Pacific Business Group On Health Selects Cigna Medical Group For Medicare Grant

Cigna Medical Group (CMG) today announced the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) has chosen CMG to participate in Wave I of its Intensive Outpatient Care Program (IOCP) for Medicare beneficiaries. The three-year program, which is supported by a $19 million grant through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), uses intensive coordinated care to achieve improved health outcomes among high-risk patient populations and significantly reduce their cost of care.

CMG is an ideal candidate for the IOCP effort and was chosen in part because of the many CMG programs that have earned positive results for commercial and individual customers and which share the IOCP goals of improved patient outcomes, better patient satisfaction and lower health care costs (triple aim). Recently, CMG was part of a study in the leading policy journal Health Affairs, which cited Cigna’s early successes with Accountable Care Organizations (ACO). CMG is the medical group practice division of Cigna HealthCare of Arizona, Inc., which holds the distinction of being the highest rated Medicare Advantage plan in Arizona, with a 4.5 star rating from CMS.

“CMG has long focused on outcomes-based care and delivering the highest quality health care to our Medicare patients in Arizona through personalized, coordinated and preventive care,” said Edward Kim, president and general manager of CMG. “The grant enhances our ability to achieve our patient care goals while improving the affordability of care for high-risk individuals and we are looking forward to the partnership with PBGH on this effort.”

Developed by Pacific Business Group on Health Medical Director, Dr. Arnie Milstein and a team of caregivers, the Intensive Outpatient Care Program has been piloted by PBGH member organizations. The model has shown it can reduce health care costs for chronically ill patients by as much as 20 percent and has been written about extensively.

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