Health Care Service Corporation Opens C1 Innovation Lab

CHICAGO, Aug. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), the nation's largest customer-owned health insurer and operator of Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, today announced the launch of the Customer First (C1) Innovation Lab in Dallas. The 32,000-square-foot facility will serve as the company's primary hub for collaboration, incubation and development of new products and services. Efforts of employees at the C1 Innovation Lab will focus on addressing company-specific and industry-wide employer challenges like rising pharmacy costs, in-patient hospital stays, cost and quality variations among providers and health care access and affordability.

The C1 Innovation Lab will develop health care solutions for national employers by focusing its core work in the following ways:

• Co-located Business Operations: Customer service and health care management teams will collaborate on-site to improve care coordination, health outcomes and the member experience.
• Dedicated Design Team: A multi-disciplinary team of strategists, design thinkers and creators will evaluate concepts, pilot products and processes and rapidly bring solutions to the market.
• Collaboration Space: Clients, providers, consultants and academic centers will be welcomed to work with design, customer service and health care management teams to develop solutions that reduce unnecessary health care costs.

"When considering how HCSC could better service our customers both now and in the future, we realized that there needed to be deeper collaboration and ideation between our business teams and the customers, providers and academic centers that we do business with," said Kevin Cassidy, president, national accounts, HCSC. "C1 will provide the cross-functional, flexible environment needed to directly address customer challenges and bring innovative concepts to fruition faster. This will, in turn, help us to get our members access to the new tools and resources they need to realize improved health outcomes faster."

Summer Wright Collins, who joined HCSC in June 2016 as divisional vice president, will manage operations at the C1 Innovation Lab. A former vice president of population health at Children's Health System of Texas, Collins most recently served as a public health consultant focused on health care innovation, transformation and quality improvement programs. In her role with HCSC, Collins will lead a team of more than 80 full-time employees focused on addressing specific client challenges with improving the affordability of care and health outcomes as its core mission. The cross-functional C1 team includes nurses, customer advocates, care coordinators, researchers, designers and data analysts to complement the already strong and growing foundation of customer-focused innovation capabilities at HCSC.

"Part of our model for innovation includes anticipating and listening to the real challenges our employers are facing and providing real-time solutions that make sense for their businesses," said Collins. "It's not about a one-size-fits-all approach. To truly innovate within a customer-focused culture, we have to first hear the challenge, then apply collaborative design principles, develop unique prototypes, test and perfect our concepts. That is the kind of work we'll be doing at the C1 Innovation Lab to help improve outcomes for everyone in the health care ecosystem."

HCSC will also house its new Security Operations Center onsite at the C1 Innovation Lab. The Security Operations Center will be HCSC's central location for conducting around-the-clock cyber security investigations, leveraging industry leading security monitoring and response tools. Seasoned security analysts will have the ability to engage with other cyber defense experts such as incident response, computer forensics and others.

To learn more about the C1 Innovation Lab, visit www.c1InnovationLab.com.

About Health Care Service Corporation
Health Care Service Corporation is the country's largest customer-owned health insurer and fourth largest health insurer overall, with nearly 15 million members in its Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. A Mutual Legal Reserve Company, HCSC is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. HCSC has a rating of A+ (Strong) from Standard and Poor's, A1 (Good) from Moody's and A (Excellent) from A.M. Best Company. For more information, please visit HCSC.com, visit our Facebook page or follow us at www.twitter.com/HCSC.

SOURCE Health Care Service Corporation

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