Cigna Launches CareAllies to Focus on Value in the Customer Experience

Cigna Corp., a global health service company dedicated to helping people improve their health, well-being, and sense of security, is moving from volume to value in the customer experience. All products and services are provided exclusively by or through operating subsidiaries of Cigna Corp., including Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company, Life Insurance Company of North America, and Cigna Life Insurance Company of New York.

Health care providers are facing increased pressure to move from fee-for-service to value-based payment, yet current market solutions to accelerate this journey have been criticized as too rigid to meet complex provider needs. Cigna has partnered with health care providers for many years to help them align their financial incentives with patient health outcomes, resulting in joint success through shared risk.

Cigna is assembling assets, resources, and talent from across the enterprise to create a new service company that will work closely with more provider organizations of all types to help them focus on improved patient outcomes and achieve better health care quality and affordability for the populations they serve.

The new company, CareAllies, Inc., will deliver the systems, capabilities and management services that providers need to be successful under a variety of value-based and risk-sharing models across the value-based reimbursement spectrum. CareAllies will offer services to help ease providers’ administrative burden across payers and can even help providers launch and manage their own health plans.

The new CareAllies will combine assets from Cigna, Cigna-HealthSpring’s management services division for independent physician associations (IPAs), and QualCare Alliance Networks, Inc. (QANI), which Cigna acquired in 2015, and it will leverage these companies’ extensive histories of successful and innovative provider collaborations.

Dr. Julian Harris, President, CareAllies, spoke to Loyalty360 about this exciting new company.

“The health care environment is changing rapidly as health insurers and providers collaborate to transform the system from one that reimburses for volume to one that’s focused on value,” Harris said. “As part of this systemic transformation, some providers are creating new business models that include establishing their own health plans, while others seek support transforming their operating models to succeed under value-based payment arrangements. We have created the new CareAllies to meet the challenges of this dynamic environment and to help us better serve providers, who have been a subset of our customers for some time. Cigna and its legacy CareAllies brand have a strong focus on consumer health engagement and a successful track record providing consumer health improvement programs.”

Some of those include disease and lifestyle management programs, health coaching, and incentives.
“Cigna-HealthSpring has a proven physician engagement model, and its independent physician association (IPA) management services division is a leader in helping doctors participate in value-based care,” Harris said. “QANI’s modular, plug-and-play operating platform helps providers evolve their practice and business models to meet local market needs, and its analytics support providers as they transition to value-based care that improves quality and lowers costs for patients. By assembling assets and talent from across the enterprise, the new CareAllies will be well-positioned to serve providers and the patients they serve as the health care system and the providers themselves evolve.”

Harris believes it’s “absolutely essential” to listen to the providers who are customers or potential customers of the new CareAllies.

“A strong focus on customer-centricity is one piece of Cigna’s legacy that we’re bringing into CareAllies,” he added. “Now, instead of the customer being employers and their employees, the customer will be providers who are seeking a partner to help them achieve better health care quality and affordability for the populations they serve. No enterprise can succeed if it ignores its customers. We plan to listen intently to our provider customers and we will remain laser-focused on meeting their needs and on helping them improve the care they provide to their patients.”

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