[August 22, 2012]

Extend Health First To Let Employers Track Real-Time Progress of Retirees Transitioning to Private Medicare Exchange

Extend Health®, operator of the nation's largest private Medicare exchange, today announced BenefitView™, the first real-time, interactive dashboard in the private Medicare exchange industry for employers transitioning their retirees to individual Medicare plans. Extend Health is a Towers Watson company.

See an online demo of BenefitView.

With BenefitView, for the first time employers now have access to up-to-the-minute information about the progress of their Medicare-eligible retirees who are evaluating and choosing private individual plans on the Extend Health Medicare exchange. Beyond measuring retiree progress, employers can now instantly access measures of Extend Health service center performance, such as retirees contacted, appointments completed, average call wait times and average length of calls.

"Employers sponsor and subsidize transitions of their retirees to individual plans to assure that every retiree gets the opportunity to have the supplemental Medicare coverage they want while managing company costs and future liabilities," said Brian Bohlig, chief marketing officer for Extend Health. "It's very important to employers, to us and most importantly to retirees that these transitions go as smoothly as possible. Extend Health has always provided employers frequent and comprehensive progress reporting to ensure smooth transitions - but now we've made it real-time and on demand. BenefitView makes communication between Extend Health and employers seamless, and it protects employer from finding out after the fact that their retirees missed out on getting the health care coverage they needed or wanted."

Over the past eight years, Extend Health has built the largest private Medicare exchange in the country. More employers have used Extend Health than any other company to transition their retirees to a private Medicare exchange. Extend Health has helped hundreds of thousands of retirees use an exchange to select from thousands of private Medicare plans from more than 75 national and regional insurance companies.

International Paper and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are among the Extend Health employer clients who have used BenefitView during their retiree transitions to Extend Health's Medicare exchange.

"Before our transition started, we wanted to make sure our retirees first understood that they were going to get more choice and control over their Medicare health benefits. Then we wanted to provide retirees with all the right information they needed to participate," said Melissa (Missy) Hartfiel, benefits planner, Global Compensation and Benefits for International Paper. "With BenefitView, we could instantly see all the data on our progress - the number of retirees contacted, the number of calls and enrollments completed, how quickly our retirees' calls were being answered, and the length of those calls. This inspired a lot of confidence in the Extend Health solution. As a non-techy, I also appreciated that BenefitView is visual and easy to use - there was no learning curve and I got all the data I wanted with one click."

"With BenefitView, I was able to give our HR Director up-to-the minute progress reports whenever she asked for them," said Oak Ridge National Laboratory benefits manager Scott McIntyre. "As we neared the end of our enrollment period, we were checking BenefitView daily and adjusting our communications and outreach to make sure we were giving all of our retirees every chance to participate. BenefitView allowed us to keep our finger on the pulse of what was happening with our retiree transition whenever we wanted."

Added Bohlig, "Extend Health is always looking for ways to improve our service and establish industry-leading standards. With BenefitView, we have increased the transparency of our private Medicare exchange by giving employers real-time access to all the same information we monitor and measure internally. Employers can be confident that no retiree is left behind."

Real-time information that is available to employers through BenefitView includes:

• Number of retirees enrolled versus the total number who can to enroll
• Percent of eligible retirees contacted
• Number of appointments scheduled
• Number of appointments met
• Plan types selected across different populations
• Average premiums across different populations
• Number of unique plans selected
• Number of unique carriers selected
• Total number of calls
• Average wait times for reaching a benefit advisor
• Average time to handle calls

Employers interested in a demonstration of BenefitView can contact Extend Health at 1-888-232-1653.

About Extend Health

Founded in 2004, Extend Health operates the largest private Medicare exchange in the country. Extend Health is a Towers Watson company (NYSE, NASDAQ: TW). For more information, visit Extend Health on the web at http://www.extendhealth.com.

Extend Health is a registered trademark of Extend Health, Inc. Other names may be trademarks or servicemarks of their respective owners.

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