Cigna's latest ACO initiative established in Indianapolis

Franciscan Alliance and Cigna have launched an accountable care initiative aimed at improving the quality of care for Cigna customers in the Indianapolis area.

The Franciscan Alliance Accountable Care Organization includes more than 600 local physicians and five Immediate Care Centers located throughout the Indianapolis area, as well as Franciscan St. Francis Hospitals in Indianapolis, Mooresville and Carmel.

Franciscan Alliance and Cigna will work together, sharing clinical and care management information to provide coordinated, comprehensive healthcare services. Each organization will have aligned incentives to improve healthcare quality and patient service while reducing costs.

The long-term goal of the initiative, which launched Jan. 1, is to build a delivery model that improves quality through better coordination of care, while taking unnecessary or duplicative costs out of the healthcare system, reducing costs for Cigna customers and their employers, according to the release.

Critical to the program’s success are complex case managers employed by Franciscan Alliance who will become part of the physician-led care team and serve as clinical care coordinators. They help patients with chronic conditions or other health challenges navigate the healthcare system. For example, they identify patients discharged from the hospital who might be at risk for readmission, help patients get the follow-up care or screenings they need, identify any issues related to medications and help prevent chronic conditions from worsening.

The care coordinators use patient-specific data from Cigna to help them identify patients in need of these services and are aligned to a team of Cigna case managers to ensure a high degree of collaboration between the two organizations. Care coordinators can also help patients schedule appointments, provide health education and refer patients to the Cigna health management and wellness programs that may be available to them through their employer’s benefit plan.

Cigna is now engaged in more than 50 collaborative accountable care initiatives in 22 states, encompassing nearly 510,000 Cigna customers and more than 14,000 doctors, including more than 6,500 primary care physicians and more than 7,500 specialists. Cigna launched its first collaborative accountable care program in 2008, and its goal is to have 100 of them in place with 1 million customers by the end of 2014.