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Hospital Announces New HMO Contracts
By: Raymond T. Hino
Description: CIGNA and PacifiCare added to TVHD.
Topics: Tehachapi Hospital
Posted by RaymondHino
Wed Nov 1, 2006 09:26:51 PST
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Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District (TVHD) CEO Raymond Hino announced this week that TVHD has entered into 2 new HMO/PPO contracts to better serve the citizens of Tehachapi. The first agreement is with CIGNA. The CIGNA agreement goes into effect on November 1, 2006. “We are very excited about this new agreement that will allow CIGNA PPO and HMO patients to use all of the services of Tehachapi Hospital,” said Hino. “We have been in negotiations with CIGNA for nearly a full year and it wasn’t easy but in the end we agreed on a contract that will be beneficial to both CIGNA and to TVHD.” The second contract that will soon go into effect is with PacifiCare including its Medicare plan, Senior Advantage. At the October 18 TVHD Board meeting this contract was approved with an anticipated start date for mid-November. Like the CIGNA agreement this contract would cover both HMO and PPO patients covered by PacifiCare. “I would encourage the people of our community to ask their employer to consider using either CIGNA or PacifiCare for their employee health plan so that they can use our local hospital. Also, be sure and ask your doctor if they will contract with CIGNA and PacifiCare so that you can use Tehachapi Hospital.” We are very excited about these new contracts which we expect will lead to more contracts for the citizens of our community,” said Hino. He added that in addition to these 2 big contracts, Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District has also added a very small agreement with Kaiser Permanente. "We recently reached an agreement to provide clinical laboratory services for Kaiser Permanente Home Health patients in greater Tehachapi. Under this agreement Kaiser Home Health nurses will bring blood to Tehachapi Hospital for testing. This will not affect the overwhelming majority of Kaiser members in our area since most are not home health patients. However, it is a start. I'm hopeful that this will be the foot in the door that we need to provide more services locally for Kaiser members," Hino said.
