Friday 1 September 2017
VitalityHealth signs new three-year deal with Alliance Health Group
Birmingham-based Alliance Health Group has recently announced the continuation of its relationship with VitalityHealth in a deal that will extend their affiliation. The association between the two companies began in 2011, when Alliance Health Group became the sole provider of Vitality’s consultant panel, and the stability of the relationship has now been further reinforced with the signing of a new three-year deal.
VitalityHealth is one of the UK’s leading and most innovative private medical insurers. The company enables people to understand more about their personal health, rewards them for healthy living and protects them when things go wrong. The support of Alliance Health Group provides VitalityHealth with a number of key differentiators in the highly competitive health insurance market, which in 2015 was estimated to be worth almost £4.7 billion.
Alliance Health Group advocates a unique ‘consultant-led’ approach, in which a network of senior medical consultants not only triage every patient from day one, but also determine their clinical pathway, selecting the most appropriate doctors and most suitable premises on a case-by-case basis. This approach not only means that patients are given the most cost-effective pathway, but also receive faster treatment – seeing the right doctor, first time in 99.5% of cases.
Working together, Alliance Health Group and VitalityHealth have developed a process that delivers significant cost saving efficiencies, outstanding clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction ratings of over 95%, which are significantly above industry benchmarks. To achieve these levels of satisfaction, VitalityHealth staff undergo high-level training in claims’ assessment and these techniques are applied from the first moment a member makes contact. Once a member’s claim has been assessed they are transferred directly to Alliance Health Group’s call centre, at which point the patient is triaged effectively to ensure they see the right medical expert, first time, whatever the speciality.
This philosophy is key to why the relationship is so successful according to Dr Keith Klintworth, Deputy CEO at VitalityHealth, who said, “Working with Alliance Health Group has enabled VitalityHealth to work alongside the consultant providers and build a strategic relationship for the greater good of our customers, giving them an enhanced, best practice journey through their claim.”
Key to cost containment for any health insurer is knowing the most efficient clinical pathway, and Alliance Health Group’s rigorous data analysis processes enable it to constantly re-visit its protocols to determine where more efficiency can be gained, ensuring cost containment without compromising clinical quality. Alliance Health Group will work closely with VitalityHealth in the coming months on a large-scale data capture programme that will enable the analysis of the efficacy of specific procedures, with an aim of further streamlining the patient’s clinical journey.
To maximise the value and benefits of the Alliance Health Group relationship, VitalityHealth has now included ‘Consultant Select’ in its core product offering to all new members. Consultant Select relies on the fact that Alliance Health Group reviews every consultant on its list using a panel of medical peers, and selects the most appropriate clinician for each particular case. This quality assurance measure ensures the clinical needs of the patient are always at the forefront of each and every case.
The signing of the three-year deal has been welcomed by CEO at Alliance Health Group Ann Copsey, who said, “Our aim is to support patients through the most difficult of times and at the heart of this is our consultant-led philosophy that puts the medical expertise of our clinicians at the heart of patient care. This approach has proven to deliver both patient satisfaction and cost control, which we will continue to deliver to VitalityHealth and its members.”
ENDS