Humana eyes larger footprint in Nevada

By Nicole Lucht

Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Humana is taking advantage of its acquisition of UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage business, Secure Horizons, to make its mark in the commercial health insurance market.

With the 27,000 Medicare policies it acquired last year from UnitedHealthcare in Clark and Nye counties, the Louisville, Ky.-based company is setting the stage for expansion, focusing its efforts on signing up employers and their workforces.

Most likely it will be a health maintenance organization product.

Although the company left the Las Vegas market a few years back as an HMO provider because of stiff competition, it decided to capitalize on Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealthcare’s forced divestiture of its Medicare business as a precondition of its acquisition of Las Vegas-based Sierra Health Services, then the largest HMO plan in the valley.

Humana jumped back into the market, buying the Medicare business for $185 million. The federal government reimburses insurance companies on their Medicare Advantage products per plan participant based on expected costs.

The company doesn’t plan to spend all its efforts nurturing its Medicare business. Humana expects to begin offering individual and group health plans this year, said Oraida Roman, president of senior citizen products for Humana Nevada.

Humana already has a minor presence in Nevada, offering dental, vision and life insurance products, and a private-fee-for-service Medicare product to about 2,000 people statewide. Those plans, when offered in an area with a network of medical providers, such as HMOs, will convert to network-based by 2011 because of a new federal regulation to cut down on fraud by some such private plans.

“What is probably exciting about where Humana is today, as a result of our increased presence on the Medicare side, it has really enabled Humana to accelerate our interest in reestablishing our full Humana brand and footprint across the entire state ultimately,” Humana sales executive Denise Jewell said.

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Although the company won’t fix its gaze solely on its Medicare business, it intends to hold on to the Medicare Advantage policies it acquired last year through an aggressive outreach campaign.

The company met six times last year with its new customers, addressing the concerns Medicare beneficiaries had of one day being covered by UnitedHealthcare, and the next, by Humana.

“One of the things we really focused on during the acquisition was maintaining stability for that membership,” Roman said. “For our seniors, this was very, very traumatic that their insurance company changed, they hadn’t had a choice.”

This month Humana opened two customer service offices in the valley: Their Henderson and Summerlin locations were selected because the majority of their customers live there.

There, Humana’s Medicare Advantage customers can speak with a customer service representative for help with their coverage, as well as weekly wellness and social programs geared toward senior citizens, and sales lectures.

“We’ve done a lot to reassure everyone that while the name changed, hopefully what you’ll find is the benefits are very similar and the service is better,” Roman said. “One of the things that we are learning from our seniors is that they want personal service.”

Nationwide, Humana is one of the largest health insurers, covering about 11.7 million people, including its 4.5 million Medicare Advantage customers.

The guidance centers, as Humana terms them, are not a first for the company. Over the past 18 months, it has opened 15 across the country, including the first in Zephyrhills, Fla., a community in the Tampa Bay area, from which Roman hails.

Although the guidance centers are an extra expense to Humana’s Medicare business, “we find that good customer service pays for itself because if a member leaves because we didn’t serve them, that costs more.”