Fiserv Strategic Ally Patient Choice Wins Leapfrog, NBCH Award

Minneapolis, MN - Fiserv Health, a business group of Fiserv Inc., has announced that one of its strategic allies, Patient Choice, was honored with one of the first Driving Value in Health Care Awards from The Leapfrog Group and the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH). According to Fiserv, the inaugural award was given to Patient Choice, a business segment of Minnesota-based Medica, for its innovative incentive strategy to stimulate better health care decisions on the part of consumers. This has been a primary focus of the Patient Choice model since its launch nearly a decade ago and is consistent with Fiserv Health's consumer-driven philosophy. Fiserv Health has been an administrator for Patient Choice for the past five years, offering its unique tiered health care delivery network that ranks providers on cost and quality measures to self-funded employers. The program is available in Minnesota, and in areas of Wisconsin, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Leapfrog and NBCH have recognized Patient Choice's groundbreaking approach to value-based health care purchasing through the use of tiered networks. This approach shows Patient Choice actively engages and informs consumers, continuously spurs providers to improve quality and control cost and reduces cost trends for employers. Most recent overall cost trends for the Patient Choice Care System program averaged 1.9 percent, well below the 9.6 percent average increase in health care costs nationally for 2005, according to data from Milliman's Medical Index 2006.

Award applications were scored on criteria that included transparency, the public reporting element of the applicant program; performance measurement composition, with standards endorsed by national measure-making organizations like the National Quality Forum; incentive or reward methodology, including both financial and non-financial rewards; target reach, including program awareness and active participation by those for whom the program is intended; and impact, which incorporates documented savings and quality improvement. Leapfrog and NBCH board members comprised the judging team.

SOURCE: Fiserv Health