Chicago hasn’t had a popular staff-model health plan since Prudential’s PruCare left the scene many years ago. Now UnitedHealth Group’s new Harken Health subsidiary is trying to grab that niche, in a modified way, with a clinic-based plan that offers unlimited primary care and behavioral visits at no charge.
The health plan, which offers services with no coinsurance charge and copays only for prescription drugs, will be available at four neighborhood office locations in Chicago and its suburbs and will open six centers in the Atlanta area. It’s a fascinating test of what Harken co-founder and CEO Thomas Vanderheyden calls relationship-based primary care. This responds to what many experts say is a need for value-based benefit designs that encourage people to receive recommended primary and preventive care.
For 2016, Harken, an independently operated subsidiary of UnitedHealth, is projecting 30,000 enrollees in Chicago and Atlanta, with plans for additional markets in 2017. “We think giving people unfettered access to relationship-based primary care will provide better counsel and advice and get members to use the broader healthcare system more judiciously,” Vanderheyden said. “We have reasonable confidence in our model … I wouldn’t call it an experiment.”
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Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA, Group Health Insurance Broker and Agent with Cosby Insurance Group, with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.
