Blue KC First in Country to Achieve NCQA Wellness & Health Promotion Accreditation: June 2009

June 29, 2009

Kansas City, MO.—Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City (Blue KC) today announced that it has earned accreditation under the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s (NCQA) new Wellness & Health Promotion Accreditation program. Blue KC was the first organization in the country to go through the process for this accreditation, and the company is the first to achieve this sought-after accreditation. This new program, announced by NCQA at the end of 2008, will help employers and others compare wellness programs using standardized results and select a wellness program with demonstrated value and quality.

“We are thrilled with the news of our accreditation! It confirms our efforts in the wellness arena, and lends an even greater sense of credibility to our wellness programs, which have been well-accepted by our clients here in Kansas City and across the nation,” said Brian Burns, Senior Vice President of Health Care Services at Blue KC. “Our A Healthier You wellness program remains the only comprehensive, turnkey wellness program in our area, and participating employer groups are beginning to see real improvements in their employees’ health.”

“Decades of work has shown that it is far easier to keep people healthy than it is to restore them to health. While wellness programs across the country can help people make better choices, there is a lot of uncertainty about what makes a great program,” said Margaret E. O’Kane, NCQA President. “NCQA’s Wellness & Health Promotion Accreditation requires organizations to demonstrate their compliance with well-defined standards and quality measures. The NCQA seal will provide employers and consumers with the information they need to choose the best program in their markets.”

More than three-fourths of the nation’s leading employers offer wellness programs to their employees as a means to improve health and lower costs. Blue KC earned the status of “NCQA Accredited” by demonstrating a focused ability to effectively tailor a wellness program to best fit an employer’s objectives as well as individuals’ identified needs and appropriately safeguard private health information.

Four years ago, Blue KC developed a worksite wellness program, called A Healthier You, for its large business clients to educate and empower employees to lead healthier lives. Today, 70% of the company’s large employer groups - more than 210 large employers in the area - and more than 130,000 employees are participating in the A Healthier You program. In addition, the company’s Integrated Health Management program works to improve the health and wellness of all its members by taking a whole population approach to health, impacting individual members, improving health outcomes, and reducing healthcare costs.

Blake Williamson, M.D., Vice President and Senior Medical Director with Blue KC, said, "Our goal is to provide a broad range of screening and support tools to program participants to help them achieve their goals for improved health and wellness. The success of integrating our A Healthier You program into our other programs is proven by the results that we are seeing. After just three full years in the program, participants are seeing lower levels of blood pressure and cholesterol, a decreased number of emergency room visits, and lower overall medical costs."

Jack Bastable, National Practice Leader, Health and Productivity with CBIZ Benefits, has had a strong interest in the A Healthier You program since its inception in 2005. He said about the recent accreditation, “This accreditation doesn’t surprise me at all. Blue KC approaches their wellness programs from a total quality perspective. As an organization, they embrace a culture of health and have developed an overarching wellness philosophy that they instill into each program participant. As a result, their wellness programs are having a significant and measurable impact in improving the health and well-being of the employees and dependents of their clients.”

NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving healthcare quality. NCQA evaluates, accredits and certifies a wide range of healthcare organizations and recognizes physicians in key clinical areas. NCQA’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in healthcare, protecting the lives of more than 100 million Americans. NCQA is committed to providing healthcare quality information through the Web, media and data licensing agreements in order to help consumers, employers, and others make more informed healthcare choices.

About Blue KC

Blue KC, the largest not-for-profit health insurer in the state and the only not-for-profit health insurer in Kansas City, has been part of the Kansas City community since 1938. Blue KC provides health coverage to nearly 900,000 residents in the greater Kansas City area and Northwest Missouri. Blue KC is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. For more information on our company, visit our website at www.BlueKC.com. Our mission statement: We will use our role as the area’s leading health insurer to provide affordable access to healthcare and to improve the health and wellness of our members.

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