Florida Blue Showcases Dedication to Healthcare Innovation: Announces Founding Partnership with Lake Nona Institute

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Oct. 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Florida Blue, Florida's Blue Cross and Blue Shield company, is pleased to announce today that it has become a founding partner of the Lake Nona Institute, a non-profit organization that is developing health and sustainability programs in Orlando's 7,000-acre Lake Nona community. Florida Blue has already begun capitalizing on the partnership by working with some of Lake Nona Institute's key partners to help people and communities achieve better health.

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Florida Blue believes that it can play an influential role leading major health care innovations in the state of Florida by becoming a founding partner of the Lake Nona Institute and it expects this partnership to incubate, activate and measure the impact of innovative technologies and programs that can become models for building healthy, sustainable and inspired communities.

"Today's announcement is a true testament to our commitment to meaningful and barrier-shattering modernization in health care that will prove beneficial to all," said Patrick Geraghty, chairman and CEO of Florida Blue. "We are extremely excited to be on the ground floor of this type of innovation in the state of Florida, and we look forward to sharing the results of our efforts with the entire health care community."

"The addition of Florida Blue as a founding sponsor of the Lake Nona Institute further advances our shared vision to accelerate the impact of innovation to improve health outcomes and the quality of life at Lake Nona, throughout Florida, and beyond," said Thaddeus Seymour, Jr., Ph.D., president of the Lake Nona Institute.

Initially, Florida Blue will begin testing innovative integrated consumer and provider experiences to drive improved collaboration between these parties with the goal of producing better health for individuals and communities, while improving overall quality and lowering costs. Florida Blue is already seeing positive results in its Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) efforts, seeing improvements in hospital admissions and emergency room visits. PCMH is an approach to providing comprehensive primary care that drives stronger partnerships between individual patients, their personal doctors, and when appropriate, the patient's family. The PCMH goal is to allow better access to health care, increase satisfaction with care and improve overall health. After its first year, providers participating in the Florida Blue PCMH scored better than non-participating doctors in clinical quality metrics – 79 percent of the time. They also reduced emergency room utilization by 12 percent, compared to non-participating providers.

Florida Blue joins industry leaders such as GE, Cisco, and Wellness & Prevention, Inc. (a Johnson & Johnson company) as founding members of the Lake Nona Institute, which aims at driving innovation throughout health care in significant ways.

The Lake Nona Institute is a non-profit, community-focused company in Orlando that Florida Blue has joined as a founding partner to:

• Explore innovations in the science of medicine
• Pilot sustainable community models for healthy nutrition
• Pilot integration between health benefit design and wellness programs
• Develop and test health data interchange in a community setting

About Florida Blue

Florida Blue, Florida's Blue Cross and Blue Shield company, is a leader in Florida's health care industry. Our mission is to help people and communities achieve better health. Florida Blue has approximately 4 million health care members and serves 15.5 million people in 16 states through its affiliated companies. Florida Blue is a not-for- profit, policyholder-owned, tax-paying mutual company. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., it is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, an association of independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies. For more information, visit www.FloridaBlue.com.

SOURCE Florida Blue