Blue Cross of California and Brown & Toland Reach Early Agreement on HMO Contract.Business Editors THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. & SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 8, 2001 No Disruption of Care for Blue Cross HMO HMO health maintenance organization. HMO n. A corporation that is financed by insurance premiums and has member physicians and professional staff who provide curative and preventive medicine within certain financial, Members Assigned to Largest IPA IPA - International Phonetic Alphabet in San Francisco Blue Cross of California, the California operating subsidiary of WellPoint Health Networks Inc. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :WLP WLP WebLogic Portal (Bea Systems) WLP Wafer Level Packaging WLP Women's Learning Partnership (Bethesda, MD) WLP Workplace Learning & Performance WLP World Library Partnership, Inc. ), and Brown & Toland Medical Group today announced that they have reached an early agreement to continue providing quality medical services to approximately 32,500 Blue Cross members at the medical group's facilities in San Francisco. The existing contract was scheduled to expire on July 31, 2001, if the parties had otherwise not reached an agreement. "Blue Cross is very pleased to reach this agreement with Brown & Toland," said Curtis Terry, vice president, network development for Northern California. "We've made a commitment to our members to provide a broad choice of quality medical groups. Attaining an agreement this early in the process signifies that we can achieve solutions with our provider partners cooperatively and without a public showdown. Now our members can continue to have the access to the caregivers they prefer." "We are pleased to reach agreement with Blue Cross," said Lin Ho, M.D., president and chairman of the board of Brown & Toland Medical Group. "It is important that medical groups receive adequate compensation from HMOs so that our physicians, in turn, can provide proper care to their patients." The agreement will continue to cover the medical group until July 31, 2002. There will be no disruption in service to Blue Cross HMO members seeking care and services from Brown & Toland, and patients may continue to see their assigned physicians or physician of choice. A national leader in managed care, Brown & Toland Medical Group is the largest Independent Practice Association (IPA) in San Francisco, with more than 1,600 physicians serving more than 240,000 patients. Brown & Toland is a three-time winner of the prestigious Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH PBGH Pacific Business Group on Health ) Blue Ribbon Award for medical excellence. For more information, visit its Web site at www.brownandtoland.com. Blue Cross of California (www.bluecrossca.com), with 5.4 million medical members in the state, is the California operating subsidiary of WellPoint Health Networks Inc., one of the nation's largest publicly traded health-care companies. WellPoint serves the health-care needs of more than 7.7 million medical and more than 38 million specialty members nationally. WellPoint offers a broad spectrum of quality network-based health products, including open access PPO PPO abbr. preferred provider organization PPO Managed care Preferred provider organization, see there Infectious disease Pleuropneumonia-like organism, see there , POS (1) See point of sale and packet over SONET. (2) "Parent over shoulder." See digispeak. POS - point of sale and hybrid products, HMO and specialty products. Specialty products include pharmacy benefit management A Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) is a third party administrator of prescription drug programs. They are primarily responsible for processing and paying prescription drug claims. , dental, utilization management, vision, mental health, life and disability insurance, long term care insurance, flexible spending accounts, COBRA administration and Medicare supplements. |
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