Slowly getting the hang of Twitter and while cruising around the TwitterSphere yesterday looking for updates from the WHIT’08 conference in DC came across a guy providing live tweets from the event. Looking more closely at his profile, it turns out he works in a “skunk-like” innovations group at Humana, called Humana Innovations. Like a [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Cigna’
Humana Breaks the Mold
Posted in consumer health, tagged Aetna, BCBS, Cigna, Freewheeling, Humana, Humana Innovations, payers, WellPoint on December 10, 2008 | 12 Comments »
CIGNA Playing Catch-up Introduces New Site
Posted in consumer health, PHR, tagged Aetna, Cigna, Healthwise, WellPoint on October 14, 2008 | 1 Comment »
CIGNA has appeared asleep at the wheel for sometime now as competitors Wellpoint and the more aggressive Aetna look to engage the end consumer. Not any more. Today’s Washington Post had a brief article on CIGNA’s introduction of the new website, itstimetofeelbetter. Along with the new website, which has a wide ranging and somewhat confusing [...]
Sec. Leavitt, CIGNA, WellPoint – The Finishing Touches to WHCC 2008
Posted in consumer health, EHR, EMR, PHR, policy, RHIO, Security, tagged CCHIT, Cigna, CMS, HHS, Leavitt, WellPoint on April 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
WHCC 2008 just wrapped up with a final keynote from Secretary Leavitt. Leavitt’s keynote was a progress report on the four cornerstones that have driven HHS under his leadership. Cornerstone One: Standard Quality Measures There has been a lot of quality metrics established, but agreement on the standards by which these will be measured is [...]
WHCC & Reports from the Field
Posted in consumer health, PHR, policy, tagged Aetna, Cigna, consumer health, Dossia, Google Health, Microsoft, PHR, WellPoint, WHCC on April 21, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I’ll be attending the World Health Care Congress (WHCC) here in Washington DC getting my fill of all things healthcare and most likely an overdose on policy – after all, this is Washington. The people who put on the WHCC have put together quite an impressive agenda with so many different and what look to [...]
Web Visits Gets Air Time
Posted in consumer health, EMR, eRx, PHR, tagged Aetna, Cigna, e-Consultations, PHR, RelayHealth on April 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This morning, on National Public Radio’s (NPR) Morning Edition, there was a nice 5 minute segment on e-Consultations. With the two big insurers Aetna and Cigna now reimbursing physicians for conducting such e-Consultations, we will be seeing much more of this in the future. During the NPR spot they interviewed an internist who actively performs [...]
An Interesting Marriage: Malpractice and PHRs
Posted in PHR, tagged Aetna, Cigna, e-Consult, Medem, PHR on March 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Now here’s an interesting spin… Malpractice insurer Northwest Physicians Insurance will be offering a rebate to physicians who adopt a PHR to facilitate patient-physician communication. Looks like this insurer predicts that if they can get the patient and physician to communicate more effectively to improve patient safety (and have an audit trail to prove it), [...]
With Merger, Is WebMD Now in Play?
Posted in consumer health, Google, health portals, Microsoft, PHR, tagged Aetna, Cigna, GE, Google, Healtheon, Intuit, McKesson, Microsoft, Revolution, RevolutionHealth, Siemens, WebMD on February 21, 2008 | 4 Comments »
This morning, along with announcing very good 4th qtr growth at WebMD, a concurrent announcement was made that Healtheon and WebMD have agreed to merge, putting the value of the combined entity at about $2.3B. Due to the structure of the deal, WebMD will also end up with a hefty war chest estimated at $700M. [...]
The Painfully Slow Move to Online Services
Posted in consumer health, health portals, PHR, telemedicine, tagged Aetna, Cigna, Kaiser Permanente, Medem, Medicare, online, PHR on February 6, 2008 | 4 Comments »
This week, the LA Times has an interesting article on how major insurers Cigna and Aetna will be reimbursing physicians for providing online consultations. It is encouraging to see these major payers step-up and support such practices. Other payers will likely follow as this could become a key service differentiator that would be attractive not [...]
Aetna Joins Cigna and Goes One Step Further
Posted in consumer health, P4P, policy, tagged Aetna, Cigna, healthcare, quality on November 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Aetna, under pressure from the New York Attorney General’s office, has agreed to change its physician quality ranking system. This follows a similar move by Cigna about two weeks ago. Both UnitedHealth and WellPoint BS/BC are the remaining hold-outs, but I expect them to follow suit in the near future. What is interesting about the [...]
