Partners Healthcare to Self-Insure Its Employees; What Are It ' s Strategic Goals?

A number of healthcare providers and insurance companies are merging. One previously reported example is the CVS purchase of Aetna (see:Merged CVS and Aetna Will Move Toward a Community-Based Healthcare Model;Analytics May Be the Secret Sauce to Propel CVS-Aetna Forward). Now comes news thatPartners HealthCare will self-insure its 100,000 employees (see:Partners HealthCare to Self-Insure 100K Employees). Below is an excerpt from the relevant article:Partners HealthCare has announced it will self-insure 100,000 of its employees, transitioning coverage from BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts to its ownNeighborhood Health Plan.... Partners HealthCare chief of human resources...[said] that the change is an effort to control health plan costs and reduce out-of-pocket spending for employees. Currently, Partners HealthCare spends roughly $830 million annually on employee health benefits....Partners expects to save between $10 to $15 million a year by transitioning employees to Neighborhood Health Plan coverage. Partners informed employees that their benefits would not change under the move to Neighborhood Health Plan.Partners will also invest in additional care coordination efforts, while offering enhanced wellness benefits, smoking cessation programs, and related programs for employees.....The move now nearly doubles Neighborhood Health Plan ’s commercial membership. Before the transition, Neighborhood Health Plan covered roughly 32,000 Medicaid beneficiaries and 100,000...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Source Type: blogs