BLOOMFIELD, Conn., Oct. 4, 2005 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Web Marketing Association has awarded a 2005 Standard of Excellence WebAward to myCIGNAplans.com, the online pre-enrollment decision support Website for CIGNA Choice Fund(SM) consumer-directed health plans.
"At CIGNA, we're focused on providing consumers with reliable, insightful information that helps them make decisions and choices about their health care plans and health care needs," said Michael Showalter, vice president of consumerism for CIGNA HealthCare.
Showalter noted that many consumers are now or soon will be in the process of making benefit plan selections during their employer's open enrollment period. "Offering Internet tools like myCIGNAplans.com for this crucial undertaking is just one of the ways we provide valuable information to consumers so they can make decisions based on their own personalized information and preferences. We are pleased that our efforts have been recognized."
Approximately 250,000 consumers will have access to myCIGNAplans.com to help them make benefit decisions during the 2005 fall enrollment season. Within this award-winning Website, consumers can calculate benefit costs across different CIGNA HealthCare plans, review providers and evaluate benefit program features, and model various health scenarios to determine how health events may impact their medical and pharmacy costs.
The myCIGNAplans.com site earned a WebAward for "Outstanding Achievement in Website Development" based on a review of features designed to offer consumers an unbiased and personalized side-by-side comparison of the benefit features and costs of available CIGNA HealthCare plans.
According to CIGNA Choice Fund(SM) customer Laureen Riley Feinman, compensation and benefits manager, Colonial Pipeline Company: "Employees at Colonial Pipeline found myCIGNAplans.com to be a useful resource for understanding how a consumer-directed plan works, the features it provides and, because the site is customized to show my company's plan designs and premium contributions, it's quite easy to use.
"This site allows my team to focus on other important tasks, rather than answering employees' questions about which plan to choose. Further, CIGNA provided a toll-free hotline that my employees could call for any additional questions they had during enrollment," she added. "We had better than expected enrollment in the first year of our consumer-directed plan offering and I believe the myCIGNAplans.com site had a lot to do with it."
Now in its 9th year, the Web Marketing Association WebAwards is a premier annual award competition that judges Website development against an ever-increasing Internet standard and against peer sites within their industry.
In addition to providing information through the myCIGNA.com pre-enrollment tool, this year CIGNA HealthCare has significantly enhanced myCIGNA.com, the personalized Website available to all CIGNA HealthCare members upon enrollment, integrating new online features including:
Hospital Value Tool: helps consumers when choosing a hospital by offering a "star" rating system based on health care Patient Outcomes and Cost Efficiency for hospital treatments of specific medical conditions. This tool provides insight into cost and quality measures resulting in more informed health care consumers.
Prescription Drug Price Quote Tool: enables CIGNA Pharmacy members to get a "real-time" price quote from any pharmacy in CIGNA's network of over 52,000 retail pharmacies nationwide as well as from the CIGNA Tel-Drug home delivery pharmacy. The quote is based on the member's specific benefit plan and reflects the actual cost the member can expect to pay out-of-pocket for a given prescription drug at a specific pharmacy.
In addition to the WebAward, myCIGNAplans.com earned industry recognition in May 2005, receiving the "Best Technology Introduced by a Health Plan Organization for Employee/Consumer Choice" award at the 2005 Consumer Directed Health Care Conference & Expo.
About The Web Marketing Association
The Web Marketing Association was founded in 1997 to help set a high standard for Internet marketing and corporate web development on the World Wide Web. Staffed by volunteers, this organization is made up of Internet marketing, advertising, PR and design professionals from around the country who share an interest for improving the quality of advertising, marketing and promotion used to attract visitors to corporate Websites.
About CIGNA HealthCare
CIGNA HealthCare, headquartered in Bloomfield, Connecticut, provides medical benefits through managed care and indemnity health care plans, dental coverage, behavioral health coverage, and pharmacy benefits. "CIGNA HealthCare" refers to various operating subsidiaries of CIGNA Corporation . Products and services are provided by these operating subsidiaries and not by CIGNA Corporation.
CIGNA HealthCareCONTACT: Joseph Mondy of CIGNA HealthCare, +1-860-226-5499 orjoseph.mondy@cigna.com
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