CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield (CareFirst) is introducing an innovative, new portfolio of health plans – called HealthyBlue – designed to foster and reward healthy lifestyles and promote collaboration between patients and their primary care physicians (PCPs). The products are specifically designed to make it easy for patients to seek necessary care, make them aware of their health risks, and provide them information and incentives to get and stay healthy.

“HealthyBlue is like no other health plan we have ever offered and unlike any other plan available in our region today,” said Chet Burrell, CareFirst President and CEO. “HealthyBlue offers direct, significant financial incentives to members who take control of their health care decisions and who work to improve their health status. If we are to keep health care affordable, it is essential that more focus be placed on keeping people healthy, not just treating them when they are sick. HealthyBlue is a firm step in that direction.”

CareFirst begins selling its HealthyBlue products for all market segments on September 1 and with coverage effective dates beginning October 1, 2010.

Members who enroll in HealthyBlue first select a PCP and complete an online health assessment. They then go to their selected PCP for a Health and Wellness evaluation. Members who meet certain health criteria can earn rewards of up to $300 for an individual and $700 for a family. Rewards will be paid as a Healthy Rewards gift card or as a contribution to a health savings account. Members who do not immediately qualify for a reward will work with their PCP to develop a Healthy Action Plan and can receive the reward if they achieve the goals of the plan.

HealthyBlue products contain a number of other innovative components aimed at removing obstacles to care and providing members with a variety of choices when accessing care.

• Routine PCP office visits and preventive care at no cost (no copays or deductibles)
• Generic medications at no cost for treatment of asthma, high blood pressure, cholesterol, depression and diabetes
• A product design that provides members choice and flexibility in choosing physicians and accessing care by offering three options:

Option 1 – Provides the greatest cost savings and maximizes the benefits of member/doctor partnership when members seek care from their CareFirst BlueChoice personal PCP.

Option 2 – Allows members to obtain care directly through a CareFirst BlueChoice specialist without first obtaining a referral. This option costs a little more but offers members freedom when selecting a doctor.

Option 3 – Offers members the flexibility to visit any doctor in the CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield PPO network or any other provider outside of the CareFirst network. This option carries more expense to the member than Options 1 or 2.

“We know that there is already great interest in the marketplace in HealthyBlue,” Burrell added. “Coupled with our Primary Care Medical Home program which will launch in 2011, we believe CareFirst will have in place the industry’s most comprehensive approach to engage and reward its members and participating physicians for working together to improve health care quality and lower health care costs.”

About CareFirst

In its 73rd year of service, CareFirst, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, is a not-for-profit health care company which, through its affiliates and subsidiaries, offers a comprehensive portfolio of health insurance products and administrative services to nearly 3.4 million individuals and groups in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia. Through its CareFirst Commitment initiative and other public mission activities, CareFirst supports efforts to increase the accessibility, affordability, safety and quality of health care throughout its market areas. To learn more about CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, visit our Web site at:

www.carefirst.com

Two Kansas City-based companies, H&R Block and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, have joined forces to provide a convenient, comprehensive tool to help small business owners understand the financial impact of health care reform.

The small business tax credit calculator is available through Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City and can be accessed by visiting www.BlueKCtaxcredit.com.  The calculator and tax content were developed by The Tax Institute at H&R Block and also may be viewed by visiting www.thetaxinstitute.com.

The calculator will help users understand the following elements of reform as they become effective:

• The small business health care premium credit for qualified employers with 25 or fewer employees and average annual wages under $50,000 (2010)
• Requirements to provide employee coverage for full-time employees who work for businesses with 50 or more employees (2014)
• Employer penalties for not providing coverage when at least one full-time employee is enrolled in an individual subsidized health care plan (2014)
• The excise tax on high-cost health plans, which applies to plans that cost more than $10,200 for an individual and $27,500 for a family (2018).

“This tool, in combination with our BlueChoice® defined contribution product, provides a strong incentive for small businesses to continue to provide insurance.  A small employer’s tax credit can be combined with our BlueChoice plan to help employers control what they spend on employee health insurance for even greater savings.  We began promoting the small business tax credit in April, right after the reform bill passed.  Our advertising campaign around the small business tax credit and calculator contributed to an additional 5,000 new members covered in 227 new employer groups – of which 28 percent were previously uninsured,” said Tom Bowser, president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City and chairman of the national Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association board of directors.

“Taxes are no longer something we just think about in April,” said Amy McAnarney, H&R Block’s president for the Central United States.  “Taxes are at the intersection of people’s daily lives with paychecks, investments, buying a home and now, health care.  This tool helps small businesses budget and forecast for the resulting tax implications.”

To use the tax calculator, small business owners answer questions about their employees and insurance coverage, including the number of employees, payroll and wages, and the insurance premiums the company expects to pay.  The calculator then generates an overview of the company’s health care costs and whether, beginning in 2014, the company will be required to offer health insurance to employees.  In addition, the calculator provides information regarding employer penalties for not providing coverage, along with details on the excise tax that could be assessed on high-cost health plans beginning in 2018.

“The tax credit website and tax calculator, developed by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City and H&R Block, provide a simple, convenient way for small businesses to determine if they are eligible to receive a tax credit to help offset health insurance costs,” said Mike Bukaty, president of Bukaty Companies, a Leawood, Kan., employee benefits and insurance consulting firm.  “We have introduced these resources to our small business clients, and the response has been very favorable.”

BlueChoice is a defined contribution product that allows small business owners to choose how much they want to contribute to employees’ health insurance premium costs and employees get to put that money toward the health plan offered that best meets their needs.  BlueChoice lets employees choose between five to six different plans for themselves and their families.  The product is an integral part of our ChamberChoice program with the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.

About Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, the largest not-for-profit health insurer in Missouri and the only not-for-profit health insurer in Kansas City, has been part of the Kansas City community since 1938.  BCBSKC provides health coverage and wellness related products and services to one million residents in the greater Kansas City area and Northwest Missouri.  Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.  Our mission: To use our role as the leading health insurer to improve the health in the communities we serve.  For more information on the company, visit our Web site at www.BlueKC.com.

About The Tax Institute at H&R Block
The Tax Institute at H&R Block is the go-to source for objective insights on federal and state tax laws affecting the individual.  It provides nonpartisan information and analysis on the real world implications of tax policies and proposals to policymakers, journalists, experts and tax preparers.  The Institute’s experts include CPAs, Enrolled Agents, attorneys and former IRS agents who draw from years of experience and H&R Block’s extensive network of resources.  For more information visit our press center at http://thetaxinstitute.com.

About H&R Block
H&R Block Inc. (NYSE: HRB) is one of the world’s largest tax services providers, having prepared more than 550 million tax returns worldwide since 1955.  In fiscal 2010, H&R Block had annual revenues of $3.9 billion and prepared more than 23 million tax returns worldwide, utilizing more than 100,000 highly trained tax professionals.  The Company provides tax return preparation services in person, through H&R Block At Home™ online and desktop software products, and through other channels.  The Company is also one of the leading providers of business services through RSM McGladrey.  For more information, visit our Online Press Center.

H&R Block does not offer Blue Cross and Blue Shield products or services.  H&R Block and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City are not affiliated companies.

CaliforniaChoice® announced today that it has become the first health insurance exchange in the nation to reach the 20 million member-month plateau, solidifying its position as the country’s most successful health insurance exchange for small and mid-size employers.

Founded in 1996, CaliforniaChoice is a product of CHOICE Administrators®, the nation’s leader in developing and administering health insurance exchanges.

Health insurance exchanges promote choice and make health insurance purchasing more value-based by allowing an individual or small business to compare the costs and benefits of various health plans and benefit options. With such information in hand, purchasers are able to do a better job selecting a health plan that best fits their needs and budget.

A key part of the recently passed healthcare reform legislation mandates that every state establish a health insurance exchange by January 1, 2014.

Member months reflect how long an individual has been a member of the exchange and are a vital metric for measuring an exchange’s ability to retain members over an extended period of time. The 20 million member-month milestone is particularly significant given that similarly structured state-run small-group exchanges have either failed or are still feeling their way, especially in serving the group market.

“If done properly – as the privately run CaliforniaChoice has shown it can be – exchanges have the capacity to help us move to a more rational method of purchasing health coverage while getting society closer to achieving the noble goal of universal coverage for all its citizens,” said Ron Goldstein, president of CHOICE Administrators.

Key to the success of an exchange is an integrated and seamless network of strong health plans and decision support tools that bring to the purchaser a wide choice of products at different price points and benefit levels. Participating in CaliforniaChoice are Anthem Blue Cross; Health Net; Kaiser Permanente; Sharp Health Plan; Western Health Advantage; and numerous leading dental, vision, chiropractic and related ancillary benefit plans.

Under the new legislation taking effect January 1, 2014, exchanges must be made available for both individual and family plans (IFP) and small groups with possibly up to 100 employees. Each of the health plans offered in an exchange will include an essential set of benefits that provide comprehensive healthcare services with different levels of cost sharing. Annual out-of-pocket expenses for individuals will be limited to an amount equal to the Health Savings Account current law limit. Multiple benefit categories will exist so purchasers can choose the one that best meets their needs and pocketbook. Individuals who cannot afford to purchase a plan in an exchange may be eligible for a subsidy from the government based on income and family size.

“In many ways the exchange is like a giant, online health shopping mall filled with an assortment of carriers offering their products at various price points and benefits,” said Goldstein. “The CaliforniaChoice model has witnessed unprecedented success, and it’s not a stretch to call it a model for how exchanges should be established and administered under the new regulations.” CHOICE Administrators® Exchanges is the nation’s leader in developing and administering health insurance exchanges.

About CHOICE Administrators®:

Currently serving more than 10,500 employers and more than 180,000 members, CHOICE Administrators® is a member of The Word & Brown Companies, the nation’s leading developer and administrator of consumer choice exchange models. Among the products currently operated by CHOICE Administrators® are the CaliforniaChoice® small group (2-50 employees) and mid-market (51- 199 employees) private exchanges and Quotit, one of the nation’s largest individual/family proposal and online enrollment systems that generated 2.5 million individual health quotes nationally in 2009. Further information may be obtained at www.choiceadmin.com.

Averde Health continues their rapid expansion across Florida with the addition of University of Florida Physicians and Shands HealthCare in Jacksonville and Gainesville to its provider network.

UF Physicians includes more than 80 physician practices located throughout north central and northeast Florida staffed by UF faculty physicians. The Shands HealthCare system is comprised of two academic health centers, Shands at the University of Florida (Gainesville) and Shands Jacksonville (Jacksonville); a behavioral-health hospital, Shands Vista; a rehabilitation hospital, Shands Rehab hospital; and three community hospitals operated through a joint venture. Each year, the UF and Shands academic health system is a health resource for Florida, serving patients from every county in the state.

UF Physicians and Shands HealthCare are the latest healthcare providers in Florida to join Averde Health in their revolutionary approach to the next generation of Consumer Directed Health Plans (CDHPs). Jacksonville joins South Florida and Tampa Bay as recent markets where Averde has signed contracts with major hospitals and expanded their Guaranteed Payment Network for individuals and groups.

Averde’s Guaranteed Payment Network works exclusively with CDHP’s for individuals, small groups, and self-insured employers, which is a growing market segment – particularly in the Southeast1. These plans can cut premiums by a significant amount but can bring hardship to consumers, doctors and hospitals when it’s time to pay for and collect medical expenses.

Averde Health improves providers’ cash flow by paying both the plan and the patient liability fully and quickly, thus eliminating any collections costs. “When physicians bear the increasing cost of patient collections, they are discounting their services for large carriers even further than they intend. With Averde, our contracts equal cash. What we negotiate is what we pay.” declares Averde’s CEO Tom Policelli. Here’s how Averde’s plan works: When a clean claim is submitted within 60 days of service, Averde will pay one hundred percent of the contracted amount (net of office visit copays) within 30 days. An added benefit is a reduction in lost office visits from patients who may be embarrassed by unpaid medical bills. After paying the provider, Averde collects from members directly and can offer flexible repayment terms including manageable payment plans through payroll deductions.

Averde founder and CEO, Tom Policelli, explains, “Our objective is to completely change the way health care is paid for and to make it easy for consumers to access, understand and pay for their medical care.” On the rapid statewide expansion Policelli remarked, “Recent trends make Florida a key market for us. Employers and consumers will benefit from increased competition in the state and our product provides great value to both.”

About Averde Health

Averde Health was founded by visionary health insurance executives who recognized the need for a better health care model that puts them in partnership with doctors and hospitals while allowing patients a simple way to manage their health care expenses. By solving problems for health care providers, Averde drives administrative costs out of the system, and helps hold down costs.

Capital BlueCross continued its commitment to educating and engaging members about health care decision making by launching MyCare Advisor (SM), which is an online suite of transparency tools that assists people in understanding and comparing cost, quality and satisfaction among providers. More specifically, this enhancement to existing tools provides estimated total cost information for 57 of the most common elective services at hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and imaging centers.

MyCare Advisor is simple to access and use. Members just need to log into the secure member portal at mycapbluecross.com, click on the MyCare Advisor link, choose a procedure category and select a ZIP code.  Once this is completed, all of the facilities that meet certain criteria for the selected procedure will be displayed for review and comparison.

Information available to members will include cost ranges; the name and contact information for each facility; the network the facility is participating in; whether or not the facility has a Blue Distinction Center of Excellence designation; and the number of procedures performed annually at each facility. The cost estimate information is derived from Capital BlueCross’ claims data. By January the tool will provide information both locally and nationally.

“With the current health care climate, more and more people are taking ownership in the decision-making process for their own treatments and procedures, and we want to help them with this process,” said Bill Lehr, president and CEO of Capital BlueCross. “Most people comparison shop for anything from groceries to a new car, but most don’t realize that for routine procedures, like MRIs, X-rays or mammograms, there can be a wide variance in costs.  Knowing there is a difference is the first step in becoming an engaged health care consumer.”

Capital BlueCross is the leading health insurer in its region, providing health insurance coverage to nearly one million people in central Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley.

Capital BlueCross is committed to making health insurance simple for its customers and members through all the stages of life by offering nationally acclaimed customer service and a full range of innovative benefit programs for groups and individuals at competitive prices. Capital BlueCross received a high honor for its service by ranking highest in Member Satisfaction among all commercial health plans in the Pennsylvania Region, according to the 2010 J.D. Power and Associates National Health Insurance Plan Study. J.D. Power and Associates

By establishing a culture of caring, Capital BlueCross constantly strives to do more in order to deliver more for the men, women and children who depend on the company for their health insurance needs. Capital BlueCross has been providing health security to the people and communities of central Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley for more than 70 years and employs about 2,000 people in the region.

Headquartered in Harrisburg, Pa., Capital BlueCross is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

More information about Capital BlueCross and its subsidiaries can be found by going to www.capbluecross.com.

SOURCE Capital BlueCross

Most health care experts agree that, despite federal health care reform, a great deal of work remains to be done to improve the nation’s health care system.  Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey (Horizon BCBSNJ) announced recently it plans to spearhead that work in New Jersey by creating a new company with a mission to energize the transformation of health care delivery to a better system marked by higher quality and more effective care, greater collaboration and efficiency, and increased affordability.

As one of the first Blue Cross plans in the nation, Horizon BCBSNJ was a pioneer in the creation of health insurance.  Horizon BCBSNJ’s new company will tap that same pioneering spirit to develop innovative collaborative models for the delivery and financing of high quality care in New Jersey.

“As the state’s oldest and largest health insurer, Horizon BCBSNJ is in the best position to initiate collaborative partnerships between the many stakeholders who are working to improve the quality of health care and bring cost increases down to a sustainable level,” said William J. Marino, Chairman and CEO of Horizon BCBSNJ.  “We believe that creating a new company is the best way to bring energy, focus, and commitment to improving the delivery and financing of health care, a goal we share with many of our colleagues throughout the health care system.”

The new company is expected to be operational in September, but Horizon Healthcare Innovations (HHI) has already begun work as a division of Horizon BCBSNJ.  HHI is already working on creating partnerships with providers, employers, and health care leaders to develop new models of care that will provide patients with better quality care, increase efficiencies, and contain costs.

“Everyone in New Jersey’s health care system understands that we cannot continue to experience spiraling costs and below average rankings across quality of care measures,” said Dr. Richard Popiel, who served as Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Horizon BCBSNJ and will lead the new company as President and Chief Operating Officer.  “We’re committed to leading a major collaborative effort among physicians, hospitals, policy makers, employers, patients, and insurers to rethink how we deliver quality care and control costs.”

Horizon BCBSNJ decided this was an opportune time to establish a new company to address the quality and cost issues left out of the recently passed federal health care reform law.  A number of provisions of the new law will increase health care costs and result in higher insurance premiums.  The new law will add to the financial burden of many individuals and employers, who are already struggling with rising health care costs.

Horizon BCBSNJ also believes there is a significant opportunity to improve heath care quality across the state.  A 2009 Commonwealth Fund study ranked New Jersey 30th in the nation for quality of care based on measures such as prevention, treatment and avoidable hospital use and costs.

“Our goal is to energize collaborative partnerships and ignite the flames of transformation that will benefit the entire health care system – individuals, families, businesses, and providers,” added Dr. Popiel.  “The time is right for innovation and rethinking how care is delivered and financed because people are focused on our health care challenges and they know we need to act.  Horizon is making a major investment and we’re ready to act.”

Source: Horizon BCBSNJ

Introducing Healthy Blue Living Rewards, an extension of Blue Care Network’s successful Healthy Blue Living product. This new product is an innovative outcome-based HMO health care plan that takes personal accountability to the next level by lowering insurance costs for people who succeed in improving their health and thereby making health care more affordable.

“We are truly excited to introduce Healthy Blue Living Rewards because this is a product the business community is demanding, and BCN is once again first to market with an innovative and affordable solution,” said Kevin Klobucar, president and CEO, Blue Care Network. “Healthy Blue Living has done extremely well in the market with more than 850 employers and 114,000 members making it their product of choice, and we believe Healthy Blue Living Rewards moves this product to the next level and capitalizes on the successes we’ve had to date.”

What makes Healthy Blue Living Rewards different from Healthy Blue Living and other products in the marketplace? This product is the second outcome-based wellness product launched by the Blues this year, with Healthy Blue Outcomes being the other product we released earlier this spring. These two outcome-based products are unique in Michigan and are among the first such products to be offered anywhere in the country. While Healthy Blue Living members are rewarded for committing to working toward certain health measures, Healthy Blue Living Rewards members and families are further rewarded for actually meeting the health measures. Healthy Blue Living Rewards follows the same criteria as Healthy Blue Living but adds even more flexibility by offering three benefit levels for individuals who are at different stages of achieving their wellness goals.

The ultimate goal of Healthy Blue Living Rewards is to improve the health of our members, thus building a healthier workforce overall. This is achieved by looking at specific health measures individuals can manage.

• Tobacco use
• Weight (body mass index)
• Blood pressure
• Cholesterol
• Blood sugar
• Depression

These measures are chosen because they have a huge impact on health care costs and the likelihood that an individual will develop a chronic or disabling condition such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes or obesity.

Through participation in a wellness screening and health assessment, Healthy Blue Living Rewards members are educated on their greatest lifestyle risk factors. By including the financial reward of a lower cost share benefit plan, this product encourages members to address those factors and improve their health. There are a number of free tools and resources available to educate members and help them achieve their health goals, including BlueHealthConnection^®, Quit the Nic! (tobacco cessation program), BCN-sponsored weight management programs, 24-hour health coaching and industry leading personalized online tools.

This product became available to groups on July 1, 2010 with an October 1, 2010 effective date and is being offered to groups of two or more employees. For more information on Healthy Blue Living Rewards visit MiBCN.com.

Blue Care Network of Michigan features award-winning disease management programs and the largest HMO network of physicians and hospitals in the state, with more than 4,000 primary care physicians, 13,000 specialists and every acute care hospital in Michigan and most of the state’s other leading hospitals. Blue Care Network, a nonprofit corporation, is the affiliated HMO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. For further information, visit MiBCN.com.

Medica, a leading health care insurance provider headquartered in Minneapolis, and HealthInsight, provider of the leading value-based healthcare incentive platform announced that they have partnered to deliver a next generation value-based benefit program to Medica’s commercial customers.

Under the agreement, Medica will deploy HealthInsight’s proprietary value-based technology, including personalized scorecards, to its commercial customers with a program that delivers better quality of care and experience for members while reducing medical costs.

The new program allows members to follow the status of their health in a simplified manner by creating personalized scorecards with personalized health actions. The scorecard will also:

• Provide information for required preventive services based on age and gender

• Proactively identify individuals at risk for chronic conditions and those with existing chronic conditions

• Track individual compliance with their personalized set of health actions

Members in compliance with their personalized health actions will be eligible for financial rewards.

Simeon Schindelman, SVP Commercial Markets said, “It is critical to address the challenge of rising health costs which, if left unchecked, cannot be sustained. Our exclusive partnership with HealthInsight allows us to be the only health plan in our market to offer customers an innovative program in which individuals can stay on the path of wellness via a set of personalized health actions focused on preventive care and chronic condition management. Our goal is to decrease healthcare costs and improve employee health.”

“We firmly believe that preventive care is the foundation for staying healthy, and our value-based programs provide the tools and technologies to reduce costs and improve employee health,” said HealthInsight CEO Martin Watson. “In teaming with Medica, we will help empower their customers to make meaningful choices toward leading a healthier life. Medica and HealthInsight share the common goals of delivering improved quality of care and reducing health care costs.”

Today, as much as 70 percent of total medical expenses are a direct result of lifestyle choices. In many cases, individuals allow chronic conditions to go untreated until treatment options become limited, quality of life suffers and the financial burden of addressing the disease increases. Using HealthInsight’s preventive care approach, members enrolled in Medica’s new program will be able to take a proactive stance toward health management, make smart choices, and manage their overall health as well as reduce the cost of healthcare.

About Medica
Medica is a health insurance company headquartered in Minneapolis and active in the Upper Midwest. With nearly 1.6 million members, the non-profit company provides health care coverage in the employer, individual, Medicaid, Medicare and Medicare Part D markets in Minnesota and a growing number of counties in North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Medica also offers national network coverage to employers who also have employees outside the Medica regional network.

About HealthInsight
HealthInsight provides a private-labeled health incentive platform to employers and health care payers. The administrative platform creates and tracks personalized health actions that are tied to incentives allowing employers and health plans to reward individuals who proactively manage their health. Individuals who complete their personalized health actions are rewarded with enhanced benefits, health care premium reductions, monetary deposits
into a Health Savings Account or Health Incentive Account and merchandise. A partnership with HealthInsight gives benefit administrators the ability to offer innovative value-based benefit solutions. Through personalized scorecards, online health coaching, and a personal health record, individuals are encouraged to play an active role in managing their health. By promoting early detection and rewarding proactive health management, in conjunction with leveraging extensive data analytics and a sophisticated team of medical professionals, HealthInsight is able to provide a solution to health care that is proven to reduce health care costs and improve employee health. For more information, please visit us at www.healthinsight.com.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan today launched a new website, www.bcbsm.com/healthreform, designed to help everyone in Michigan understand how national health care reform will affect them. As Michigan’s leading health plan, BCBSM is committed to serving as a trusted source for information on reform and all issues related to health across the state.

“The Michigan Blues are committed to helping people understand reform requirements and impacts,” said Daniel J. Loepp, BCBSM president and CEO. “As we work to implement reform requirements over the coming months and years, this website will be a source of timely information — and a way for people to get their questions answered.”

Individuals, seniors, business owners and health care professionals all have questions – the website looks to clarify, educate and inform. Features include recent news about reform implementation, an interactive timeline, a place to submit questions and get answers and much more.

Changing our health care system as called for by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is just beginning. As the health care landscape as we know it changes, the Blues will continue to lead Michigan to a healthier future by working in our local communities and by helping our members become healthier. BCBSM will also continue working with Michigan businesses to develop health care solutions that fit their needs and budgets. And, we will continue to strengthen our partnerships with doctors and hospitals to improve quality and lower the cost of health care delivered in Michigan.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is a nonprofit corporation and independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. For more company information, visit bcbsm.com.

SOURCE Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan

For the second year in a row and third time in five years, Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) ranks #1 in overall performance – making it the easiest payer for health care providers to do business with – in a review of 2009 claims-payment data conducted by athenahealth Inc., a provider of Internet-based business services to doctors, and Physician’s Practice magazine.

athenahealth and Physician’s Practice®, a leading practice-management journal for physicians, conduct the rankings annually to grade insurance companies on their transactions with physician offices. The complete 2010 PayerView Rankings, evaluating nearly 140 national, regional and government payers across the U.S. can be found at athenahealth.com/PayerView.

“We are honored to be named the nation’s top payer for the second consecutive year by athenahealth,” said Bruce Perkins, senior vice president of healthcare delivery systems and clinical processes at Humana. “We remain committed to investments in technology that drive efficiencies, reduce administrative costs and improve customer service. Humana and athenahealth share common goals to drive innovation that creates cost-saving business transactions for health care providers, while also reducing fraud and waste in the system.”

For example, in tandem with athenahealth, Humana offers solutions such as real-time adjudication, which enables health-plan members to have a claim processed instantly before leaving the doctor’s office – which is good for all parties involved.

“The good news from athenahealth today is that Humana is continually paying physicians more quickly and accurately than our competitors, while also improving on our own company performance year over year, which results in an increasingly improved experience for our members,” Perkins said. “We take a lot of pride in that and we devote a lot of time, resources and effort into making it happen.”

Data for the 2010 rankings was derived from athenahealth’s web-based practice-management platform, athenaCollector^SM, and ranks health insurers in areas of:

• Financial performance
• Administrative performance, and
• Medical-policy simplicity

The data athenahealth analyzed came from more than 23,000 health care providers in the U.S., roughly 39 million transactions and $7 billion in charges in services billed in 45 states for the full year 2009.

Humana improved across all metrics in the ratings, including dropping its “days in accounts receivable” by nearly 16 percent to an industry-leading 22.4 days. Since the ratings began five years ago, Humana has improved its performance on this metric by more than 25 percent. It is one of the most heavily weighted measures in the athenahealth rankings.

“Clearly, with its top finish three years out of five now in the athenahealth PayerView Rankings, Humana is committed to being the easiest payer for physicians to do business with,” said Jonathan Bush, chief executive officer of athenahealth. “Humana knows that this performance translates into better relationships with the medical community and more satisfied health-plan members.”

The rankings were published today on the Physician’s Practice website, in the publication’s June issue, and on athenahealth’s website.

Humana Inc., headquartered in Louisville, Ky., is one of the nation’s largest publicly traded health and supplemental benefits companies, with approximately 10.4 million medical members and approximately 7.2 million specialty-benefit members. Humana is a full-service benefits solutions company, offering a wide array of health and supplemental benefit plans for employer groups, government programs and individuals.T