HMO MERGER ACHIEVED; CAREAMERICA JOINS WITH BLUE SHIELD.Byline: Ben Sullivan Daily News Staff Writer Blue Shield of California Blue Shield of California is a not-for-profit health insurance provider headquartered in San Francisco, California. An independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Blue Shield of California is an incorporated, wholly owned subsidiary of California Physicians' completed its purchase of Woodland Hills-based CareAmerica Health Plans on Wednesday, more than doubling the managed care company's Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, presence. Nonprofit Blue Shield Blue Shield A US not-for-profit health care insurer that is a reimbursement intermediary for physicians. Cf Blue Cross. , based in San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden , paid $195 million to CareAmerica parent company UniHealth for the 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, and for the related CareAmerica Life Insurance. The purchase received California Department of Corporations approval Nov. 10. The purchase adds CareAmerica's 265,000 HMO enrollees to Blue Shield's Southern California ranks, including 48,000 Medicare members. Blue Shield to date has concentrated on Northern California Northern California, sometimes referred to as NorCal, is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The region contains the San Francisco Bay Area, the state capital, Sacramento; as well as the substantial natural beauty of the redwood forests, the northern , with fewer than 200,000 Southern California enrollees before the purchase. Blue Shield spokeswoman Lisa Citron citron (sĭt`rən), name for a tree (Citrus medica) of the family Rutaceae (orange family), and for its fruit, the earliest of the citrus fruits to be introduced to Europe from Asia. said it is too early to tell whether the merger will lead to any layoffs of potentially redundant employees at the two organizations. ``Even though we understand that that's an important question for all of us, there are no answers yet,'' Citron said. A transition team is preparing an integration plan for the companies that must receive Department of Corporations approval, Citron said, and any significant staffing changes will likely be outlined in that document. Citron said she did not know when the plan would be complete. The purchase of CareAmerica is unusual in that it involves the conversion of the for-profit CareAmerica into a nonprofit entity. Alan Tomiyama, a spokesman for the California Association of Health Plans, said he knew of no similar conversion to nonprofit status by a major health plan in California in recent years. Industry analysts said the proposed deal reflects the growing competition nonprofit managed care companies like Blue Shield face from their for-profit counterparts. Also, as health care providers, including physicians and hospitals, band together to gain more negotiating strength against managed care companies, and employers join forces to wrangle lower premiums from them, HMOs are starting to experience a boomerang boomerang (b  `mərăng'), special form of throwing stick, used mainly by the aborigines of Australia. effect: The very consolidation they helped initiate by squeezing suppliers and purchasers is forcing the HMOs themselves to consolidate further. CareAmerica's parent company UniHealth is a Woodland Hills-based holding company that owns hospitals, physician management and other health care companies. UniHealth and Blue Shield considered a merger in 1993 but no transaction ever took place. Tuesday's purchase makes Blue Shield one of the largest HMO operators in Southern California, behind the likes of Pasadena-based Kaiser Permanente, PacifiCare of California in Cyprus, and Woodland Hills-based Foundation Health Systems, each of which has more than 1 million Southern California HMO enrollees. |
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