Tufts, CIGNA form national alliance

Waltham. Mass.-based Tufts Health Plan, a nonprofit firm, is teaming with for-profit CIGNA HealthCare in a joint marketing arrangement.

The pact will open CIGNA's physician and hospital networks nationwide to employees of certain companies served by Tufts who live and work in regions outside of Tufts' New England home.

The agreement is expected to enable both Tufts and Bloomfield, Conn.-based CIGNA to reach out more effectively to win the business of companies whose workers are spread out across the country.

The companies will start pitching the alliance to plan sponsors in February. Employees whose firms choose the option can use the expanded network, incorporating Tufts and CIGNA physicians, starting in the last quarter of 2005, said Richard Gray, CIGNA vice president for business development.

The two plans will offer participation in the nationwide network to firms with at least 200 employees. Tufts members whose employers choose products enhanced with the CIGNA affiliation will be able to go to any physician in CIGNA's networks outside Massachusetts or Rhode Island, Gray said.

CIGNA has 12 million medical members; Tufts. 714,000. CIGNA has 400,000 doctors in its networks, encompassing every state, while Tufts has 20,000.

The two companies, which announced the alliance in December 2004, said they would work to establish a seamless disease management program that serves members of both companies.

Tufts has no interest in becoming a for-profit plan in the future, said Catherine Grant, a Tufts spokeswoman. "Tufts Health Plan is remaining Tufts Health Plan," she said.

The Massachusetts Medical Society supports insurance initiatives that open up more managed care networks to greater numbers of patients but needs to study the CIGNA-Tufts alliance as it takes shape, society spokesman Richard P. Gulla said.

The agreement appears similar to another strategic alliance between nonprofit Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and for-profit UnitedHealth Group, announced last August.

Massachusetts-based Harvard Pilgrim and Minneapolis-based United said they planned to market insurance jointly to national, self-insured employers with workers situated outside of Harvard Pilgrim's primary membership base in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. That coverage option, for companies with at least 1,000 employees, was to become available beginning Jan. 1.