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Press Release: 2009

Select Health of South Carolina Helps Pilot New Tool for Assessing Health Literacy

Select Health of South Carolina recently participated in the first phase of pilot testing for the first-ever National Health Literacy Assessment Tool, a project designed by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and Emory University to assess the health literacy friendliness of health insurance plans.  Select Health was one of eight AHIP member companies that participated, which included national, regional, and local plans serving people covered by their employers as well as people covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

Select Health received favorable feedback from the assessment in many areas, including having established guidelines for enhancing readability and health literacy friendliness of member information, as well as having staff training related to member services and verbal communication.  Select Health is also committed to working on those areas identified as opportunities for improvement.  The tool is currently being finalized and once finished, will be distributed to health plans all over the country to help identify needs for improvement in health literacy.

To further increase the awareness of low health literacy in the country, Select Health’s parent company, AmeriHealth Mercy, has partnered with Health Literacy Innovations (HLI), a social entrepreneurship company that creates tools to enhance health literacy, to create the nation’s first comprehensive guide on health literacy, the “Health Literacy & Plain Language Resource Guide.”  The guide, gleaned from hundreds of national and international resources, aims to help improve health literacy outcomes and costs by bringing together health literacy resources that health providers and educators need.

About Select Health
Incorporated in 1995, Select Health was licensed as a Health Maintenance Organization by the South Carolina Department of Insurance in 1996.  Later that year, the company contracted with the Department of Health and Human Services to offer First Choice, the state’s first Medicaid managed care plan.  Select Health is accredited by URAC and is a wholly owned subsidiary of AmeriHealth Mercy.  The AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies touches the lives of more than 6.5 million members nationwide.