BlueInsight(SM) Online Tool from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona Improves Employers'...

BlueInsight(SM) Online Tool from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona Improves Employers' Ability to Manage Health Care Costs, Employee Wellness

PHOENIX--(Business Wire)--
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona (BCBSAZ) today introduced a new
online tool that can give employers a competitive edge to make better,
faster health care decisions to help manage health care costs and
develop healthier, more productive employees.

BlueInsight(sm) is BCBSAZ's newest program designed to help manage
health care costs and improve workplace productivity for Arizona
employers. It is available to organizations with 100 or more employees
and is being offered as a value-added service to BCBSAZ large group
clients.

The online tool gives employers access to cost and utilization
data that provides a roadmap to determine where to focus efforts for
health and disease management. It also identifies the benefits
employees are using most and areas where they can realize additional
savings. The data is delivered in aggregate format to ensure privacy
of employees' health information and anonymity of individual
employees.

According to Two Roads Diverged: Hewitt Associates LLC's Annual
Health Care Survey 2008, employers are declaring that having healthy
employees is one of their most important workforce issues. In
response, employers are devising strategies to target specific
populations for health improvement efforts.

The study found that nearly two-thirds of employers (63 percent)
surveyed reported that they are increasing their reliance on health
care data and measurement to find cost savings by adopting strategies
over the next three to five years that incent healthy behaviors and
use data technology to better manage risk. Half (50 percent) reported
that they will provide health and productivity programs that are
tailored to their employees' risk levels.

"There can be vast differences in the demand for various types of
benefits and in the overall health of companies' workforces," said
Dick Hannon, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Provider Affairs
for BCBSAZ. "By being able to identify benefits that employees rarely
or never use as well as key areas of health concerns, BCBSAZ can
develop a customized benefit package for large employers that costs
less and is more effective for their employees than a 'one size fits
all' package."

BlueInsight provides access to hundreds of health care measures
and reporting and analysis tools online. By better understanding the
employee population's health and health care usage trends, employers
can identify top medical conditions and lifestyle risks affecting
employees and better understand the conditions that are driving cost
or are conducive to disease management. BlueInsight also identifies
avoidable utilization and cost, such as the use of brand name vs.
generic medications or use of in-network versus out-of-network health
care providers. Finally, the tool allows employers to benchmark the
health of their workforce against industry or like-sized employer
benchmarks.

Using this data, BCBSAZ data analysts can work with employers to
develop customized benefit plans that focus on a company's unique
needs, resulting in lower costs for the employer and a more effective
benefit plan for positively impacting the health of employees.

About Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, an independent licensee of the
Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, is the largest Arizona-based
health insurance company. The not-for-profit company was founded in
1939 and provides health insurance products, services or networks to
more than 1.1 million individuals. With offices in Phoenix, Flagstaff,
Tempe and Tucson, the company employs more than 1,500 Arizonans. For
information about Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona and its community
programs such as WalkingWorks, please visit www.azblue.com.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, Phoenix
Regena Frieden, 602-864-4046
M: 602-568-3716
rfrieden@phx1.bcbsaz.com
Carlos DellaMaddalena, 602-864-4067
M: 602-316-8500
cdellama@phx1.bcbsaz.com
Renee Hunt, 602-864-5182
M: 602-920-9487
rhunt@phx1.bcbsaz.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008