Articles
SouthWest Health Alliance (SWHA) drives a better solution!
On December 5, 2001, SouthWest Health Alliance (SWHA) announced its sponsorship and exclusive distribution of a new healthcare management service in Arizona called HealthEOS. SWHA is sponsoring this product because Alliance members and prospects have told us they want help finding alternatives to the limited health plan choices for single employers in Arizona. We have chosen HealthEOS because HealthEOS has the value purchasing tools and services in-place - right now - to move our healthcare delivery system beyond the downward spiral of double-digit rate increases and declining quality where employers and providers find themselves with HMO managed care plans.
"The approach to managed care under which the country has been operating is dead, or will be soon. We tried to use the health insurance industry as an agent to beat up on providers in an attempt to save money. That approach has failed." Uwe Reinhardt. 9/01.
Since its inception in 2000, SWHA has proposed the philosophy of 'value purchasing', whereby value equals the quality of healthcare services divided by the cost of those services. As costs decrease and quality rises, the value of your healthcare dollars also increases.
The new health plan management service inside HealthEOS provides:
- Highest quality healthcare assured through leading edge CareEngineSM Service that monitors and communicates best practices healthcare in real-time to providers intervening before costly misdiagnoses, negative drug interaction, inappropriate care, emergencies, and hospitalizations,
- A comprehensive, discounted network of physicians and hospitals in Arizona with national PPO coverage,
- Near and long term costs savings generated by CareEngineSM Service (please see ROI exhibit),
- Control and information given to employer/purchasers through CareEngineSM Service and other risk monitoring, reporting, and management tools,
- Healthier employees who miss less work and are more productive (for every $1 saved in direct benefits costs reduced through the CareEngineSM Service there is between $3 and $4 saved in productivity cost from reduced lost time and reduced 'presentyism', on the job but not productive).
The over 2 million lives across the country access the HealthEOS CareEngineSM Service that the SWHA HealthEOS plan is introducing in Arizona. Companies, such as, Merrill Lynch, Sears, and Circuit City have seen significant cost reduction from the disease management CareEngineSM Service that is the cornerstone of the HealthEOS program. Please look at the ROI exhibit on our Website www.swhealthalliance.org to see the financial impact HealthEOS delivers or to review the Wall Street Journal article on Merrill Lynch published on May 23, 2000.
Education is the key to understanding the new wave/shift in healthcare we will experience in the near future. SWHA has sponsored seminars this year on disease management, productivity and quality measurements to describe the value purchasing proposition. This coming January 2002, we will be conducting seminars on HealthEOS and the risk management tools inherent in its design. By the way, the capability of HealthEOS can also be applied to workers' compensation claim management as well.
If you are interested in taking control of your employee healthcare benefits and turning them from an employment disincentive that has caused increased employee anxiety and frustration into a old fashion benefit that comforts employees, please contact SouthWest Health Alliance (SWHA) through our website at www.swhealthalliance.org.
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