Cigna: Uniting Medical, Drug And Mental Health Saves $850 Per Enrollee

Cigna said efforts to combine medical, pharmacy and behavioral benefits saves more than “$850 per customer,” according to the insurer’s internal analysis.

Cigna, which owns the large pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) Express Scripts, released its fourth annual “value of integration” study documenting various savings for employer clients that have a “connected set of medical, pharmacy, and behavioral benefits.” The insurer looked at more than 2.3 million customer claims during a two-year period.

Though an internal report that would seem to favor a developing Cigna strategy, the analysis captures a broader effort by the health insurance industry to integrate more than just medical benefits into offerings they sell to employers and government clients.

Health insurers see a value-based approach that better coordinates care for the “whole person” as a way to improve health outcomes and ultimately save money. That contrasts with fee-for-service medicine that pays doctors and hospitals based on volume of care delivered.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.