The beginning of every new year is traditionally when our Customer Service center experiences its highest call volume. With the recent introduction of our Medicare Part D product, DeanCare Rx, we are experiencing an especially large increase in calls. On January 3, we received more than 3,500 calls — the highest one-day call volume in our 23-year history. We apologize to members who have been inconvenienced by long delays and appreciate your understanding as we work aggressively to resolve this issue. In order to more effectively keep pace with the current call volume, we have added more phone lines (quadrupled our capacity!) and have made more staff available to answer calls. We look forward to regaining the high service levels that you are accustomed to from Dean Health Plan (DHP).

Also beginning in January, we launched a 90-day mail-order pharmacy service. The response has been tremendous, and I encourage you to take advantage of this great new program. Unfortunately, some of you may have experienced long delays in contacting our mail-order partner, Prescription Solutions. They, too, have received an extraordinary number of Medicare Part D questions, and wait times are much longer than usual. You can visit the Prescription Solutions website, www.rxsolutions.com, and follow the instructions for printing and sending in the mail-order request form. At present, this is the fastest way to sign up for mail-order delivery.

For some of our members who need injectable medications, we launched a new service in 2005 to have those medications delivered to their home or office. We received feedback from a number of members who thought that service could be better. In response to those comments, we worked with our partners to select a company that is truly dedicated to quality service. I’m happy to announce that we will soon be adding a new injectable-medicine supplier, and I’m certain you will see the difference.

Every year, DHP conducts a survey that asks members to evaluate their healthcare experiences. We use the information to measure our members’ level of satisfaction and identify areas where we can improve. Such improvements include the introduction of a new Health Insurance Benefit Summary that will go out to all subscribers later this year. This document, which will be sent to you when you renew, will summarize your benefits. It will include important information about your policy provisions, such as copayment, coinsurance and other out-of-pocket limitations, as well as information on other commonly used services. We urge you to keep this with your other important insurance papers. This document was designed in response to 2005 survey concerns that finding and understanding member information was a source of dissatisfaction. Some of you have received the 2006 survey. This is an important assessment tool for DHP, and I urge you to participate.

DHP ranked 33rd in the U.S. News & World Report list of America’s Best Health Plans^® 2005*. In addition, DHP holds Excellent Accreditation from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for our commercial HMO product. It is through your feedback and our continued commitment to your satisfaction that we’re able to achieve recognition as one of the top health plans in the nation. As always, I encourage you to contact me with your concerns. You can leave me a message at 800-336-3302 or send me an e-mail at dhp.ceo@deancare.com.

Sincerely,

Robert L. Palmer, P.Eng.
President and CEO

*America’s Best Health Plans^® is a trademark of U.S. News & World Report.

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