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WellPoint is Nation's First Health Benefits Company to Measure the Health of Its Members

Posted on: Tuesday, 3 April 2007, 09:00 CDT

INDIANAPOLIS, April 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- WellPoint, Inc. , the nation's largest health benefits company in terms of medical membership, today unveiled its Member Health Index (MHI), a comprehensive initiative designed to measure the improvement in the health of its 34 million members.

WellPoint is the first health benefits company to directly link success in improving the health of its members with the compensation of every associate in the company. The MHI will measure the success of WellPoint's programs to better manage care and improve the health and wellness of its members.

"Our core mission as a company is to improve the lives of the members we serve, and by implementing the Member Health Index program we will be able to measure the progress we are making," said Larry C. Glasscock, chairman, president and chief executive officer of WellPoint.

"We are dedicated to transforming health care by delivering innovative products, services and support to our members. As an industry leader, we are setting the standard by offering a tangible measure of our progress to the public and reinforcing our commitment," said Angela F. Braly, incoming president and chief executive officer of WellPoint.

WellPoint's MHI is comprised of 20 clinical areas that reflect the quality of care an individual has received - some developed using national standards and others developed by WellPoint's clinical experts. These measures focus on prevention and screening, care management, clinical outcomes and patient safety. Together, the measures will be combined in a proprietary statistical model to determine the quality of health care the company's members receive year after year.

For example, for members who have diabetes, the index will help to measure if they are getting necessary eye exams, maintaining their blood sugar level to reduce complications and having their blood pressure level controlled. For children, the index will measure if they received their immunizations. WellPoint will be able to analyze the data in many different sub-populations, including Medicare beneficiaries, Medicaid members and large national employer groups, in order to target improvement efforts.

As a part of this initiative, a portion of all WellPoint employees' incentive income will now be tied to improvements in the member's health index score. Linking progress to incentives represents an effort to ensure that all associates are fully engaged and focused on improving the lives of the people WellPoint serves and the health of its communities.

For each of the measures that make up the MHI, WellPoint has experts within the company who will analyze the results and determine strategies to improve processes such as screening studies and outcomes of care such as optimal management of diabetes and heart disease.

"This is a bold commitment we are making to improve the health of our members," said Dr. Sam Nussbaum, executive vice president and chief medical officer for WellPoint. "We will work to maintain the health of our members through prevention and screening and seek to gain the best outcomes of care available. The MHI is a comprehensive initiative and will demonstrate how we're working with our members and physicians and hospitals to improve health."

WellPoint has established a target performance goal for the year 2010 and has used 2005 data to calculate a baseline measurement. Each year, the objective is to improve the score reflecting that more of our members are receiving the care they need.

"We have set a high bar for success, and we are committed to making significant progress each year through existing and new health improvement programs," said Dr. Nussbaum. "The measurement system we have developed will help provide us with an accurate assessment of the improvements in the health of our members at every stage of care. Research studies have demonstrated that individuals receive recommended care only 55 percent of the time. Our goal is to dramatically improve on that result."

Contacts: Media James P. Kappel, 317-488-6400 Investor Relations Wayne S. DeVeydt, 317-488-6390 About WellPoint, Inc.

WellPoint's mission is to improve the lives of the people it serves and the health of its communities. WellPoint, Inc. is the largest health benefits company in terms of commercial membership in the United States. Through its nationwide networks, the company delivers a number of leading health benefit solutions through a broad portfolio of integrated health care plans and related services, along with a wide range of specialty products such as life and disability insurance benefits, pharmacy benefit management, dental, vision, behavioral health benefit services, as well as long term care insurance and flexible spending accounts. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, WellPoint is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and serves its members as the Blue Cross licensee for California; the Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee for Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri (excluding 30 counties in the Kansas City area), Nevada, New Hampshire, New York (as Blue Cross Blue Shield in 10 New York City metropolitan and surrounding counties and as Blue Cross or Blue Cross Blue Shield in selected upstate counties only), Ohio, Virginia (excluding the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.), Wisconsin; and through UniCare. Additional information about WellPoint is available at http://www.wellpoint.com/.

WellPoint, Inc.

CONTACT: media, James P. Kappel, +1-317-488-6400, investors, Wayne S.DeVeydt, +1-317-488-6390, both of WellPoint, Inc.

Web site: http://www.wellpoint.com/

Source: PRNewswire-FirstCall

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