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2021 Annual Report

President and Chair Message

Aloha,

HMSA is committed to showing our members, employers, and providers that we’re an organization they can count on especially in times of uncertainty. Last year, we once again lived up to that commitment.

In addition to expanding health plan benefits for our members, we found innovative ways to support communities, employers, and providers. We remained connected with them virtually and in person to help ensure their health, well-being, and safety. And our data strategy project, which began in 2020, built and implemented a secure technology platform that gives us the ability to work hand in hand with doctors, specialists, and other health care providers to ensure that our members are getting the right care, at the right place, at the right time.

To ensure that our workforce could continue to serve you, we worked hard to keep our employees safe. HMSA was one of the first companies in Hawaii to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for employees.

Looking ahead, we’ll build on the progress we’ve made and what we learned in 2021 while considering how the world around us is changing. We’ll deal with the challenges presented to us and stay true to our purpose of improving the lives of our members and the health of Hawaii.

And fulfilling our purpose as a health organization requires us to see the big picture, envision the path forward, and balance the needs of all our stakeholders. We look forward to the journey we’ll take together.

Mahalo,

Signature of Mark Mugiishi

Mark M. Mugiishi, M.D., F.A.C.S.
President and Chief Executive Officer

Signature of Robert S. Harrison

Robert S. Harrison
Chair of the Board

Photo of Mark Mugiishi and Robert Harrison
 
Community Health Initiatives

Community Health Initiatives

HMSA gave nearly $1 million to these organizations whose missions align with our purpose to improve the health of Hawaii.

  • Blood Bank of Hawaii – Expanded access to communities.
  • Hawaii Keiki: School-based Immunization Program – Aims to improve the rate of school-required vaccines among 7th and 8th grade students in the Kau-Keaau-Pahoa complex area on the Big Island.
  • Maui Health Systems – Wound Care Program to help prevent infections and other serious health risks.
  • Punahele Pathways – Uses an eldercare curriculum in schools to promote intergenerational strategies that value kupuna, support caregivers, and encourage youth to pursue careers in aging.
  • The Queen’s Care Coalition – Community health care navigators who help high-need individuals access medical and behavioral health care, financial and housing assistance, and meals.
  • The Queen’s Medical Center – Donated pulse oximeters for patients with COVID-19 to monitor their condition at home.

 
 

Community Giving

HMSA and our employees and retirees contributed $1.7 million to 82 organizations statewide. These organizations included:

  • Aloha United Way
  • Alzheimer’s Association
  • American Diabetes Association
  • American Heart Association
  • American Lung Association
  • Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders
  • Family Promise Hawaii
  • Food banks statewide
  • Hawai`i LGBT Legacy Foundation
  • Hawaii Workforce Development Fund
  • HOPE Services Hawaii
  • March of Dimes
  • Mental Health America of Hawai`i
  • We Are Oceania

We also provided 35 organizations with in-kind donations worth over $15,000.

Community Health Initiatives
 
 

Here with Our Members

With a membership that increased to more than 765,000, we looked for innovative ways to make sure that they had continued access to safe, reliable, quality care.

  • Our promotion of telehealth resulted in one-third of our members receiving care through telehealth, which recorded more than 1.2 million visits on various platforms. Fifty percent of those visits were for behavioral health services.
  • HMSA’s Online Care® recorded 119,504 visits.
  • Continued to pay with no cost share for COVID-19 tests and related services such as treatment, preoperative diagnostic tests and provider visits, and teledentistry.
  • Announced EyeMed Vision Care as our vision plan administrator and prepared to transition to their network. EyeMed will make it easier for members to get glasses and contact lenses.

Member

765,000
members

mobile

1.2 million
paid telehealth claims

Laptop

119,504
Online Care Visits

 
Here with you

Supporting Employers

To support businesses and help ensure that their employees had continued access to health plan benefits, we:

  • Kept premiums relatively flat for small and large businesses.
  • Offered deferred payment plans.
  • Credited employers with more than $15 million for premiums paid.
  • Promoted health and well-being resources such as behavioral health programs.
  • Provided virtual servicing options, tools and educational materials throughout the year.
 
 

Working with Providers

HMSA worked with Hawaii’s two largest health systems to battle the health crisis with a unified goal of protecting our community. In addition to helping staff their vaccination appointment phone lines, we provided the following support:

  • Hawai`i Pacific Health: Registered nurses reconciled patients’ discharge medications with their current medications. We also helped manage HPH’s complex cases and, when appropriate, enrolled patients in our Complex Case Management and Event Driven Care programs.
  • The Queen’s Health Systems: Through our Event Driven Care program, the HMSA clinical team supported hospital discharge transitions to home that helped prevent unnecessary emergency room use and readmissions.

For individual providers, we enhanced telehealth benefits and supported HMSA Payment Transformation Program providers with coverage of vaccine administration fees during flu season to encourage “catch-up” vaccinations. We also continued to cover COVID-19 tests and vaccinations.

With the unprecedented surge in hospitalizations, we adjusted several medical policies and created new ones to allow medical centers to implement safe, timely patient discharges. We also implemented policies that enabled providers to render COVID-19 related treatments efficiently at an appropriate cost.

provider partnership
 
 
partnership-government

Working with the Government

The government is our customer, our regulator, and one of our most important stakeholders.

We continued our essential role in the state’s COVID-19 Public Health Recovery Task Force to help develop a road map to reopen Hawaii’s economy. We worked side-by-side with public and private leaders as part of our state’s emergency response and vaccination efforts. At the 2021 Hawaii State Legislature, which convened virtually, policymakers asked for and valued HMSA’s opinions and perspectives related to COVID-19. We attribute this to the leadership that HMSA showed in supporting the community and our stakeholders during the pandemic.

In February, we were awarded a new five-year QUEST Integration contract that we successfully implemented in July, allowing us to continue providing statewide managed care services to a rapidly growing number of members.

 
 

Employees Connecting with Our Community

Our Circle of Caring program gives employees opportunities to volunteer for community activities and programs. Many employees also volunteered with organizations that they’re personally passionate about. All together, employees volunteered 1,420 hours.

Here are a few organizations that benefitted from employees who paid it forward:

  • Aloha Harvest
  • Blood Bank of Hawaii
  • Blue Zones Project®
  • Letters2OurKupuna
  • Residential Youth Services & Empowerment
partnership-employers
 
 
2021 Financial report
2021 Financial Report [PDF]

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