Posted on 20. Mar, 2010 by cyndynayer in Cyndy's Spot on Health Value, News
Industry Ally to the Center, SeeChange Health has launched the first insurance company built on prevention-wellness and value-based designs. As an Industry Ally, SeeChange Health used the expert guidance and evidence from the Center in crafting their new product, now officially launched in California. Cyndy Nayer, President and CEO of the Center for Health Value Innovation, notes, ” It’s the alignment of incentives to engage consumers with the reimbursement strategy to engage the providers in keeping people well–the very embodiment of outcomes-based contracting–that is so unique. Sustainable behavior change that supports improved health is the goal. Bravo, SeeChange Health and HealthInsight for changing the direction of consumer health improvement.”
SeeChange Health – The New Value-Based Health Insurer Aligns Benefits with Preventive Care and Chronic Condition Management
San Francisco, CA–March 22, 2010 – SeeChange Health today launched the first new value-based health insurance company in California, offering personalized, value-based health plans that provide incentives to encourage individuals to play an active role in their health management and improve their quality of life. As the first value-based health insurance company to launch in the United States, SeeChange Health brings affordable, next-generation insurance designs to the employer group market. The plan will be available initially in Fresno, California, but the company plans to expand their offering to Los Angeles, San Diego, Bakersfield, Monterey, Sacramento and San Francisco in the coming months.
Value-based health care encourages individuals to access preventive care, which will identify looming health problems before they become serious – and expensive. Participants who complete a health questionnaire along with age and gender specific preventive examinations, including cancer screenings and basic lab tests, are rewarded with enhanced benefits such as reduced coinsurance and deductibles along with cash rewards.
Unlike typical health insurance companies, SeeChange Health designed its benefit plans to encourage individuals to see their doctor. SeeChange Health covers preventive examinations, including cancer screenings and associated lab tests, at 100 percent.
“We are thrilled to partner with a health plan that rewards its members for building and maintaining a relationship with their doctor,” said Dr. Daniel Bluestone, Chief Medical Officer of Santé Community Physicians. “SeeChange Health promotes healthy behaviors, which will ultimately reduce chronic illnesses and help people live fuller, healthier lives.”
In addition to providing enhanced benefits for completing preventive examinations and related screenings, SeeChange rewards its members with financial incentives for completing health actions necessary for proactively managing chronic conditions, such as diabetes, asthma and coronary artery disease.
“When SeeChange approached us with its groundbreaking solution, we eagerly embraced the only health plan to completely align its benefits with preventive care and chronic condition management,” said Cyndy Nayer, President of the Center for Health Value Innovation, the nation’s premier information exchange for value-based design.
“The reaction and feedback we are receiving from employers is overwhelmingly positive,” said Chuck Trogdon, CEO of Renberg, Trogdon, & Cavale Insurance Services. “Employers are clamoring for affordable health plans with benefits designed to support individual efforts for staying healthy. This approach drives down health plan costs and promotes a healthier workforce.”
Why the initial focus on California? One out of seven residents are uninsured and the number is growing. In the coming months, SeeChange will expand their health insurance offerings throughout California and into twenty-four states where they are licensed to sell value-based health insurance.
“While the nation debates the merits of a national health care plan, the elephant in the room is who is going to pay for it,” said Martin Watson, CEO of SeeChange Health. “With our new plan, we are effectively showing that you can lower health care costs and improve the quality of care while you’re doing it.”
About SeeChange Health
SeeChange Health provides fully-insured, value-based health insurance to employer groups. The company combines value-based benefit designs, data analytics and an interactive personal health record to consistently improve the health profile of individuals. Preventive health actions are assigned and tracked at an individual level. Individuals with disease states such as pre-diabetes, diabetes, asthma and heart disease receive specific health actions based on their medical condition. SeeChange Health is headquartered in San Francisco and is focused on reducing health care costs through proactive health management and early detection of health conditions.
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PRSeeChangeLaunchMarch22-2010
SeeChange Health – The New Value-Based Health Insurer Aligns Benefits with Preventive Care and Chronic Condition Management
San Francisco, CA–March 22, 2010 – SeeChange Health today launched the first new value-based health insurance company in California, offering personalized, value-based health plans that provide incentives to encourage individuals to play an active role in their health management and improve their quality of life. As the first value-based health insurance company to launch in the United States, SeeChange Health brings affordable, next-generation insurance designs to the employer group market. The plan will be available initially in Fresno, California, but the company plans to expand their offering to Los Angeles, San Diego, Bakersfield, Monterey, Sacramento and San Francisco in the coming months.
Value-based health care encourages individuals to access preventive care, which will identify looming health problems before they become serious – and expensive. Participants who complete a health questionnaire along with age and gender specific preventive examinations, including cancer screenings and basic lab tests, are rewarded with enhanced benefits such as reduced coinsurance and deductibles along with cash rewards.
Unlike typical health insurance companies, SeeChange Health designed its benefit plans to encourage individuals to see their doctor. SeeChange Health covers preventive examinations, including cancer screenings and associated lab tests, at 100 percent.
“We are thrilled to partner with a health plan that rewards its members for building and maintaining a relationship with their doctor,” said Dr. Daniel Bluestone, Chief Medical Officer of Santé Community Physicians. “SeeChange Health promotes healthy behaviors, which will ultimately reduce chronic illnesses and help people live fuller, healthier lives.”
In addition to providing enhanced benefits for completing preventive examinations and related screenings, SeeChange rewards its members with financial incentives for completing health actions necessary for proactively managing chronic conditions, such as diabetes, asthma and coronary artery disease.
“When SeeChange approached us with its groundbreaking solution, we eagerly embraced the only health plan to completely align its benefits with preventive care and chronic condition management,” said Cyndy Nayer, President of the Center for Health Value Innovation, the nation’s premier information exchange for value-based design.
“The reaction and feedback we are receiving from employers is overwhelmingly positive,” said Chuck Trogdon, CEO of Renberg, Trogdon, & Cavale Insurance Services. “Employers are clamoring for affordable health plans with benefits designed to support individual efforts for staying healthy. This approach drives down health plan costs and promotes a healthier workforce.”
Why the initial focus on California? One out of seven residents are uninsured and the number is growing. In the coming months, SeeChange will expand their health insurance offerings throughout California and into twenty-four states where they are licensed to sell value-based health insurance.
“While the nation debates the merits of a national health care plan, the elephant in the room is who is going to pay for it,” said Martin Watson, CEO of SeeChange Health. “With our new plan, we are effectively showing that you can lower health care costs and improve the quality of care while you’re doing it.”
About SeeChange Health
SeeChange Health provides fully-insured, value-based health insurance to employer groups. The company combines value-based benefit designs, data analytics and an interactive personal health record to consistently improve the health profile of individuals. Preventive health actions are assigned and tracked at an individual level. Individuals with disease states such as pre-diabetes, diabetes, asthma and heart disease receive specific health actions based on their medical condition. SeeChange Health is headquartered in San Francisco and is focused on reducing health care costs through proactive health management and early detection of health conditions.
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Posted on 20. Mar, 2010 by cyndynayer in Cyndy's Spot on Health Value, News
Building on their consistent theme of value-based benefit designs linked to meaningful behavior change, Cyndy Nayer and Jack Mahoney, M.D. have released evidence documenting the link from Value-Based Design to behavioral health. Adherence is the sustainable goal when designers fully comprehend that co-pay reduction alone will not support long-term change. ”Co-pay reduction is an engagement tool, but we’ve documented evidence for many years that the goal of sustainable adherence to improved health is the systematic application of the levers of prevention and wellness, chronic care management, and care delivery. The incentives must align in order for sustainable change to occur; barriers must be removed and reimbursement must be aligned in order to remove the friction that causes interruption in management,” say the authors and co-founders of the Center for Health Value Innovation.
As the country approaches the end of a year of promised reform that would deliver more health care, bend the trend on costs, and get more uninsured people into the system, weariness and wariness have taken root. The focus has moved from “bending the trend” to insurance reform, but the plan sponsors—most often employers of many sizes and sectors—have a job to do, and they need health and productive employees to do it.
Value-Based Designs Deliver Dividends—But Overcoming Non-Adherence Is Key
Adherence indicators may well be part of the “holy grail” for beneconomic outcomes. Using a suite of levers, defined as insurance design, incentives and disincentives, the benefits and compensation decision-maker has the power to influence behavior change for desired results. But the arbitrary implementation of iconic models of value-based designs, using these levers to remove cost and access barriers for certain populations, is not without consequences. Value-based designs do work, influencing patient and consumer behaviors in prevention/wellness, chronic care management, and choice of care delivery.
Read more. Nayer, Mahoney J Comp Ben Behavior Change and VBBD JCBv26#1 copyright
“Reprinted from Journal of Compensation and Benefits. Copyright © 2010 Thomson Reuters/West.
For more information about this publication please visit www.west.thomson.com
Posted on 17. Mar, 2010 by cyndynayer in Cyndy's Spot on Health Value, News
John Riedel, of Riedel and Associates, and Cyndy Nayer (CEO of the Center for Health Value Innovation) have written a primer for Health Promotion Practitioners on value-based benefit designs. The primer, published in the Art of Health Promotion (a section of the American Journal of Health Promotion), has been well-received by worksite and community-based practitioners. A special thank you is also warranted to Larry Chapman, editor of the Art of Health Promotion, for his comments on the opportunity found in value-based designs.
Read more of the primer by clicking here.
AHP HPP primer 3.2010
Posted on 15. Mar, 2010 by cyndynayer in Events, News
Through a collaboration of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM), the Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI), and the Center for Health Value Innovation (the Center or CHVI), a new and exciting Health and Productivity Management clinic will be featured at the ACOEM-AHOC conference in Orlando on April 30, 2010. This new clinic, a first of its kind, is Updated with the latest research, new survey results and a new module on value-based benefit design….including a special focus for the benefits consultant community
Read more here HPM-VBD Seminar
Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by cyndynayer in Cyndy's Spot on Health Value, News, Press Releases
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TriZetto Joins Center for Health Value Innovation, Signals Role of Healthcare Information Technology in Accelerating Adoption of Value-Based Solutions
ST. LOUIS, Mo./NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. – March 01, 2010 – The Center for Health Value Innovation (www.vbhealth.org), the nation’s premier information exchange for value-based design, today announced that The TriZetto Group, Inc. (www.trizetto.com) has joined its growing membership of healthcare industry innovators. This collaboration is expected to accelerate the development of new value-based strategies, which many industry analysts and leaders believe are vital to healthcare reform.
“TriZetto will share its knowledge to demonstrate how technology can be used to promote the adoption of value-based designs, and our value-based solutions will incorporate the ideas and principles of the Center,” said Jeff Rideout, M.D., chief medical officer and senior vice president of cost and quality at TriZetto. “As a leader in healthcare payer technology, TriZetto recognizes the potential of value-based designs for healthcare reform and will assist the Center in evaluating value-based strategies, developing critical analytics and leveraging technology to refine programs and measure outcomes.”
The introduction of “levers” of value-based design incentives is now recognized as one of the most effective approaches to encourage individuals to adopt healthier lifestyles and effectively manage chronic conditions by adhering to recognized healthcare guidelines. In its recently released book, Leveraging Health (2009), authors from the Center articulate the role of value-based solutions to enhance workplace health and productivity and promote financial sustainability for organizations.
Gail Knopf, vice president of enterprise strategy at TriZetto, added, “This collaboration presents both TriZetto and the Center with significant opportunities to leverage the latest innovations and best practices to help unlock the potential of value-based designs. Together, we plan to develop value-based strategies that improve member health, successfully address healthcare economic inflation and drive Integrated Healthcare Management (IHM) and its subset, Systematic Health Management (SHM).”
TriZetto’s industry vision, IHM is the systematic application of processes, shared information and aligned incentives to optimize the coordination of benefits and care for the healthcare consumer. TriZetto’s IHM vision encompasses three areas for payers: administrative costs, supply-driven costs and demand-driven costs. TriZetto has become well recognized for its administrative solutions that increase efficiency for payers and their employer customers and members. TriZetto’s new SHM process focuses on the supply and demand drivers to address clinical cost and quality challenges that primarily manifest themselves in unwarranted variations in care, which create significant waste.
Cyndy Nayer, president and CEO of the Center, said, “With the recent introduction of its Value-Based Benefits Solution, TriZetto demonstrates a serious commitment to developing technology to administer value-based benefits on an individual level and integrate the process in real-time with claims processing. We are grateful to TriZetto for sharing its talent, expertise and technical experience, and look forward to working closely with its leadership.”
About The Center for Health Value Innovation
Information Exchange for Value-Based Design
The Center for Health Value Innovation has grown into the nation’s premier organization dedicated to sharing the evidence of improved health and economic outcomes through value-based designs for sustainable health and financial improvement.
www.vbhealth.org
About TriZetto
Founded in 1997, TriZetto is the leading privately held healthcare information technology company to the healthcare payer industry. With its technology touching half of the U.S. insured population, TriZetto is Powering Integrated Healthcare Management®, the systematic application of processes and shared information to optimize the coordination of benefits and care for the healthcare consumer. The company’s offerings include enterprise and component software, hosting, outsourcing services and consulting that help payers implement and optimize their operations and minimize the risk of bringing to market new products that drive competitive differentiation.
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TriZetto Joins Center for Health Value Innovation, Signals Role of Healthcare Information Technology in Accelerating Adoption of Value-Based Solutions | Business Wire
