CIGNA Care^® Designation and Physician Quality and Cost Efficiency Designations

CIGNA is dedicated to making quality and cost-efficient health care accessible to its plan participants. A key component of this commitment is CIGNA's strategy to offer support tools to CIGNA plan participants that can help them make informed health care decisions. These tools include two programs:

• The CIGNA Care^® designation; and
• The Physicians Quality and Cost-Efficiency designations.

Both the CIGNA Care designation and the Physician Quality and Cost-Efficiency designations use the same measures and similar criteria to evaluate physicians. Reimbursement rates for physicians participating in the CIGNA network are not affected by designations received in either program.

These two programs reflect a partial assessment of quality and cost efficiency for select physician specialties. They should not be the sole basis for decision-making; as such measures have a risk of error. We encourage CIGNA plan participants to consider all relevant factors and to consult with their treating physician when selecting a physician for care.

CIGNA Care Designation

CIGNA Care designation is available in 57 service areas across the country. Developed in response to our customers' requests for more information about physician quality and cost-efficiency, the CIGNA Care designation designates specialists participating in the CIGNA network in 21 specialty types based on specific quality and cost-efficiency measures. All CIGNA participating physicians are considered in-network whether or not they receive the CIGNA Care designation. However, a lower co-payment or coinsurance level applies if a participant chooses a CIGNA Care Network designated physician.

Physician Quality and Cost Efficiency

The CIGNA Physician Quality and Cost-Efficiency designations are available only on the CIGNA secure website for participants, www.MyCIGNA.com. Quality and Cost-Efficiency designations are available for 24 specialties; the 21 specialty types evaluated for the CIGNA Care designation and three Primary Care Physician specialty types (Family Practice, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics). Symbols represent quality criteria met and stars (*) are used to report cost-efficiency results. Physician Quality and Cost-Efficiency designations are available in 69 service areas, including the 57 used for the CIGNA Care designation.

Both programs provide physician groups advance notification of status changes and opportunities to both access physician group reports of the information that determined the status, as well as to provide additional information and request changes to the group's status.

For additional information, view the CIGNA Care Designation and Physician Quality and Cost Efficiency Designations 2009 Methodologies (*PDF).