December 2018

New Cigna Pregnancy App Can Lead to Improved Health and Lower Costs for Pregnant Women

Cigna has launched a new Cigna Healthy Pregnancy® app to better connect individual customers to Cigna’s suite of health benefits, including the Cigna Healthy Pregnancies, Healthy Babies® maternity health engagement program. This program has had a positive impact on health outcomes for pregnant women and their babies.

In 2016, 53% of eligible Cigna participants enrolled during their first trimester, with only 10% of these women experiencing preterm deliveries.1 In addition, there was a 79% full-term pregnancy rate among women identified to be at risk for preterm delivery.1 Improving the likelihood of full-term pregnancies also improves affordability, with more than $2,000 in average savings per participant and nearly $43,000 saved per participant identified as at risk for preterm delivery.1

The app’s developer, Wildflower Health, reported that more than 66% of app users registered during their first trimester, and stayed engaged in the app by regularly accessing content within the app. This includes about 60% of users taking the app’s pregnancy health assessment survey, which identifies potential high-risk pregnancies and connects those at risk to relevant resources that can help.

“Our new app is designed to make it easier to enroll and engage the Cigna Healthy Pregnancies, Healthy Babies program, which has shown to have a direct impact on improved health outcomes for both mom and baby,” said Patricia Stephenson, MD, Senior Medical Director at Cigna. “The app delivers convenient, personalized guidance, giving expectant moms and dads information to help them make important health care decisions in real time.”

The Cigna Healthy Pregnancy app is unlike the content-only pregnancy apps currently available in the marketplace. The integrated app provides personalized guidance and helps expectant parents optimize their health benefits. It also connects them to other available resources, including health alerts and reminders, the Find a HealthCare Provider feature, cost and quality tools, and maternity coaching, as well as incentives.

An important goal of the Healthy Pregnancies, Healthy Babies program and accompanying Healthy Pregnancy app is to reduce the number of pregnancies resulting in preterm and low birth weight babies through early risk identification. The program encourages appropriate care and treatment coordination, offering important information about preventive care and healthy lifestyle decisions. Key features of the app include:

  • A health assessment survey that transmits answers seamlessly to Cigna maternity coaches who reach out to women and encourage enrollment in the pregnancy coaching program.
  • A direct connection to all Cigna Healthy Pregnancies, Healthy Babies program resources.
  • Employer-specific Healthy Pregnancies, Healthy Babies program incentives, where available, and customer support phone numbers.
  • Personalized content with daily and weekly milestones based on expected due date. This helps track the baby’s development and identifies common pregnancy symptoms.
  • Information and resources to encourage a conversation between individuals and health care providers about predictors of preterm birth.

The app will be broadly available to eligible customers in January 2019. In addition to the fully integrated and connected version of the app available for eligible customers, the content-only version is available to all U.S. Cigna medical customers. The Cigna Healthy Pregnancy app is powered by mobile health app developer Wildflower Health and will be available on the App Store® or Google Play™ online stores.

 

  1. Cigna 2016 full-year data. National book of business. Individual results may vary.

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