Florida Health News

Humana experiment pays members to watch their health

By Susan Jaffe
2/26/2008 © Florida Health News
WASHINGTON -- Simple reminders aren’t enough to persuade some people to take care of themselves. So Humana Inc., Florida’s most popular Medicare health plan, is trying something different – a reward for being good.

How about a gift card for Macy’s, CVS, Lowe’s or Borders?

Humana’s “Healthy Returns” rewards program, which the company launched as an experiment last month, is a bet that providing incentives for members to prevent health problems will pay off for all concerned. Since Medicare offers health plans the same monthly premium for similar members in the same region, regardless of whether they get sick, plans stand to profit if they persuade slackers to fly right. And gift cards may help.

"It’s much less expensive for Humana to help people maintain their health than to treat them when they are acutely ill,” said Scott Latimer, Humana’s market president for senior products in Central and North Florida.

“Humana is increasingly aware that to be successful, it’s not enough to provide strong benefits for people who are ill. We need to get better at reaching out to people to help them maintain their health.”

There’s just one problem: Because Humana doesn’t use the rewards program as a marketing tool, most prospective enrollees don’t know about it.

“It wasn’t designed around sales and marketing,” Latimer explained. “The intent is to increase participation in selected wellness programs among the current membership.”

Latimer said he’s not aware of any other Florida Medicare plan offering this kind of bonus. UnitedHealthcare, Humana’s close competitor in the state senior market, relies on “member education” to boost participation in preventive care, said spokesman Roger Rollman.

The Healthy Returns program consists of three experiments. First, new Humana Medicare health plan members anywhere in the country who signed up for 2008 coverage can earn a $15 gift card if they complete a health-risk assessment. The review pinpoints the need for more exercise, a change in diet, or other steps that can reduce the chance of developing health problems. So far 35,000 members nationwide have earned this reward.

The assessment gives Humana an opportunity to tell members how they can keep healthy by doing things like joining Silver Sneakers, a free health club membership program, which was launched in the Tampa Bay area four years ago. It’s now available nationwide and has 180,000 members, including 60,000 in Florida.

The other two pilot projects – a more extensive preventive-care program and a disease-management regimen for diabetics – offer gift cards worth much more than $15, up to a total of $125.

The next step for the company is to measure the results, said Latimer. If the rewards work, Humana may expand them to more members.

"Someday we may put it in advertising material,” he said.

Rewarding members for doing the right thing is a familiar concept in employer-sponsored plans. Humana offers workers in some plans up to $400 a year in gift cards. All they have to do is take frequent walks wearing a pedometer and send the mileage report to the Humana web site. But that kind of rewards strategy hasn’t been tried with the Medicare population until now.

Humana’s bet may make sense, even if there isn’t a lot of evidence yet that small incentives can make a big difference, said Alwyn Cassil, spokeswoman for the Center for Studying Health System Change, a non-profit health policy research group in Washington, D. C. The idea is part of a growing movement to encourage patients to take more responsibility for their health care costs, lifestyle choices and treatment decisions.

"You probably get a better result with a carrot than with a stick,” she said. “If $20 can get someone to get a flu shot and they can avoid getting the flu, that’s a big payoff.” Immunization rates are not what they should be among people 65 and older, who comprise nearly all of the 36,000 flu-related deaths every year, she added. “The insurer doesn’t end up having to pay for a hospital admission and the beneficiary doesn’t get sick."

That should leave plenty of time for shopping.

FHN Washington correspondent Susan Jaffe can be reached at susanjaffe@earthlink.net.

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Humana experiment pays members to watch their health

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