MetroPlus #1 - Again

The results are in – for the second year in a row, the New York State Department of Health has rated HHC’s own health plan – MetroPlus – as the best Medicaid Managed Care health plan in New York City.

The designation was published in the Health Department’s 2006 Consumers’ Guide and placed MetroPlus ahead of the 15 other Medicaid Managed Care plans in the city. The findings were based on both quality and patient satisfaction.

“This recognition clearly shows that our health plan provides the highest level of care to our members, and that our customers realize this and appreciate the excellence of our services,” said Arnold Saperstein, M.D., Executive Director of MetroPlus.

MetroPlus celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2006. With over a quarter of a million members, the health plan has a vast network of over 8,000 primary care doctors and specialists, including nearly 4,500 independent community providers. Plan members hail from a wide diversity of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, and MetroPlus is well equipped to serve them, with staff members who are from the same communities and speak over seventy languages.

Excellence in preventive health care was one of the categories in which MetroPlus had to prove itself to earn the number one rating. In addition to providing adults and children with excellent primary healthcare, MetroPlus has developed a number of special case management programs, such as MetroMom, to provide complete care for expectant mothers and their infants.

MetroPlus also operates Partnership in Care, a Special Needs Plan (SNP) for people with HIV and their families, which recently became the first HIV SNP in the nation to enroll 1,000 members. The Partnership provides individuals with coordinated care from a team of HIV Specialists, including physicians, social workers and nutritionists.

In addition to Medicaid Managed Care, MetroPlus offers Child Health Plus and Family Health Plus to eligible people living in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. The same top rated health coverage is also available to HHC employees and their families in the MetroPlus Gold health plan.

The recent high ratings in the plan’s quality measures and the customer satisfaction results from members prove that, when it comes to MetroPlus, the slogan “You’re #1 With Us!” goes both ways.