Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield will stop paying for preventable hospital errors www.EasyToInsureME.com

Blue Cross Ohio Quotes Anthem Health insurance

The largest health insurer in Ohio is following the lead of Medicare and will stop paying hospitals for costs of certain preventable mistakes and infections.

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield announced Wednesday that as of Oct. 1 it will no longer pay for errors such as surgeries performed on the wrong body part. The insurer listed 11 categories in which it won’t cover extra costs of treatment, including pressure sores, urinary tract infections from catheters left in too long and hospital-acquired fractures.

Anthem’s parent company, WellPoint Inc., initiated the change in Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans it operates in 14 states, said Kim Ashley, a spokeswoman for Anthem Blue Cross Ohio. Anthem covers about 1 million people in Northeast Ohio and more than 3 million statewide, not including those in Medicaid managed care plans, she said.

The policy follows the plan the government announced last year for Medicare.

Hospital infections alone are blamed for about 100,000 deaths a year in the United States, and $27 billion in costs, according to Consumers Union.

Tiffany Himmelreich of the Ohio Hospital Association said she was not sure if any other Ohio insurers had adopted the policy. Hospitals are concerned about “gray areas” — conditions that in some cases may not be preventable, she said.

“There is still a lot up for debate,” Himmelreich said. “How do we pay or not pay for something when it’s not crystal clear what type of event it is. Is it preventable or not.”

Hospitals are not allowed to bill patients for costs Anthem declines to pay under the policy, Ashley said.

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Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Ohio Launches Zagat Health Survey Tool in

Ohio Blue Cross Quotes   Anthem Quotes

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Ohio Launches Zagat Health
Survey Tool in Greater Cincinnati and DaytonMembers to Use
Survey to Rate Physician Experiences CINCINNATI, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/
 -- Anthem Blue Cross and BlueShield in Ohio today announced the
launch of the Zagat Health Survey tool, a new online survey tool
that will allow consumers to share their physician experiences
with others in the greater Cincinnati and Dayton markets.    

The survey tool is now available to members in these cities
enrolled in the company's Lumenos consumer driven health plans
and will be available to all members in these locations at the
end of the first quarter of 2008. Anthem will continue to
progressively introduce this tool across all of Ohio."Zagat is
widely known and trusted for its ability to help people share and
learn from other consumer experiences. By working with them we
are able to create a trusted resource for consumers and actively
engage consumers in sharing and using that information," said
Chuck Slater, president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in
Ohio. "Consumer experience information, such as that enabled by
the Zagat Health Survey tool, complements our Care Comparison
tool and other resources that make clinical quality and cost
transparent for consumers."Through its relationship with Zagat,
 Anthem is helping to address an unmet need for peer-to-peer
interaction among health care consumers. The new survey tool will
provide a vehicle for members to review and evaluate physicians
based on a set of distinct criteria, creating a trusted resource
to support informed member decision-making.    "Honest and
constructive feedback about things such as communications skills
and whether a patient trusts his/her doctor is something that all
physicians should welcome hearing," said Stephen Pleatman, M.D., a
pediatrician with Suburban Pediatrics in Mason, Ohio. "We need to
know whether we are meeting the needs of our patients and whether
we are doing a good job. Patient satisfaction tools such as this can certainly help provide thatinformation.

"Consumers will be able to review their doctor visits based on:    
--  Trust --  Communication    --  Availability    --  Environment 
In addition, the survey will feature a comments section, allowing
members to expand on their ratings. These categories are solely
designed to reflect a consumer's experience with a physician and
not to reflect the quality of care received. The survey and results
will be available free of charge to members via their health plan's
Web site.    For each network physician, the online entry will
display contact information, ratings on a 30-point scale for each
 of the four categories, and the percentage of members who recommend
 that physician. The most recent comments will be displayed first,
and members will have the option to rate the usefulness of comments
and report suspicious comments."Anthem is committed to providing
its members with the data and tools necessary to help them take a
more active role in their health care decision making," said Slater. 

"With this tool,Anthem is helping to give consumers theability to
make informed decisions about selecting doctors based on other
people's experiences, in a format that is familiar, easy to
understand and meaningful.

"About Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Ohio Anthem Blue Cross
and Blue Shield in Ohio is a subsidiary of 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 access to nationwide networks, the company
delivers a number of leading healthbenefit 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. Life and disability products are
underwritten by Anthem Life Insurance Company, an independent
licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Additional information about WellPoint is available at

www.wellpoint.com.

    About Zagat Survey, LLC

    Known as the "wildly popular" "burgundy bible", Zagat Survey is the

world's most trusted source for information about where to eat, drink, stay

and play. With more than 300,000 surveyors, Zagat Survey rates and reviews

restaurants, hotels, nightlife, movies, music, golf, shopping and a range of

other entertainment categories and is lauded as the "most up-to-date",

"comprehensive" and "reliable" guide ever published. Zagat content is

available to consumers wherever and whenever they need it: in book format, on

ZAGAT.com, via the downloadable ZAGAT TO GO for smartphones and on the mobile

web with ZAGAT.mobi. For more information, visit ZAGAT.com

SOURCE  Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Ohio

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