Three Recipients Win The Alliance Health Transformation Award

MADISON, WIS., May 23, 2019 – Three awards were given to organizations that have made significant contributions to transforming health care in their community when The Alliance held its Annual Seminar on May 21.

This year’s award recipients are:

• NOVO Health, Appleton, Wis., is transforming the way health care is delivered and reimbursed. Their direct contracting model offers employer-partners transparent, bundled pricing on over 60 outpatient medical procedures. Their model encourages employee engagement which educates and empowers consumers to make better decisions about their own health and the care they receive.
• Promega Corporation, Fitchburg, Wis., created a Caregiver Leave policy as part of their employee health benefits. Caregiver Leave can apply to parents of newborns or older children, a spouse or partner, or aging parents. The scope of employee need was not well known, so rolling out this benefit on Jan. 1, 2018, required a leap of faith. The policy was so well received, Promega expanded the program in 2019 to include additional support resources.
• Marilyn Bartlett and the Montana State Employee Health Plan, Helena, Mont., are being recognized for their turnaround plan using Medicare rates to benchmark and then reset hospital payments, which had been found to have large pricing variations. For hospital care, prices paid by their plan were as high as three times what Medicare paid. The outpatient services prices paid by their plan were as high as 600 percent of Medicare. Bartlett wanted to pay a fair price – cost to deliver care plus a reasonable margin. This was estimated to be between 220 to 250 percent of what Medicare pays. Getting hospitals to accept this reduction in fees took determination plus a willingness to withstand conflict at all levels.

The Alliance presents the Health Transformation Awards at its Annual Seminar, where national leaders share their expertise on crucial health care issues. The event annually attracts an audience of employers and health care providers as well as brokers, agents and other professionals who support employers that self-fund their health benefits.

Health Transformation Award recipients must demonstrate their commitment to promoting change in the health care marketplace based on one or more of the following criteria:

• Exploring new approaches to delivering care.
• Exploring new approaches to paying for care.
• Improving the quality of care using a systematic, process-oriented approach that can be adapted and implemented by other organizations.
• Collaborating with other organizations to develop innovative solutions to significant health care problems.
• Advancing our understanding of how to engage consumers in making better decisions about their care.
• Providing extraordinary leadership among employers related to health benefits, specifically by representing employers’ interests and/or developing a consensus on important issues among a significant number of employers.

The Alliance is a not-for-profit cooperative that moves health care forward by controlling costs, improving quality and engaging individuals in their health. Members include more than 240 self-funded employers and multiemployer plans in Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa.

We can connect journalists with award winners and The Alliance Board of Directors upon request.