WellPoint
To Bonus All Employees Based on Improvement in Patient Care
What
would happen if laboratory employees could earn a bonus each year
if physicians did a better job of using laboratory testing to
measurably improve the health of their patients? That idea is
not far removed from a just-announced employee bonus program at
WellPoint, Inc., the nation’s
largest health insurance company.
Under its new company-wide employee incentive program, 5% of the
current bonuses paid to WellPoint employees will be based on whether
the company meets specific goals for screening and treatment of
its 34 million beneficiaries. Every employee at the company is
eligible for this bonus incentive and WellPoint’s strategy
is to increase the attention and efforts by employees to improve
the health of beneficiaries.
A range of patient health targets are included the measures to
be used to trigger bonus payouts. These include screening rates
for certain types of cancer, pediatric vaccination rates, and
patient adherence to prescription drug protocols, among others.
Even hospital visits for congestive heart failure and asthma will
be monitored.
Other good news for the laboratory industry from WellPoint’s
new bonus initiative is the effort to increase the use of certain
laboratory tests for such things as cholesterol screening. WellPoint’s
Chief Medical Officer, Sam Nussbaum, M.D., noted that WellPoint
has eight million beneficiaries who are at an age where they should
have cholesterol screens. Yet medical utilization data within
the company reveals that cholesterol screens have only been performed
for 3.5 million of these members.
Dark Daily observes that the new program will certainly raise
the visibility of these benchmark measures among WellPoint’s
42,000 employees. After all, people always seem to pay close attention
to things that can affect their pay either positively or negatively.
What is a more interesting speculation is to ask this question:
If WellPoint offered a 5% reimbursement “bonus” to
its laboratory providers whenever its medical utilization data
showed that the rate of appropriate use of laboratory screening
tests had improved by its physician-providers, would this trigger
significant gains in the desired outcomes? Such a financial incentive
has a high probability of triggering improvements that benefit
patients.
Related Articles
WellPoint
is Nation's First Health Benefits Company to Measure the Health
of its Members (press release)
WellPoint
ties bonus to goals for care
WellPoint ties care to staff bonuses
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