WellPoint Health Networks' California HMO Receives Three-Year, NCQA Full Accreditation.WOODLAND HILLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 3, 1998-- CaliforniaCare, Blue Cross of California's 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, , has received full accreditation from the National Committee for Quality Assurance National Committee for Quality Assurance Medical practice A private, not-for-profit organization which has become the leading accreditor of managed care plans; in site visits, NCQA reviewers evaluate a managed care plan in terms of quality management, physicians' (NCQA NCQA National Committee on Quality Assurance, see there ). Blue Cross of California is the California 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. ), one of the nation's largest publicly traded managed care companies. Full accreditation is granted for a period of three years to those plans that have excellent programs for continuous quality improvement and meet NCQA's rigorous standards. NCQA is an independent, not-for-profit organization that evaluates managed care organizations. NCQA's mission is to provide information that enables purchasers and consumers of managed health care to distinguish among plans based on quality, thereby allowing them to make more informed decisions. "We are very pleased with the full accreditation that we have received from NCQA," said Jeffrey Rideout, M.D., vice president of quality management for Blue Cross. "We have developed and implemented more intensive and comprehensive quality assurance programs, such as extensive credentialing programs for network providers, member services programs that focus on protecting members rights and quality management programs that monitor the delivery of our members' health care." "We feel that quality is a critical factor in the delivery of our health-care services," added Ron Williams, Blue Cross of California president. "The NCQA accreditation demonstrates our commitment to continue to provide our CaliforniaCare members with access to quality health care with products and services that are designed to meet their changing needs throughout their lives." Blue Cross of California, with nearly 4.4 million medical members, is the California operating subsidiary of WellPoint Health Networks Inc., one of the nation's largest publicly traded managed care companies. Based in Woodland Hills, WellPoint serves the health-care needs of more than 6.7 million medical and more than 22 million specialty members nationally. WellPoint offers a broad spectrum of quality network-based health products including HMO, PPO PPO abbr. preferred provider organization PPO Managed care Preferred provider organization, see there Infectious disease Pleuropneumonia-like organism, see there and specialty managed care 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, flexible spending accounts, COBRA administration, Medicare supplements, and 24-hour integrated, network-based workers' compensation workers' compensation, payment by employers for some part of the cost of injuries, or in some cases of occupational diseases, received by employees in the course of their work. coverage.
CONTACT: WellPoint Health Networks Inc., Woodland Hills
Cynthia Coulter, 818/703-3046, Media
John Cygul, 818/703-4321, Investors
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