Allina announces joint venture with Aetna

A big Minnesota hospital system is joining forces with a major health insurance company — Allina Health on Wednesday announced a joint venture with Aetna.

CEO Penny Wheeler said the partnership with Aetna is meant to reduce the financial burden on patients, mainly by keeping them from getting sick in the first place. She said coordinating patient data with the insurer is the key.

"For example, you have a frail elderly patient with diabetes who's unable to get a prescription filled. And by combining information with our side of the organization — the clinical information — with the claims information from the insurance side, we can intervene and help support them in getting the medication they have so they avoid trouble," she said.

Wheeler said Allina will remain a nonprofit system, and the combined venture is not a merger, but rather a separate for-profit company.

She says the new plan won't limit customers to Allina facilities; it runs a dozen hospitals in Minnesota, including Abbott Northwestern in Minneapolis, plus more than 90 clinics. Those who enroll can still go to non-Allina physicians, and Allina will continue to accept payments from outside health plans.

Wheeler said Allina has been planning the partnership for a couple of years, long before the election of Donald Trump, who's promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

"This is not a reaction to the recent things. Our mission is to create more value for the community," Wheeler said.

Minnesota Council of Health Plans CEO Jim Schowalter said the partnership will mean another option for consumers and more competition in the Twin Cities health care market.

Schowalter said it's still not clear whether plans like the one Allina and Aetna proposed actually save patients money. But he said it makes sense for the companies to combine forces and avoid duplicating work.

"When doctors or hospitals just turn in bills to insurers to pay them, there can be an incentive to turn in more bills or not necessarily take a look at the total cost of care and figure out what's the best way to do it. It's one of those things about the fee for service system that nobody's been satisfied with," he said.

Allina and Aetna did not disclose the financial terms of the partnership. But the companies expect to begin selling the plan in the greater metro area next year, once government regulators give it the green light.