Of course, avoiding such oversight should not be the main motivation for improving quality, says Alan Zwerner, M.D., J.D., former chief medical officer of Health Net, a California HMO covering 2.3 million lives.
Happy customers mean healthy bottom lines.
With that in mind, Health Net launched an external review process last May to respond to demand for plan accountability. He left Health Net in December and is now a consultant. We wanted to do a better job, and doing a better job means people are less likely to litigate. Health Net wants its members to know that decisions made by providers and the plan can be challenged. The reason the external review process was launched was to respond to the needs of our customers to improve trust in the quality of decision making and in the speed of decision making.