The health plan's bold goal is to improve customer health 20% by 2020. Humana's strategy includes helping community make better use of existing resources.
A community health initiative by Humana is proving beneficial to both the company and consumers by improving the health of those whose care tends to be the most costly for any health plan.
A key part of the health plan's strategy is to help communities make better use of the resources already available to them.
Humana announced its Bold Goal community health program two years ago, aiming for a 20% improvement in the health of its customers 2020, using the CDC's population health management tool known as Healthy Days to benchmark community health and measure progress.
The measurement takes into account how a person is feeling holistically, including his or her mental and physical health.
The 2017 Humana Bold Goal progress report showed a two percent improvement on a national basis among its membership. That is a significant improvement for Humana customers, who mostly are Medicare Advantage enrollees, says Roy Beveridge, MD, chief medical officer at Humana.
Better Health, Better Financials
Members typically stay with Humana for about seven or eight years, which gives the company a chance to encourage meaningful changes in their health, he says.
"The more we improve their health, their lives improve. But also, the better it is for us financially," Beveridge says.
"We learned years ago that we have these phenomenally, wonderfully aligned interests. The healthier we make our population, the better off we are financially and obviously the better it is for the patient."
It doesn't happen with just Humana's input and effort, Beveridge says. The Bold Goal program incorporates grocery stores, pharmacies, local governments, gyms, transportation sources, and other factors that can affect an individual's health.
"If we can help the community as a whole by addressing food deserts and supporting local food banks, we're actually helping improve global health," Beveridge says. "That works in hand with the effort we put into improving the health of individuals."
In San Antonio, TX, for instance, community leaders welcomed Humana's help, but asked them not to create anything new.
All the resources existed already, but the community needed a way to bring them together in an effective way for consumers, says Pattie Dale Tye, segment vice president at Humana and leader of the Bold Goal initiative.
A 'Clinical Town Hall'
Humana met that need by putting together a "clinical town hall" that has become a model for the Bold Goal initiative in other communities as well.
Humana brought together local stakeholders in community health that included government officials, nonprofit leaders, business leaders, and healthcare professionals to discuss what issues pose the greatest challenge to health improvement and map out ways to address them in the coming year.
The town halls also helped identify members for a health advisory board to direct those efforts. Humana has helped establish these boards in a dozen markets across the country.
"The San Antonio health advisory board has launched a diabetes resource directory, free and available to all members of the community and all physicians, so anyone can go to one place and see all the resources available to address diabetes," Tye says.
"That's an example of convening the community around one issue to have the biggest impact."
Beveridge says the Bold Goal program is a natural outgrowth of the move to value-based care. "In this outcomes-based world, if you think you can do it just by yourself, you're deluded," he says.
"We know that if we want to be successful in managing and improving the health of the people we serve, it has to be more than just the traditional approach of providing the medicine and making an appointment for next month. It's how you deal with all these other things in a person's life that affect their health, the things that must be addressed to improve the health of a population."
Gregory A. Freeman is a contributing writer for HealthLeaders.