(Washington, DC) - The American Association of Health Plans (AAHP) today announced the results of a one-year, nationwide initiative to identify best managed care practices for safeguarding and improving the health of women with breast cancer. The report, supported by The Commonwealth Fund, highlights exemplary breast cancer programs developed by Humana Health Plan of Chicago, Keystone Mercy Health Plan of Pennsylvania, Kaiser Permanente of California in partnership with WIN Against Breast Cancer, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts in partnership with the American Psychological Association.

The report is the first of four included in a new series, Best Practices in Women’s Health :Identifying Exemplary Care, that highlights fundamental features of organized care that improve the health of patient populations in ways that the old system could not. Each of the four reports identifies exemplary, model programs, gleaned from more than a thousand AAHP member health plans across the country and provides key questions that women can ask to determine if their plan incorporates important practices and features of these models.

"The Commonwealth Fund was interested in identifying exemplary models of delivering care in important areas of women's health," said Karen Scott Collins, Assistant Vice President at The Commonwealth Fund. "The Fund's hope is that this information will encourage widespread adoptions of these kinds of practices."

"Most people don't realize that every day women's lives are being saved and their quality of life improved because health plans have developed programs that safeguard women's health -programs that were not possible when individuals went to doctors and simply sent a bill to their insurance company for reimbursement," said Karen Ignagni, President of AAHP.

For example, the plans highlighted in the breast cancer report have created strategies to increase the early detection and treatment of breast cancer by creating comprehensive tracking Systems, improving access to preventive health care services, and broadening treatment approaches to serve a patient's complex needs - those of her body, mind and spirit. Other issues included in the report range from ensuring that breast care centers are accredited by the American College of Radiology to monitoring the quality of individual physician practices to conducting aggressive outreach to under-served women.

Because managed care plans provide care for large populations of women, they can implement new systems that track and evaluate programs to ensure that more women receive exemplary treatment. In addition, the managed care community can share information about what works best, and in that way, can improve care for increasingly large numbers of patients.

The programs were identified by a Women's Health Task Force convened by AAHP. The panel comprises women's health experts, including primary care physicians, women's health specialists, health educators, patient advocates, health policy experts and people who specialize in assessing treatment quality and analyzing health care systems.

AAHP will release the three other reports in the series - on domestic violence, obstetrics and prenatal care, and hormone replacement therapy and other mid-life issues - over the next several months. All of the reports are derived from longer, technical reports called Advancing Women’s Health: Health Plans' Innovative Programs. The Commonwealth Fund provided support to AAHP for the one-year women's health initiative.

The American Association of Health Plans represents over 1,000 HMOs, PPOs and other similar health plans that provide coverage for 140 million Americans.

The Commonwealth Fund, a New York City based national foundation, undertakes independent research on health and social issues.