Dear Physician and Office Staff:

When we began to redesign our business a couple of years ago, we found our compass in what I like to call the "hand mirror" test — we held up a hand mirror and asked ourselves, as consumers, what we wanted out of our health benefits that would improve our experience. We got some pretty predictable answers that were validated by later research — give us freedom to choose and information to help us make those choices; make the system easy to use and leave us with security and financial peace of mind.

We asked ourselves the same thing as physicians and what we saw was pretty consistent — respect our clinical autonomy, make the system easy to use and perform reliably and efficiently.

We set about redesigning our health benefits to give our customers more choice and flexibility. We redesigned our services to put our members in control and get out from between them and their physicians. We designed new services to help our members make decisions about their care. And we invested heavily in technology to make our systems reliable, efficient and easy to use.

One prime example of a new product designed to provide consumers with more choices and flexibility is SmartSelect^SM, which will be offered to consumers in the first quarter of 2003. SmartSelect is the newest technology-enabled health benefit from Humana that allows consumers to tailor their coverage to meet their individual health care needs. A series of Web-based questions helps members define their utilization patterns and coverage options and calculate out-of-pocket expenses.

Humana members can make informed decisions about office visit and emergency room copayment amounts, deductibles, maximum out-of-pocket limits, coinsurance percentages and pharmacy benefits. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the new online products at www.humana.com, so that you may talk with your patients about their medical care and specific needs.

By exploring the Humana site, you'll also see that because we offer so many products online, physician offices will save time by processing claims, checking patient information and completing other transactions electronically. This will help to make our transactions more efficient and error-free.

Our members told us that they want Humana to provide information about health care choices, not to make choices for them. We have customized our products and engaged our members to help them to navigate the health care system with the expertise of their physician. You can help keep your patients healthy and satisfied by discussing with them the health care that's appropriate for them.

Sincerely,

Jack Lord, M.D.
Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Strategy and Innovation Officer