Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Becomes First Health Plan Certified in Critical Outcomes Report Analysis by the Disease Management Purchasing Consortium

Business Wire, March 27, 2007

WELLESLEY, Mass. -- The Disease Management Purchasing Consortium (DMPC) announced today that Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has become the first health plan in the nation certified in Critical Outcomes Report Analysis (CORA) for disease management and wellness.

Charles Huang, Harvard Pilgrim's Manager of Financial Planning & Analysis, Strategic Financial Planning, is the first person from a health plan to pass the CORA certification test, in which actual outcomes reports are presented and must be critiqued.

"The average person in the field can successfully identify about 25% of the fallacies in this 90-minute test," said DMPC President Al Lewis. "Charles found a large multiple of that figure. A customer of Harvard Pilgrim can be confident that when Charles says a DM report is free of significant error, that no benefits consultant could find significant errors."

Harvard Pilgrim earned the organizational level of CORA Certification by agreeing to have Huang review any outcomes reports carrying the DMPC CORA-Certified logo. If Huang is unavailable, DMPC or another CORA-certified person must perform the review.

"It is no surprise to me that Harvard Pilgrim is first to achieve CORA," said Lewis. "They are the highest-ranked plan in the country overall by many measures, and in disease management, have earned more awards and certifications than any other health plan in the country. I have already referred customer organizations to them and will continue to do so."

DMPC is offering the CORA certification because of the generally poor quality of disease management and wellness reporting to employers from health plans and from vendors. "I am continually amazed at what most benefits consultants and employers deem acceptable," said Lewis. "In fact, almost every question on the CORA test highlighting an impossible outcome or incongruity between pages of a report or math error, were taken from reports that a benefits consultant found acceptable."

Both individuals and organizations can earn CORA certification. On the individual level, it is a professional credential that will increasingly be recognized as evidence of expertise in a challenging endeavor. Organizations may earn CORA certification by agreeing that someone with CORA certification will review all reports, and reports will not be made official until that person declares them to be free of identifiable errors. Such reports will be clearly labeled with a DMPC logo (in the case of internally reviewed reports) or a DMPC's auditor's letter in the case of DMPC-reviewed reports. The CORA-certified person chosen may be an employee, a consultant or DMPC.

About the Disease Management Purchasing Consortium

The Disease Management Purchasing Consortium International, Inc. (DMPC) provides strategy and procurement services to support the disease management and wellness efforts of more than one hundred health plans, employers and states. The DMPC is led by Al Lewis, who is widely accepted as the founder and most influential leader in the disease management industry. Associate members include national health care accreditation organizations such as JCAHO and URAC, the Harvard School of Public Health, Bain & Co., Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey and eight investment banks. DMPC also offers Certifications in Savings Measurement Validity, Small Group Outcomes Measurement and Critical Outcomes Report Analysis. Programs and services are available at www.dismgmt.com.

About Harvard Pilgrim Health Care

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care is a not-for-profit health plan that provides a variety of insurance plan options and self-funding arrangements to more than a million members in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. Harvard Pilgrim provides innovative approaches to health improvement and disease management, unique online tools that speed and simplify key transactions for employers and providers and personalized health support.