Health insurer Cigna is beefing up its digital healthcare platform for employers and plan members with more ways to see a doctor online.
Beginning in 2017, Cigna, which provides health insurance coverage for 15 million consumers and processed 158 million medical claims in 2015, is expanding its telehealth services to include more mental and behavioral health coverage and more doctors. Cigna, which already utilizes the telehealth services of MDLive Inc., now has added the services of another telehealth platform provider: American Well.
MDLive, which has been a Cigna telehealth vendor since 2013, has a national telehealth network of 800 doctors and other healthcare specialists. American Well also operates a national telehealth platform of several thousand providers in 48 states, the company says.
The addition of American Well offers plan members a bigger and more diverse roster of doctors online to choose from, Cigna says.
With the expansion of its telehealth platform, Cigna is now making the option for plan members to see a doctor for treatment online for allergies, cold, flu and related minor conditions versus scheduling and making a regular office visit a standard benefit for many of its employer health plans in the U.S. and individual consumers that buy Cigna health insurance through a health exchange.
Before giving employers, employees and consumers a telehealth option was an additional benefit that Cigna health insurance customers would add to their benefits package. Cigna is offering telehealth as part of the standard benefits at a time when employers and employers are looking for ways to cut healthcare costs and use the web to give consumers more options to pick when, where and how they see a doctor, Cigna says.
Compared to the cost of a traditional visit to the doctor that can range from $120 to $140, digital doctor visits cost between $39 and $59 per visit, Cigna says. For example MDLive charges $49 per visit, although costs may vary depending upon a patient’s specific insurance coverage. American Well also charges about $49 per visits but costs may also vary.
For a Cigna, what a plan member may pay for a telehealth visit will be based on the member’s co-payment amounts and deductibles. In some cases an employer may offer a telehealth visit as a free benefit to employees, but offering that option would be at the employer’s discretion, a Cigna spokesman says.
Cigna is expanding its telehealth program now to offer wider national coverage and more providers, and to give plan members more and easier ways to see a doctor, especially during an emergency or if the plan member lives in a rural area. At a time when many customers are responsible for a larger portion of their medical costs than in the past, telehealth offers online access to healthcare professionals at a lower cost than do other healthcare facilities, such as retail clinics, urgent care clinics and emergency rooms, says Cigna telehealth lead Robert Wijnhoven.
“Cost is especially important for customers on the public exchanges, which is why we are extending this benefit beyond our employer-sponsored plans,” Wijnhoven says. “As important, however, is quality and continuity of care and that is why both MDLive and American Well for Cigna are able to share consult notes with the customer’s primary care physician, with their consent, which helps facilitate continuity of care and promotes better quality and results.”
The newly expanded telehealth program also gives Cigna plan members a new way to schedule and see a mental or behavioral healthcare specialist that is part of the healthcare insurer’s network of 96,000 participating behavioral health care professionals and 12,500 facilities and clinics. “We will be reimbursing our behavioral health care professionals regardless of what telehealth platform they use,” the spokesman says.
“Since Cigna began offering telehealth to customers 10 years ago, we’ve learned a few things about how we can help people benefit from their plans in the ways that matter most,”Wijnhoven says. “We also know about the difficulty some Americans have accessing a behavioral health professional, especially in rural areas. Enabling access to our behavioral health care professional networks via telehealth provides an innovative solution to this accessibility challenge.”
Employers, employees and plan members will be able to access the expanded telehealth options through MyCigna, the health insurer’s digital healthcare portal. Plan members can access the telehealth options on desktop and mobile versions of the MyCigna portal and through the iOS and Android version of the MyCigna app.
Adding mobile health connectivity for its telehealth program was a priority for Cigna, the spokesman says. “People use their mobile phone when they have an emergency, it’s the middle of the night and they want to consult a doctor right away or may not have easy access to seeing a doctor because they live in a rural area,” the spokesman says.
Date: September 28, 2016