Health Net Federal Services: Managing Care to Achieve Performance Excellence
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
by Susan Pietrykowski, Chief Operating Officer, Health Net Federal Services
For nearly 40 years, Health Net Federal Services (HNFS) has managed the health care of our nation’s active duty and reserve service members, their families, retirees, and Veterans. This year, HNFS received its highest performance rating in the company’s history, signaling a new level of excellence in balancing cost, quality, and management. HNFS is on track to achieve similar performance ratings for our final year of health care delivery. HNFS has achieved this while also significantly surpassing our commitment to supporting small businesses under the current T2017 TRICARE West Region contract with the Defense Health Agency (DHA).
Managing a health plan for the U.S. government, especially under the DHA’s TRICARE program, is both complex and dynamic. At the heart of this effort is our mission to provide timely, quality health care for nearly 2.8 million beneficiaries through our expansive network of nearly 450,000 community providers, each of whom are critical partners in this mission. While delivering tens of millions of medical episodes of care each year, our true success lies not just in numbers but in the real impact we make in the lives of those who serve our country. It’s this focus on service that drives us to innovate and improve our approach to care coordination and patient support.
Since 2017, our leadership team has worked to address some of the DHA’s most pressing challenges, such as improving access to care at remote locations, combating the opioid epidemic, and supporting service members and their families with special needs. One of our key achievements has been significantly reducing wait times for specialty care by expanding our Military Treatment Facility (MTF) support team, cutting average wait times by 49% in some of the most remote areas.
In recent years, HNFS has reached several milestones that underscore our commitment to service and care coordination. Under the T2017 TRICARE contract, we earned the highest customer satisfaction scores in our company’s history—among MTFs, providers, and beneficiaries. These efforts have resulted in nearly $600 million in savings for 2023 alone, benefiting the broader health care system while improving the patient experience.
Our commitment to uniformed service members, retirees, and their families goes beyond the administration of the TRICARE program. Through partnerships with organizations such as the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), Blue Star Families, and the National Military Family Association, we actively volunteer our time and resources to enhance the lives of those we proudly serve.
By raising the bar in health care management, we have set a new standard for managed care for our nation’s heroes.
