Five Star Quality Care, headquartered in Newton, has accomplished the corporate equivalent of going from zero to 60 in five seconds. Founded just six years ago, the company now boasts more than 17,000 employees in 32 states. Five Star's business provides older Americans with a wide range of services, including independent and assisted living as well as skilled nursing, hospice, and respite care. The company also operates rehabilitation hospitals and institutional pharmacies.
Success like this presents considerable challenges. For example, how would Five Star provide health care coverage to its rapidly growing personnel base? Working together, Shawna Murray, Director of Benefits and Compensation at Five Star, and Carl Raymond, Account Executive from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, determined which products would best meet the needs of Five Star and its many new employees.
Our comprehensive product line, along with the skill and experience of our account representatives, enabled us to provide precisely the services Five Star needed at every stage of business development. We tailored products that fit Five Star when it had a smaller workforce — and we now provide what the company needs as it grows into one of the biggest players in its industry.
Like many of our accounts, Five Star benefits enormously from our Total Health Solution, which integrates dental care into overall health care. In fact, because poor oral health has been associated with diabetes, coronary artery disease, and preterm, low-birth-weight pregnancies, we reach out to people with these risk factors and encourage them to get dental care. And, we're so confident that regular dental care will improve their health and prevent greater costs down the road, we offer some dental plans that waive dental copays and co-insurance.
Five Star has also benefited from Health Informatics, a consultative service we developed for our business partners that analyzes account-specific data and identifies opportunities to improve employee health while lowering costs. Like many of our accounts, Five Star used the recommendations generated by Health Informatics to make modest changes in its plan design, which yielded both higher quality care and significant savings.
Our goal is to provide Five Star — and each one of our accounts — with exactly the right products and services to suit their needs.