(CIGNA HealthCare: Bloomfield, Connecticut) -- In an effort to manage the high-volume data used in its health advocacy programs, CIGNA HealthCare is teaming up with Thomson Healthcare’s MedStat data services. By employing greater data management, the goal for CIGNA HealthCare is to engage members in their own health care while providing employers with data for use in prevention planning.

“We see an explosion of health care data in the near future—new sources of information, more real-time availability, greater clinical specificity and more patient self-reported data,” says Joseph M. Mondy, CIGNA HealthCare spokesman. “Our strategy is to change from being a health insurance company that simply helps treat the sick, to a health services organization.”

Information flow, cost, and market standards all contribute to the reasoning behind this step to improve health care management. The ability to take in more data, map it, analyze it, and convert it into a more streamlined process will bridge the gap between health care plans and provider network structures.
 
“We interpret data from employee members in aggregate to design a health care program that will be targeted to conditions at a particular work site,” says Mondy. “For example, a customer of ours polled its employees about their health risks. One question dealt with weight—about 40 percent of employees responded that they were 10-20 pound overweight. We reviewed their BMI data to determine that more than 80 percent of their employees were in fact morbidly obese. Using this data we designed weight loss and fitness programs to address the needs of employees at that worksite. In two years, the employer was able to flatten medical trend by using our data to develop programs that helped address the health needs of their employees.”

Through the use of lean and Six Sigma techniques, CIGNA hopes this collaborative effort will lead to lower cost and more accessible health care for all involved.

For more information, visit http://newsroom.cigna.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=828