HEALTH PLANS

Customer Perspectives    Health Plans

Faced with economic pressures, fierce price competition and a slowly eroding number of employer-based members, health plans are fast evolving into more than just traditional insurers. They are transforming into health services companies, poised to be “one stop shops” for employers needing support for multiple care management programs and better cost controls.

The rise of lifestyle-related illness threatens to reverse much of the last decade’s progress of initiatives such as disease management and further increase the burden of chronic disease. It is no surprise, then, that recent research shows wellness is the most highly valued non-core service offered by health plans.

Yet, despite demand, most of the emerging wellness programs designed to address avoidable health risk factors have been uncoordinated, ineffective and very difficult to scale to larger populations.

Employers are looking for effective wellness programs and evidence shows they increasingly believe that incentives matter. Health plans can start to distinguish themselves among their competitors if they are able to help integrate the most relevant incentives for an employer population into benefit specifications.

Health plans need robust and personalized wellness solutions that positively impact costs by keeping healthy members out of the healthcare system and prolonging disease progression in at-risk and diagnosed members. They need wellness programs that:

• Connect healthy lifestyles and prevention interventions with the daily lives of members
• Provide and track incentives that create and sustain behavior change
• Offer clinically- and actuarially-sound interventions that impact the key cost drivers of health
• Seamlessly integrate with other health plan and employer care management programs

Vitality offers a personal pathway to a customized wellness solution for each health plan member. The program is a turnkey health enhancement solution unique in the marketplace. It is based on a strategy that combines personal health awareness, proactive preventive measures and individual accountability with an unparalleled range of high-perceived-value incentives.

With more than a decade of experience and a member base in excess of 1.5 million, our experience has proven the concept of generating claims savings in excess of incentive payments. In fact, we guarantee it.

Based on the strength of our experience and data, The Vitality Group provides a guarantee that, once employees/members participate in the Vitality program, healthcare savings will exceed the cost of incentives. If these savings are not realized, or are insufficient to cover the full cost of incentives, The Vitality Group will make good the difference.

For a more customized presentation of program capabilities, please contact The Vitality Group today.

Sources:

Hewitt Associates, “Two Roads Diverged: Hewitt’s Annual Health Care Survey,” 2008

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute, “Behind the Numbers: Medical Cost Trends for 2009,” June 2008

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute, “What employers want for health insurers—now,” 2008

Integrated Benefits Institute, “Employer Incentives for Workforce Health and Productivity,” 2008