By Brian Brus
Courtesy of The Journal Record
OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahoma City-based MedEncentive has signed its first large preferred provider organization, First Choice Health, which has triggered a rush of many more potential clients, Chief Executive Jeff Greene said.
The privately held company has slowly been rolling out what it refers to as an evidence-based health care cost containment program that rewards both doctors and patients for adopting best practices in treatment plans. Over the last seven years the patented, Web-based program has proven its efficacy in seven trial installations, which were evaluated by independent studies.
And earlier this year two of the nation’s largest reinsurers – AIG Benefit Solutions and IHC Risk Solutions – began offering discounts to employers that adopt the MedEncentive program. The First Choice PPO serves more than 1 million people in the Northwest.
“The importance of First Choice Health and other large customers adopting our program is that they are essentially large industry insiders that provide services to thousands and millions of people,” said Greene, who is also the company’s founder. “Their customers look to them and ask, ‘Well, what do you do for your own family, your own employees?’ and there we are. … So this is an important milestone that they would choose us and really opens a lot of doors.”
Greene said he has a difficult time explaining MedEncentive’s purpose because the company approaches health care industry efficiency from multiple directions simultaneously, which he referred to as the triple-aim: better health, better health care systems and lower costs. Other companies tend to focus on one target at a time.
“For example, HMOs controlled costs in the ‘90s, but they did it by rationing care,” he said. “So was it really a solution that improved health? If you look at the history of what happened in the Patients’ Bill of Rights, most experts would say it only solved one of the three aims.”
The same was true of the more recent pay-per-performance movement, he said, which led to accountable care organizations, or ACOs, to prod health behavior changes. MedEncentive’s program appeases doctors, patients and insurers at the same time by engaging them with an easy-to-access Internet program and health care performance standards such as enhanced patient medical literacy, electronic prescription of drug therapy, patient medication compliance and health risk assessment follow-throughs.
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