SC BlueChoice Offers New Group Health Plan Rewarding Employee Engagement
June 24, 2014
COLUMBIA, SC – As employers seek strategies to manage rising health care costs, BlueChoice® HealthPlan of South Carolina is offering a new product combining incentives for employees who use Patient-Centered Medical Homes (PCMH) and wellness tools.
“Companies that want to create a culture of health and wellness in the workplace will be interested in this new plan. This employee engagement approach has been shown to decrease overall health costs and improve productivity while scoring high on patient satisfaction,” said BlueChoice President Scott Graves.
Called Engagement Plus, the plan is designed to offer the highest level of benefits when a member uses a PCMH, especially employees who have high blood pressure, heart failure or diabetes. In return for using a PCMH, the member will pay a lower copayment than if they went to a non-PCMH medical practice.
A PCMH is a model that creates a system of care around the patient’s needs as well as measures and constantly improves quality as part of a national recognition process.
In addition, Engagement Plus includes a program managed by BlueChoice® on behalf of the employer in which employees may earn points for engaging in pre-identified healthy activities. They redeem the points for gift cards and merchandise. For instance, getting an annual physical or filling out an online personal health assessment might be a designated healthy activity.
Also offered in the new plan are BlueChoice’s Great Expectations for Health programs that focus on the early detection of illness and the prevention of disease; vision; dental; an employee assistance program offering confidential counseling for life management issues affecting absenteeism; and care advocacy that helps bridge the gaps between care and benefits.
Engagement Plus is available to companies with 100 employees or more.
BlueChoice HealthPlan of South Carolina
Headquartered in Columbia, S.C., BlueChoice HealthPlan of South Carolina (www.BlueChoiceSC.com and www.BlueChoiceSCMedicaid.com) is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. BlueChoice HealthPlan has an A+ rating from A.M. Best and a “Commendable” accreditation from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for its commercial business, as well as an NCQA “New Health Plan Accreditation” for its Medicaid business. BlueChoice HealthPlan offers four categories of group health plans, as well as individual plans for adults and families, and a South Carolina Medicaid product.
