New Jump Start Report is Very Educational
Starting August 1, your can receive a FREE Jump Start report that provides a snapshot of your workforce’s health, including areas of concern that need specific attention.
About Jump Start
Jump Start allows your employees to take an online health assessment and then enjoy free enrollment in our award-winning 10,000 Steps® program. Studies show that members who take the assessment and go on to complete an eight-week 10,000 Steps program reduce annual claims by an average of $280. This can favorably affect your renewal rates.
In addition, one in four individuals who takes the assessment is found to be at risk for diabetes or heart disease. Identifying these individuals early saves $3,000 to $5,000 in future annual claims because we’re able to take action to prevent or delay disease onset. This also favorably impacts your renewal rates while reducing worker absenteeism and improving your company's productivity.
About The New Jump Start report
Our new Jump Start report provides you with a summary of:
- How many employees and dependents have taken the assessment and joined the 10,000 Steps® program.
- The number of individuals specifically at-risk for diabetes or heart disease, and how many we have contacted to offer assistance.
- What health risk factors – such as smoking or stress – are prevalent in your workforce, and how we can help address them.
What YOU can do right now
To get this report, you must have at least 50 employees and covered dependents participate in Jump Start. Your HealthPartners representative will produce a report and contact you when you have reached this threshold.
What can you do in the meantime? Promote Jump Start to your employees and encourage them to participate. This will make the report and resulting action steps more useful to you.
To make promotion easy, visit our Jump Start page on our employer portal. It includes a ready-to-go employee email, plus flyers, posters and paycheck stuffers that you can download at your convenience. Review these items now!
To learn more please contact your HealthPartners Sales Executive.
Who’s not looking for a proven strategy to manage costs? We call them TrendBusters — and at our recent Purchaser Symposium, 500 purchasers and agents heard firsthand how the experts and their colleagues are using these strategies for a better bottom line:
- Tiered medical plans: two out of three plan members choose Tier 1 providers for best quality, best price.
- Smart cost sharing: Only HealthPartners uses registered and licensed Nurse Navigators for fast, expert consultation by phone on where to go for care, what to consider and how much certain types of services are likely to cost.
- Rx value copay: industry statistics show that your employees — and you — pay less for prescriptions with HealthPartners because our rate of generic dispensing is higher than that of other plans.
- Wellness investments: Our Jump Start program offers every member an online health assessment and free membership in the award-winning 10,000 Steps® fitness program,saving an average of $290 per person on annual medical expenses.
TrendBusting is all about having the right partnership to better manage your costs:
- For you — it means wisely modifying their benefit plan while focusing more on the long-term health of their employees.
- For your employees — it means taking greater responsibility for their health and health care spending decisions.
- For providers — it means improving the quality and cost of care so that all patients receive the right care at the right time.
- And for your health plan — it means being the key partner who facilitates your transition into this new marketplace.
See why HealthPartners is your partner to make TrendBusters happen.
HOW WE ADD VALUE
Finding a Best Choice Provider
Now that your employees are more engaged on the cost of care, they need to know their options.
That’s why we identify our Best Choice providers online at healthpartners.com.
What’s a Best Choice provider? It’s how we recognize the clinics, primary doctors and specialists that provide higher quality services at a lower cost.
These designations are based on our stringent cost and/or quality measures, which ranked #1 in our region on this year’s eValue8 report — the National Business Coalition on Health, a national benchmark for the nation’s biggest employers.
It’s easy for your employees to find a Best Choice provider at healthpartners.com:
- Click on the Consumer Tools in the left-hand navigation list.
- Choose the Search for Best Choice Providers button.
- Select a care category to find the most cost-effective services for any of the conditions listed, from cardiology to urgent care. You can also specify the geographical area to search and sort the results by provider name or location.
Visit healthpartners.com to find a Best Choice provider or see other consumer tools.
HEADLINES
Zocor® Goes Generic
Now your employees can fight high cholesterol without the high priced brand drugs. A new generic cholesterol drug, Simvastatin, has been approved as a generic equivalent for Zocor®.
Cholesterol drugs are the most expensive class of drugs, accounting for nearly 12 percent of total drug spending, and Zocor is the second most expensive medication in this class. Simvastatin is a safe and effective cholesterol-lowering alternative. Members who are currently taking a brand-name cholesterol medication can ask their doctors if they can switch to Simvastatin.
Promoting generic usage is one of the ways HealthPartners helps you manage your trend. In fact, we lead all local plans in generic drug dispensing, thanks in part to our nationally recognized pay-for performance provider and pharmacy incentives. For more pharmacy savings tips like pill splitting and mail order pharmacy, visit the Pharmacy page at healthpartners.com
Women Need Fewer Pap Screenings
Good news: Healthy women can reduce the frequency of Pap screenings from once a year to once every three years. This news comes from the United States Preventive Services Task Force and the Institute for Clinical System Improvement (ICSI).
Reducing the frequency of these exams will save both time and money — as many as 20,666 exams costing a total of $4.6 million per year.
Initially, Pap smears are done yearly (beginning at age 21 or within three years of the start of sexual activity, whichever comes first) to screen for cervical cancer. Once a woman has had three consecutive normal Paps, she can scale back to once every three years.
As long as the results are normal, having a Pap smear more frequently than once every three years does not give added protection from cancer. In fact, having unnecessary Paps can expose women to unnecessary procedures, cost and inconvenience.
Plan Ahead to Fight the Flu
When your employees catch the flu, it can mean lost productivity and higher health care costs.
Here’s an ounce of prevention: HealthPartners Corporate Influenza Prevention program helps stop the flu before it starts spreading in your company. We’ll bring the flu shots to your worksite. And now’s the time to sign up for a smooth and successful program this fall.
You’ll find an Employer Registration form online at healthpartners.com under Programs for Your Group. Complete it online and send it back. You can choose whether to offer flu shots to your HealthPartners covered employees, them and their dependents (including children over age nine) or all employees. The shots are a covered benefit for HealthPartners members and their dependents; cost for nonmembers is $20 to $30 per person.
Contact us before October 6, 2006, to arrange this winter’s flu shots. Sign up today.
Free Benefit Manager Orientation
Make plan administration even easier by coming to our free benefit manager orientation.
Service experts from several departments bring you useful tips about plan administration; review key topics such as claims processing, membership tracking, pharmacy administration and customer service; explain main features of healthpartners.com; and highlight how to benefit from the many services HealthPartners provides.
Upcoming 2006 sessions: July 27, August 29, September 26
Location
HealthPartners Conference Center — Superior Room
8100 34th Ave. South
Bloomington, MN 55425
Registration: 8:30 a.m. Program: 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
To register: Fax the following information to 952-853-8704 or email it to salestrgregistration@healthpartners.com.
Your Name
Title
Employer name
Group number
Email address
Phone number
Fax number
Program date you wish to register for
Healthpartners is in the Top 50 Nationwide
 HealthPartners is the highest-ranked health plan in Minnesota, according to the U.S. News & World Report. The rankings, based on clinical quality, member satisfaction and NCQA accreditation, compare quality of care and customer satisfaction for more than 450 commercial, Medicare and Medicaid plans from across the nation.
- HealthPartners commercial plan is the top-rated plan in Minnesota and is ranked among the top five in the region.
- Our Medicare plan is the 15th-ranked plan nationally.
- We scored higher than the national average on measures for diabetes, depression, asthma care and cancer screening
Go to usnews.com to see all plan rankings and details about each plan's performance in key areas.
HealthPartners New Address
We’re not moving, but our address is. As of June 26, 2006, the City of Bloomington is changing the address of our corporate headquarters to:
HealthPartners
8170 33rd Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55425
Please update your records accordingly even though mail will be forwarded for 18 months following the change. Our P.O. Box address will remain the same (P.O. Box 1309, Minneapolis, MN 55440).
LIBRARY: QUICK LINKS TO GREAT RESOURCES
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Our AchieveSM Health Improvement Programs
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Direct Connect to Employer Portal
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