Word: cigna
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...surprisingly, health-care companies have been the early adopters of work-force lactation programs. Cigna's Working Well Moms program is considered a benchmark. It offers moms-to-be consultation with a professional breast-feeding expert, known as a lactation consultant, before and after they give birth. When the new mom returns to the bosom of corporate life, Cigna provides access to a private room with a hospital-grade pump, a carrying case to discreetly transport the pumping paraphernalia and expressed milk, plus bottles and access to a refrigerator...
...Cigna, at which nearly 80% of the work force is female, sees the lactation program as good health policy and good business. A UCLA study commissioned by the company showed that it saved about $240,000 a year in health-care expenses for breast-feeding mothers and their children and a further $60,000 through reduced absenteeism. That's not including the incalculable goodwill of happy new parents. "They couldn't have made it any easier," says project manager Maria Couchon about pumping milk at work for her four-month-old daughter Ava. "It's a fact of life that...
...past few months, big insurers such as Aetna, Cigna and various Blue Cross/Blue Shields have signed contracts, paying as much as $20 a month per member to have chronics looked after. Medicare and many state Medicaid programs are already experimenting with the idea. Even pharmacies and pharmaceutical firms are rolling out disease-management programs to make sure people keep popping those lucrative pills. "Less than 25% of the time, everyone in the health-care system is doing what they're supposed to do," says Richard Rakowski, president of American Healthways, whose stock has soared sevenfold, to nearly...
...setting of care, the traditional office visit, was created to take care of acute medical problems a century ago," says Dr. Victor Villagra, president of the Disease Management Association of America and a national medical executive at Cigna, which already has more than 600,000 members enrolled in chronic-care programs and has seen a 14% cost savings for diabetic patients who are participants. "That is no longer sufficient," he says. What is, apparently, is having someone there to tell you to take your medicine, or else...
This summer a new outfit called MedUnite will try to close the loop. Formed by large insurers, including Aetna, Cigna and Oxford, that didn't like the idea of WebMD coming between them and their core customers, MedUnite will try to offer intelligent connectivity to doctors and HMOs in order to speed claims, referrals and eligibility checks--and to cut costs. "Who better to work out the relationship with HMOs than the HMOs themselves?" asks Dave Cox, MedUnite...