Monday, December 22, 2008

Health plans ease access to essential treatments: Study

More health plans are reducing barriers to essential treatments in response to employers' requests, according to the 2008 findings of the National Business Coalition on Health's eValue8 tool, which coalition members use to assess the quality of health plans as part of the request for proposal process.

For example, for patients with diabetes, 27% of health plans currently waive copayments, and 33% reduce copayments, for essential drugs and equipment such as blood glucose monitors. For patients with asthma, 19% of health plans waive copays for essential drugs, and 32% reduce them.

For patients with hypertension, 20% of health plans waive copays for drugs and equipment, and 28% reduce copays for such treatments. In the area of wellness and health promotion, 43% of health plans waive copayments for preventive health care visits.

Although employers are asking health plans to provide more detailed quality information to plan members so they can make better-educated decisions regarding provider selection and treatments, only 47% display such quality information, and only 16% enable plan members to search for physicians based on quality, the eValue8 RFP tool found.





And while employers are demanding that health plans adopt electronic medical records to improve information flow, patient safety and reduce gaps in care, so far only 25% of health plans indicate in their provider directories whether the physicians use electronic health records, according to eValue8.

The 2008 eValue8 findings also showed health plans need to do more to ensure plan members are receiving preventive treatment such as cancer screenings. For example, only 57% of health plans remind members about colorectal cancer screening, and only 53% of health plans tell members when their colorectal screening is overdue. Moreover, only 40% of the plans report to physicians if their patients have received colorectal cancer screenings.

For more information on the eValue8 tool and its findings

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