News Stories

Small business owners with one to 50 employees can cut the cost of their employee insurance plans by as much as 15 percent with a new Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina plan offered in strict partnership with Wake Forest Baptist Health.

Almost a year after Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina teamed up with five N.C. health systems to curb medical cost increases, the insurer announced this week that Charlotte’s two major health care systems have joined the plan. With the addition of Atrium Health and Novant Health, the program, called Blue Premier, will be working with seven of the state’s largest health systems starting next year.

A few months ago, an employee of a large health system and I spoke about the current state of our health system. He shared a very sad account of a family member with a brain tumor. As the hospital system and the insurer worked through the rather inefficient approval processes leading up to the surgery, the tumor more than doubled in size requiring a more invasive and risky removal procedure.

Imagine you are sitting at your desk one morning, and you have just received some distressful news about your company — a high-level data breach, for example. You start to feel some tightness in your chest because of the magnitude of the news. Then your arm starts tingling. A few minutes later, your smart watch has sent you a notification that your heart rate and blood pressure levels are not normal.