Dear Physician and Office Staff:

We’ve talked in these pages before about our commitment to what we call “transparency” in the health system. In the context of the new consumerism driving so many changes in health benefits, that means enabling consumers to see their health system more clearly — what their choices are and the impact these choices may have, both in terms of effectiveness and cost. This is one of the ways we have committed ourselves to setting a new standard for the delivery of health benefits.

But in setting a new standard, we apply the idea of transparency even more broadly than that. Unlike some, we believe transparency should be a principle that applies to all parts of the system, not just to the delivery system. We need to be more transparent, too, so that people buying and using their health benefits will know what they’re buying and enjoy their full value.

In this spirit, we have embarked on a journey unique in the industry. Over the past two years, we have sought to verify that our core clinical services and the organizational processes that support them meet the quality standards established by the International Organization for Standardization known as “ISO-9000,” a set of quality management standards that in its simplest terms asks us to say what we do; do what we say; prove it; and improve it! All of our clinical programs and the operations that support them will be ISO-registered. This will mean more dependable and predictable service and a sharper focus on improving the experience of our customers — consumers, business customers, physicians and other care providers, too.

Along the way, we’ve tried to create more transparent work spaces for our own employees — tearing down the walls, eliminating private offices and opening up our work environments to encourage communication, creativity and interdepartmental coordination. And it’s worked! We’ve seen tremendous change in what departments know about each other, how they interact with each other and how ideas cross-fertilize. It’s been amazing to see how some process disciplines, married to a transparent work environment, have stimulated innovation in what we do and how we do it.

We aspire to nothing less than to change the way health benefits are provided, and in doing so, how they are perceived by everyone in the system. You will be seeing those changes in action. Let us know what you think.
Sincerely,

Jonathan T. Lord, M.D.
Chief Innovation Officer