National Business Coalition on Health Recognizes Health Plans for Efforts to Improve Community Health



Today the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH), a non-profit organization of employer-based health coalitions, honored three health plans with the 2007 eValue8 Health Plan Innovation Awards during its annual conference. The awards, sponsored by Novo Nordisk, identify and recognize the innovative and creative work of providers developing and implementing programs that address critical health care issues.

"We applaud these health plans for demonstrating their commitment to improving the value of purchaser health care spending," said Andrew Webber, president and CEO of NBCH. "By sharing these ground-breaking programs with other health plans and purchasers we hope to improve community health systems across the country."

The 2007 eValue8 Health Plan Innovation Award winners:

-- BlueChoice HealthPlan (Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina) for The Great Expectations Migraine Program which was started in October 2002 with the goal of improving the continuity of care and treatment for members with severe and recurrent headaches.

-- Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan's Collaborative Quality Initiatives (CQIs) developed to address varying issues that involve the quality of patient care in Michigan. CQIs are prospective clinical registries in which multiple participating institutions collect and share data to improve the quality of care for certain areas of health care or "initiatives." By partnering with providers to implement regional CQIs, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan was able to provide resources to help transform care in several surgical services across the entire state.

-- Kaiser Permanente, Northern California for its Family Violence Prevention Program -- a comprehensive approach to reduce the impact of domestic violence among Kaiser Permanente health plan members through screening, identification and referral.

Approximately 50 plans applied for the awards as part of information submitted on "Best Practices and Innovations" in NBCH's 2007 eValue8 submission tool, an annual evaluation of health plans used by employers and business coalitions. The program information was reviewed by a selection committee of eValue8 reviewers. Based on creativity, effectiveness and replicability, the submissions were narrowed down to ten finalists, with three final winners.

About the National Business Coalition on Health and eValue8

Celebrating 15 years of value based purchasing, NBCH is a national, non-profit, membership organization of nearly 70 employer-based health care coalitions, representing over 7,000 employers and 34 million employees and their dependents across the United States. NBCH and its members are dedicated to value based purchasing of health care services through the collective action of public and private purchasers. eValue8 is a product of the National Business Coalition on Health and is the nation's leading evidence-based request for information (RFI) tool used by coalitions and major employers to assess and manage the quality of their health care vendors. For additional information visit



National Business Coalition on Health Recognizes Health Plans for Efforts to Improve Community Health