Archived Content

Driving Innovation In the Health Care Marketplace:

A CEO Report

Humana Inc.

Inspire health — it’s one of our values at Humana and captures the company’s commitment to the people we’ve cared for since our founding 53 years ago. It’s also our number one priority when it comes to engaging Humana’s 52,000 associates. As all of us at Humana work to improve the health of the communities we serve, we are simultaneously making measureable progress toward helping our associates live healthier lives. 

How are we doing this? By rewarding our associates for adopting healthier behaviors and by rewarding health care providers who put quality ahead of quantity. 

In 2001, Humana and our associates began a process of cocreating the health plans they enroll in and that we ultimately take to market. Over the next 12 years, Humana’s average annual health-cost increase was 5.5 percent, compared with 9.1 percent for all employers. Engaged associates, associates who are living healthier and carefully managing their health care spending, deserve the credit for this. 

We’re also incentivizing our associates to be healthier via their participation in the science and rewards-based HumanaVitality program. Associates earn rewards for a wide range of healthy behaviors, from stopping smoking or losing weight to donating blood and taking 10,000 steps a day. 

In 2012 and 2013, associates who actively participated in HumanaVitality experienced lower average health costs and improved workplace productivity. 

  • Engaged associates spent an average of $53 less per month on health costs than unengaged associates. 
  • The largest impact on health costs was for associates with lifestyle-related chronic conditions like high blood pressure or diabetes. Engaged associates with these conditions had 60 percent lower health claims costs than unengaged members with the same conditions. 
  • Unscheduled absences from work were 56 percent lower among engaged associates. 

We’re also now in our third year of tracking associates’ health and well-being via a 150-data-point “Well-being Report,” and we’re seeing significant improvements in healthy lifestyle behaviors and health outcomes. For example: 

  • In 2012, 87 percent of associates completed a health-risk assessment. In 2013, that number increased to 89.7 percent. 
  • In 2012, 40 percent of associates set health-related goals. In 2013, 46 percent set goals. 
  • In 2012, 28 percent of associates reached “silver” status in HumanaVitality, the level at which we consider associates to be engaged with the program. In 2013, 41 percent reached silver status. 

Humana is passionate about transforming health care in the United States from reactively providing “sick care” to proactively helping people maintain and enhance their health. Every day, Humana’s health care analytics engine reviews millions of clinical data points to provide our associates, members and health care providers real-time clinical insights and gaps-in-care data that are helping us improve health outcomes. 

Humana has a dream — to help people achieve lifelong well-being. To make the dream a reality, we must make it easy for people to achieve their best health. That starts at home, with our own associates. 

Companies

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BRT companies provide health coverage to more than 40 million Americans. We help American workers and their families remain healthy, receive quality treatment when necessary and achieve better health outcomes. The private-sector innovations in the insurance marketplace that enable us to provide these services to our employees and their families serve as models for public programs — but additional reforms are necessary.

This report highlights the innovations we have made and the public policy changes we believe would drive value by promoting health and improving outcomes.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/brt.org/archive/0_healthcare/BRT-Health-Care.pdf

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