 |
 |
 |
|
|
2007 |
2006 |
2005 |
2004 |
2003 |
2002 |
2001 |
2000 |
1999 |
1998
|
|
|
|
| UnitedHealthcare, Hewitt Associates, Optima Health and Exante First to Offer Quicken for Health Care |
|
| Intuit and Ingenix set to Develop Products That Will Revolutionize Health Care for up to 40 Million Americans |
|
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. -
April
12,
2006 -
Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU) and Ingenix, a company of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), with an initial group of leading national health care companies and a leading human resources outsourcing and consulting services company, launched an initiative to develop and distribute products and services that will simplify the way millions of American consumers manage their health care. The initiative is the foundation of an exclusive multi-year agreement to produce a series of Quicken®-branded health care management products that will help simplify health care management and improve decision-making in the same way Quicken revolutionized personal finance.
The first companies who have expressed a commitment to this initiative include a wide range of participants in the health care industry:
- UnitedHealthcare: The provider of health benefit services and solutions for approximately 25 million Americans.
- Hewitt Associates: A leading provider of human resources outsourcing and consulting services to over 2,500 organizations worldwide, including more than 350 benefits outsourcing clients which represent more than 18 million employees, retirees plus their dependents.
- Optima Health: The provider of hospital, physician and insurance services to more than 350,000 consumers in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.
- Exante Financial Services: A division of UnitedHealth Group and provider of health-related financial services, including health care accounts for more than 1 million Americans.
Other major health plans, health systems and industry players are expected to announce their involvement in the coming months.
The first of these new Quicken-branded products and services, planned to be available in 2007, will help consumers make better health care decisions and will help them save time and money. For the first time, millions of people will have the ability to view and organize the flood of information coming from a variety of health care sources, including medical bills, insurance payments and medical records from physicians and hospitals, into one easy-to-use system.
"Already flooded with millions of pieces of medical and insurance-related paperwork, Americans are assuming more control over their own health care," said Richard Anderson, chief executive officer of Ingenix. "Currently 82 percent of American households are spending significant time organizing, filing and reconciling their health care information. We will break through that clutter of information and consolidate it, so consumers can be empowered to make the right decisions and save time and money."
This initiative will help strengthen the relationships between consumers and their health plans, doctors, pharmacies and others by making it easy for them to organize, plan, manage and direct their health care.
"Americans spend more than $350 billion in out-of-pocket medical expenses each year," said Steve Bennett, president and chief executive officer of Intuit. "One of the ways we can help is to equip consumers with tools that enable them to easily navigate through their health care information and decide what's right for them. There's a huge consumer need for this and one that we can address well using our experience from Quicken and TurboTax. We expect this to be another great growth opportunity for Intuit."
Content Consolidation System Powers Information Exchange
The health care management products will be based on a new health care content consolidation delivery system. This new system and its future versions will enable health plans, physicians, pharmacies and banks to exchange accurate, up-to-date medical and financial information with consumers, and will be designed to be compliant with industry security and privacy regulations. This information will be available anytime, anywhere via the Internet and will help consumers make more informed decisions faster, and health plans and providers to better serve member and patient needs.
A Wide Range of Initial Key Participants
The first group of companies who will join the initiative – UnitedHealthcare, Optima Health, Hewitt Associates and Exante Financial Services – bring a wealth of industry knowledge and expertise.
UnitedHealthcare insures approximately 25 million individuals and is at the forefront of the convergence of health care and financial services. As the leader in affordable health care solutions, UnitedHealthcare continues to improve access to quality care for consumers while providing innovative services to make the process easier and more rewarding.
Optima Health, a leading provider-owned hospital network and insurer, will also provide these new tools to its members.
Hewitt Associates, a leading human resources services company, building on its more than 20 years of health care experience and innovation, will contribute its deep expertise of employers' strategies and objectives for improving employee health outcomes. In addition, Hewitt has a unique perspective on employees' health care enrollment decision-making through its observations of millions of enrollment transactions. Hewitt will promote and distribute the products to its clients, enabling them to help their employees become better educated health care consumers and ultimately make more informed health care enrollment and utilization decisions.
Exante Financial Services is one of the largest providers of health savings accounts in America and a leader in simplifying health care transactions. Exante and the other financial institutions that are expected to join this effort will provide consumers with the same type of seamless integration they experience with Quicken.
The Need to Understand Health Care Costs
Health care costs have been climbing for decades, reaching $1.87 trillion in the United States in 2004, according to a February 2006 report issued by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That number is expected to reach $4 trillion by 2015, its growth far outpacing that of inflation.
Employers are reacting to this rapid cost increase by adopting consumer-driven health plans, which will significantly expand the need for information and decision-making support for consumers. These new products and services will enable employers to realize the full promise of consumer-driven benefits beyond cost savings to true consumer empowerment.
"As consumers assume increasing financial risk for the health services they use, access to consumer-friendly information about medical cost, quality and outcome will be a competitive market differentiator" according to an October 2005 Gartner, Inc. report titled "Predicts 2006: Healthcare Payers Must Tap IT to Support CDHP Demand," by Robert H. Booz and others.
Getting Involved, Learning More
Companies wishing to learn more about joining the initiative can obtain more information by contacting Ingenix at www.ingenix.com/quickenhealth or by calling (800) 765-6706; or Michael Klieman, director of health care business development at Intuit, at 650-944-2735. Additional information for consumers is available at http://quickenhealth.intuit.com/.
About UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare (www.unitedhealthcare.com) provides a full spectrum of consumer-oriented health benefit plans and services, helping approximately 25 million individual consumers nationwide achieve improved health and well-being through various health service systems. UnitedHealthcare arranges access to quality, affordable care with more than 500,000 physicians and other care professionals and 4,600 hospitals across America. UnitedHealthcare is one of the businesses of UnitedHealth Group, a diversified Fortune 50 health and well-being company.
About Hewitt Associates
With more than 60 years of experience, Hewitt Associates (NYSE: HEW) is the world's foremost provider of human resources outsourcing and consulting services. The company consults with more than 2,400 organizations and administers human resources, health care, payroll and retirement programs on behalf of more than 350 companies to millions of employees and retirees worldwide. Located in 35 countries, Hewitt employs approximately 22,000 associates. For more information, please visit www.hewitt.com.
About Optima Health
Optima Health offers a variety of award-winning innovative health plans to more than 340,000 commercial, Medicare and Medicaid members in Virginia. Optima Health maintains 'Excellent' ratings from NCQA, and an 'A+' from the Weiss ratings agency. Optima Health has won awards from the Disease Management Association of America for its Partners in Pregnancy program and its LifeCoach program for patients with Type 2 Diabetes. It has also won an EPA Environmental Leadership award for its home-based Asthma management program which reduces asthma triggers in patients' homes.
About Exante Financial Services
Exante Financial Services is focused on enhancing and serving the health care financial needs of insurers, benefits administrators, consumers and health care professionals. Exante offers a variety of consumer health care accounts – Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs), and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) – as well as card technology and a host of electronic solutions. Exante, member FDIC, is a Utah-state chartered industrial loan corporation located in Salt Lake City, chartered in January 2002 by UnitedHealth Group. Exante provides comprehensive consumer health financial services capabilities to 16 independent health administrators in addition to UnitedHealth Group and its operating businesses. Together, these clients represent over one million health care accounts managed by Exante.
About Ingenix
A leading health information company, Ingenix provides products and services to a diverse customer base within the health care community. Organizations rely on its innovative technology to help them improve the delivery of health care and the operations of their business. For more information about Ingenix and its products and services, visit www.ingenix.com. Ingenix is a wholly owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a Fortune 50 company.
About Intuit Inc.
Intuit Inc. is a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small- and mid-sized businesses, consumers and accounting professionals. Its flagship products and services, including QuickBooks®, Quicken® and TurboTax® software, simplify small business management and payroll processing, personal finance, and tax preparation and filing. ProSeries® and Lacerte® are Intuit's leading tax preparation software suites for professional accountants. Founded in 1983, Intuit had annual revenue of more than $2 billion in its fiscal year 2005. The company has nearly 7,000 employees with major offices in 13 states across the U.S., and offices in Canada and the United Kingdom. More information can be found at www.Intuit.com.
|
| |
Intuit, the Intuit logo, and Quicken, are registered trademarks and/or registered service marks of Intuit Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other parties' trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective owners and should be treated as such.
Cautions About Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including: Intuit's expectation that health care will be another new business growth opportunity for Intuit; other expectations about the market opportunity for future products and services; statements about the anticipated launch, features and benefits of future products and services; the expectation that other companies will announce their involvement in this initiative; and the projected growth in health care spending.
Because these forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, there are important factors that could cause Intuit's actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements. These factors include, without limitation, the following: product introductions and price competition from our competitors can have unpredictable negative effects on our revenue, profitability and market position; current and future products and services may not adequately address customer needs and may not achieve broad market acceptance, which could harm our operating results and financial condition; we may not be able to accurately predict consumer behavior, and consumers may not respond as we expect to our advertising and promotional activities; our new product or service offerings may not attract customers or they may negatively impact our profitability if the business models for new offerings are not successful or if customers elect to purchase lower-priced alternatives; and our failure to maintain reliable and responsive service levels for our offerings could cause us to lose customers and negatively impact our revenues and profitability. More details about these and other risks that may impact Intuit's business are included in our Form 10-K for fiscal 2005 and in our other SEC filings. You can locate these reports through our Web site at http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/investors. Forward-looking statements are based on information as of April 11, 2006, and we do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statement or other information in this press release.
|
|
|
|
|
