Aetna President and CEO John W. Rowe, M.D., Announces National Implementation of More Flexible Physician Contracting Strategy.

Business/Technology Editors

HARTFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 19, 2000

Aetna (NYSE:AET) President and CEO John W. Rowe, M.D., announced today that all individual and group-contracted physicians participating in Aetna's networks will have more choices in health plan participation beginning in 2001. Physicians will have the option to elect to participate in all Aetna products, HMO-based products only or PPO-based products only.

"We encourage physicians to participate in all Aetna products to maintain important patient-physician relationships and to give our members the maximum choice of physicians regardless of their type of health plan," Dr. Rowe said. "However, Aetna is modifying our previous policy and no longer will include the all-products clause in our standard contracts.

"Today's announcement reflects our commitment to work as a partner with physicians in providing patients with access to quality, affordable health care. One of my highest priorities is improving physician relationships with the goal of improving health care quality. Many physicians have told us that our all-products policy has been a concern. This important change in policy reflects ongoing discussions with physicians and with medical societies around the country, including New Jersey, Florida and California."

Aetna expects that providing physicians with greater choice of health plan participation will encourage those not currently participating to join Aetna's network of more than 300,000 health care professionals.

"Creating a more flexible contracting policy is just one example of changes we're making to reduce the `hassle factor,' " Dr. Rowe said. "We are working on other physician policy changes on a market-by-market basis because we recognize that local needs should be addressed. For example, earlier this year we announced an important agreement with the state of Texas, and Aetna Chairman William H. Donaldson announced initiatives in Connecticut at a meeting with the Connecticut State Medical Society. A number of changes also have been announced in Georgia and Virginia in collaboration with medical societies, and today we're making several public announcements with state medical societies."

The all-products policy change will apply to all nonhospital-based physicians. In the case of existing contracts, physicians will have the opportunity to opt out of a product line (i.e., HMO-based products or PPO-based products) by giving Aetna 90 days' notice prior to their contracts' renewal date. In the case of new contracts, the change will be effective as of January 2001, subject only to obtaining any required state regulatory approvals.

Aetna is the nation's leading provider of health care and related benefits, serving more than 19 million health care members, 14 million dental members and 11 million group insurance customers.