Fallon Health Insurance

Fallon Community Health Plan (FCHP) is an affordable health insurance provider based in Worcester, Massachusetts. Fallon provides Massachusetts residents with an array of personal insurance plans, ranging from HMO to POS to PPO, and works with the government subsidized Medicaid and Medicare programs. It is one of the four major insurance providers in the state, along with Blue Cross Blue Shield, Harvard Pilgrim and United Health Care.

History

• Fallon Community Health Plan was founded in 1977 in the city of Worcester with a mission to offer affordable health insurance and health care coverage to central Massachusetts residents. A year later it became the first federally qualified HMO in its region, and covered Worcester's first heart transplant patient in 1986. By the mid-1990s, FCHP had expanded to offer coverage to residents across the state and was also the recipient of several prestigious health care awards, including the number one HMO in the United States by "U.S. News and World Report."

Significance

• In 2007, FCHP became a member of the Commonwealth Care health insurance program, an initiative started by the Massachusetts government in response to the new law requiring all state residents to have health insurance. The program worked with popular health insurance providers to lower the cost of individual coverage by subsidizing membership fees with government funds.

Features

• In addition to being one of the state's loudest champions for universal care, FCHP is famous for offering its members extraordinary benefits, such as $0 doctor co-payments for routine physicals and child visits, work site wellness programs, and free services such as bi-annual massages and deeply discounted gym memberships. Fallon Community Health Plan has also been one of the first insurance providers to include holistic remedies, such as acupuncture and meditation, in the realm of covered services.

Considerations

• As a healthcare provider, Fallon Community Health Plan places a large emphasis on community health and maintains several community development and enrichment programs, including charitable giving resources and volunteer programs. It also distributes a series of monetary grants to individuals or groups that support social services pertaining to health care or at-risk youth groups.

Benefits

• Fallon Community Health Plan is the parent entity to the Summit ElderCare program. Summit ElderCare is part of the national Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) and works to give elderly residents the benefits of nursing home care while allowing them to remain in their own homes and retain their living independence. Summit ElderCare offers members access to their hospital and pharmaceutical facility located in Worcester and provides them an at-home caregiver to help manage medical conditions and lifestyle maintenance.