Hmo Combine Backs Attempts To Develop A Patient Bill Of Rights

Passage of a patient bill of rights to make the nation’s health maintenance organizations (HMOs) more accountable is becoming increasingly doubtful this session of Congress.

“But this is an issue that will persevere,” vows lobbyist Karen Merrikin.

“There’s too much that needs to be done to restore consumer trust in managed-care plans for this effort just to wither and fade away,” she said.

But Merrikin is no advocate for a consumer watchdog coalition or hired mouthpiece for health care litigants, as one might expect.

Merrikin is director of public policy and governmental relations for a combine of nonprofit health maintenance cooperatives that have broken ranks with most of the nation’s publicly traded HMOs to campaign for more patient rights - not fewer.

Her employer, Kaiser/Group Health, is a three-way affiliation among Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente, Group Health Puget Sound and Group Health Northwest in Spokane. They joined forces a year ago “It is not a top-down holding company,” Merrikin emphasized.

“It’s an affiliation that enables the three separate marketing plans to use their combined authority and efforts more effectively for desired ends.”

The effort to pass a patient bill of rights, she said, is an excellent example of how the combine exerts clout. Kaiser Permanente is the nation’s largest HMO with 8.6 million members in 19 states. Here in the Pacific Northwest the co-ops serve 1.3 million in Washington, Idaho and Oregon.

If anyone is more committed to the bill of rights effort than she is as lobbyist for the legislation, says Merrikin, it is Kaiser/Group Health Chairman and President Phil Nudelman. He also is chairman of the American Association of Health Plans, representing 1,000-plus health plans serving 140 million persons, which makes the pro-rights stand by this region’s co-ops more remarkable.

Nudelman, currently on vacation out of the country, could not be reached for comment. But in Spokane, Maureen Goins, communications director for Group Health Northwest, said the three plans are “all in step.”

“We have all committed to voluntary compliance with the President’s Bill of Rights within three years,” said Goins. “There are three steps to compliance for us.

“We are in step one now - going through an analysis of a practical implementation plan to come into compliance within three years. We are looking at the eight different areas in the Bill of Rights and seeing, if we are not in compliance, how we can get there in the set time frame.

“Group Health is so consumer based there is nothing in the Bill of Rights that we don’t support in principle and about 99 percent of what is advocated we are already doing,” said Goins. “So it makes sense that we would back a real consumer-based legitimate consumer protection concern.

Said Merrikin: “At present, we are not endorsing any particular one of the several bills in Congress. We are watching all with interest. All have elements we can support, and other elements that are problematic.

“We are actively working for enforceable national standards, and we are striving for voluntary compliance. In the area of voluntary compliance, a large part of our energy internally is going toward doing the things we can do voluntarily. Some other things require legislation.”

Merrikin said, “I don’t know if any legislation will pass this year. I’d say it is on a middle burner and simmering.”

Downtown plan may include pedestrian mall

The city’s new downtown Spokane plan now being drafted after months of meetings with hundreds of members of the community probably won’t include a Lincoln Street Bridge.

But it will include a conceptual pedestrian mall on Riverside that would serve as a town square or community meeting place.

At least that’s how work on the plan is shaping up so far, reports urban planner Bill Bell, who is heading up the project for the city.

At the final community meeting, members of the public turned thumbs down on a Lincoln Street span by a margin of nearly two to one (38 percent pro, 58 percent con).

But by an even wider margin (66 percent to 21 percent) the public favored carving a city plaza out of Riverside between Wall and Howard.

‘Definitely Downtown’ campaign honored

The Downtown Spokane Partnership has been named winner of the International Downtown Association’s 1998 Special Achievement Award for Marketing.

The award recognizes the excellence of the partnership’s “Definitely Downtown” promotional campaign created by marketing director Annie Matlow and the Spokane firm of Warner, Birchell & Hall.