, triggers for follow up action by providers, and the full report.
“Patients who complete a Health Profile are provided with immediate feedback,” said Maureena Moran, executive director, Web Services & Enterprise Information Management, Strategic Services & Quality Division, Group Health Cooperative. “They know more about their health risks and options before they see the doctor and can be better informed, more confident, and more effective in talking with the care team.”
– UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare, a provider of consumer-oriented health benefit plans and services to individuals, public sector employers and businesses, was honored for two programs that were combined because of the importance of their interaction – its Diabetes Health Plan (DHP) and Patient-Centered Medical Home program (PCMH). The DHP program is a new and innovative employee benefits offering that supports diabetics, pre-diabetics and their family members. DHP integrates a series of condition-specific features for diabetic and pre-diabetic members with the cost-saving, self-management aspects of a standard UnitedHealthcare plan design. DHP is an add-on that is wrapped around, or bundled, with those plan designs.
The Patient-Centered Medical Home is an approach for providing comprehensive care to patients by facilitating partnerships between patients and their physicians. The PCMH model: enables and strengthens the primary care physician-patient relationship; replaces illness-based episodic care with coordinated care; emphasizes better integrated care coordination and delivery; and offers preventive care services that help patients live healthier lives.
There were over 100 programs submitted for the awards as part of information submitted on "Best Practices and Innovations" in NBCH's 2009 eValue8 submission tool, an annual evaluation of health plans used by employers and business coalitions. The program information was reviewed by a selection committee of eValue8 reviewers. Based on creativity, effectiveness and replicability, the submissions were narrowed down to nine finalists with two winners. Finalists also included Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Indiana, HealthPartners, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Premara Blue Cross, Priority Health, and The Regence Group.
“UnitedHealthcare is honored to receive this award from NBCH as recognition that our company’s continued innovation is helping people live healthier lives,” said Dr. Sam Ho, UnitedHealthcare's executive vice president and chief medical officer. “Both the Patient-Centered Medical Home and the Diabetes Health Plan provide examples of using financial rewards, comprehensive programmatic support and a focus on outcome to help physicians and members, respectively, achieve better quality and cost results. Supporting and encouraging preventive treatments and care for the chronically ill is critically important if we want to tackle rising health costs and help drive better health outcomes.”
About the National Business Coalition on Health and eValue8
NBCH is a national, non-profit, membership organization of 60 business and health coalitions, representing over 7,000 employers and 25 million employees and their dependents across the United States. NBCH and its members are dedicated to value-based purchasing of health care services through the collective action of public and private purchasers. eValue8™ is a product of the National Business Coalition on Health and is the nation’s leading evidence-based request for information (RFI) tool used by coalitions and major employers to assess and manage the quality of their health care vendors. For additional information visit: www. nbch. org.
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