Tell Me How You Feel: CIGNA Lets Patients Rate Their Experience with Behavioral Health Care Professionals

Business Wire, Sept 23, 2008

BLOOMFIELD, Conn. -- It's not unusual for doctors or psychologists to ask their patients how they feel. In fact, it happens millions of times every day. Now CIGNA has introduced a twist and is inviting the people who use its behavioral health care network to tell CIGNA how they feel about their behavioral health care professional.

Individuals can complete a simple online survey and rate their behavioral health care experience across a broad range of factors, such as how easy it was to make an appointment, whether they were seen on time, the physical condition of the care giver's office, as well as the quality of the treatment itself. The survey even asks if the individual would recommend this behavioral health care professional to someone else. CIGNA collects the feedback, analyzes it and passes it along to the behavioral health care professionals.

"It's very important for us to know what people think about the quality of their experience," said Nancy Hedstrom Wigley, vice president of health and network operations for CIGNA's health solutions organization. "The best way to ensure that we are meeting the needs and exceeding the expectations of the people we serve is to ask them directly, and this online survey is a great tool to achieve that. We see this as an opportunity to help the professionals in our network improve their practice, and so far the reaction has been very positive."

"As a behavioral health care professional, my primary responsibility is to help people cope with whatever challenges they face so they can live healthier, more satisfying lives. I want to know about anything in my practice that interferes with my ability to do that, so the patient feedback from CIGNA's online survey is invaluable," said Barbara O'Brien, LPC, MA, a Phoenix-based counselor.

To complete the survey, people who use CIGNA's behavioral health care services simply access the behavioral Web site www.cignabehavioral.com. People can also use this site to find a professional care giver, take a self assessment or obtain health information.

Future plans call for CIGNA to use survey feedback to develop a numerical rating for each care giver and post those ratings on its Web site.

"For now we're focused on encouraging people to use the online survey, collecting the responses and passing them along to the behavioral health care professionals," Hedstrom Wigley said. "Ultimately we want to complete the loop and channel those responses back to the people we serve in the form of ratings that will help them choose a behavioral health care professional that's right for them."

CIGNA (NYSE:CI) provides employers with benefits, expertise and services that improve the health, well-being and security of their employees. With approximately 47 million covered lives in the United States and around the world, CIGNA's operating subsidiaries offer a full portfolio of medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy and vision care benefits and group life, accident and disability insurance. For more information, visit www.cigna.com.