Aetna Signs Four-Year Contracts with St. Luke's Hospital and Mayo Clinic.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Aetna announced today that it has signed a four-year agreement with St. Luke's Hospital, renewing the company's long-term contractual relationship with the hospital.

Under the agreement, members of all Aetna's managed care plans in the area can continue visiting St. Luke's for covered health care services, and receive in-network benefits.

Aetna also announced it has signed a new four-year contract with Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, enabling members of the company's preferred provider organization (PPO) plans, and certain of the company's point-of-service (POS) plans, to receive care at in-network benefits at the clinic. Mayo Clinic had not previously been part of Aetna's Jacksonville-area network. The new agreement takes effect Nov. 15.

"St. Luke's Hospital is a very important part of Aetna's Jacksonville-area provider network," said Ruth Fricke, head of network operations for Aetna in Florida. "And we're especially pleased that Mayo Clinic has been added for our POS and PPO plan members. Our aim is to offer Aetna members access to a broad network of hospitals and physicians, and these agreements are consistent with that goal."

Aetna provides health benefits to nearly 1.1 million members in Florida, including approximately 200,000 in the Jacksonville area. Jacksonville members have access to a network of 12 hospitals and more than 2,000 physicians.

"St. Luke's Hospital is pleased to continue its relationship with Aetna, in order to provide superb service to Aetna customers, our patients," said Dr. George Bartley, chairman of the Board of Governors at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville. "We are also excited to begin a relationship with Aetna's PPO and POS members at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. This new clinic agreement will give Aetna patients access to Mayo's team approach to diagnosis and treatment, a single electronic medical record, and highly specialized sub-specialty care."

Mayo Clinic is a multi-specialty medical clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. The staff includes 328 physicians working in more than 40 specialties to provide diagnosis, treatment and surgery. Patients who need hospitalization are admitted to nearby St. Luke's Hospital, a 289-bed Mayo facility. Visit www.mayoclinic.org/news/ for all the news from Mayo Clinic.

As one of the nation's leading providers of health care, dental, pharmacy, group life, disability and long-term care benefits, Aetna puts information and helpful resources to work for its approximately 13.6 million medical members, 11.6 million dental members, 8.3 million pharmacy members and 13.3 million group insurance members to help them make better informed decisions about their health care and protect their finances against health-related risks. Aetna provides easy access to cost-effective health care through a nationwide network of more than 646,000 health care professionals, including over 385,000 primary care and specialist doctors and 3,908 hospitals. For more information, please visit www.aetna.com. (Figures as of September 30, 2004)