HealthPartners
Jean Jantzen knows the value of a co-op; she spent most of her career working for one. These days, the retiree is appreciating how important a cooperative can be to her health.
Jean is one of the nearly 730,000 members of HealthPartners Inc., the nation's largest consumer-governed nonprofit health care organization. The co-op provides medical and dental services and insurance coverage for members in Minnesota and western Wisconsin.
Increasingly, Americans are viewing cooperatives as avenues to affordable, quality health care. Cooperatives operate in virtually every area of the health care sector. They keep the costs of health care services, drugs and insurance reasonable; help nonprofit hospitals and locally owned pharmacies remain independent; and improve the quality of home-based health care and assisted living.
HealthPartners excels at both affordability and member-patient care. Since implementing its electronic medical records database in 1997, the co-op has helped doctors ensure that patients with chronic illness get the care they need. And Jean and her fellow members enjoy wellness programs tailored to different life stages, visits with doctors via the Internet, a telephone service for pre- and post-pregnancy care, and a free hotline answered by registered nurses.
Such services have earned the co-op the highest rankings possible from the foremost authority on health plan quality, the National Committee for Quality Assurance.
Learn more about HealthPartners at www.healthpartners.com.