Covered benefits, deductibles, co-payments or co-insurance of current university employees will not be affected
COLUMBIA, Mo. – The University of Missouri System is dedicated to providing the most competitive benefits with the best value for the price for its employees, and after an extensive Request for Proposal (RFP) process, has selected United Healthcare as its new partner for employee medical benefit plan administration. The University of Missouri Board of Curators approved the change from the current medical benefit plan administrator, Coventry/Aetna, to United Healthcare today during the board’s annual June meeting on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus. The change, effective January 1, 2016, will not affect the covered benefits, deductibles, co-payments or co-insurance of current University employees, as the university is self-insured.
The university routinely conducts a competitive RFP process to ensure that the administrative fees, administrative services and network discounts associated with its current medical benefit plan are competitive in the market. Following initial RFP responses, the university invited qualified finalists to finalist meetings, while visiting each of the operations sites to further quantify which provider would be selected as the long-term partner.
“United Healthcare demonstrated strong commitment and capabilities throughout the entire procurement process, and as such, we believe their proposed offering aligns best with the long-term goals and strategies of the university as it relates to healthcare administration and management,” Betsy Rodriguez, vice president for Human Resources, said. “It is also significant that the changeover from our current provider to United Healthcare will occur with minimal physician/patient disruption,” she said.
In addition to the basic benefits for employees remaining unchanged after the new plan goes into effect on January 1, 2016, the United Healthcare plan will also offer a broader network than the current plan, as some of the claims that are currently out of the network with Coventry will be in-network with United.
Areas evaluated during the decision-making process included network and financial capabilities, customer service model, comprehensive analytics, account management resources and network discounts. The combination of the RFP evaluation, along with the scoring of the finalist meetings and site visits prompted the university to select United Healthcare.
Retired medical benefits will continue to be administered by Coventry/Aetna.
Reviewed 2015-06-25