Pre 2004 Press Releases

2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | Pre 2004

Ten Years, One Mission

LifeMasters Supported SelfCare Celebrates Ten Years on the Frontlines of a Healthcare Revolution

Leading Disease Management Company Continues Mission to
Improve Quality of Healthcare, While Reducing Costs

Irvine, CA (June 22, 2004) - LifeMasters® Supported SelfCare^SM, Inc., one of the nation's leading disease management companies, celebrates a milestone anniversary this month. The company, founded in 1994, has reached its tenth year of delivering life-improving disease management services to individuals with chronic disease across the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Throughout the past decade, LifeMasters has been focused on one mission: to empower individuals living with chronic diseases to achieve optimal health. In what is still a nascent industry, LifeMasters stands alone as the only disease management company in the nation with a long tenure uniquely focused on delivering disease management solutions that improve health outcomes while significantly reducing costs.

The company was founded in 1994 with the vision of creating a coordinated approach to preventive care for chronic illness rather than simply managing them. Today LifeMasters is one of the largest and most widely recognized disease management providers in the nation. With over 300,000 participants, LifeMasters' is fully accredited by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) to provide disease-management services for the five most prevalent and expensive chronic medical conditions: diabetes, congestive heart failure (CHF), coronary artery disease (CAD), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. Other programs offered include musculoskeletal conditions and depression.

"We have come a long way in a relatively short period of time," said CEO Christobel Selecky. "As a company, we've helped change the face of healthcare and will continue to do so. Over the course of ten years we have made real improvements in the lives of countless numbers of people with chronic illness and helped bring disease management to a national stage. We have helped to change old attitudes and beliefs by proving it is possible to impact the behavior of chronically ill individuals in a significant enough way to produce real improvements in both clinical and financial outcomes."

LifeMasters' disease management program participants develop one-on-one relationships with specially trained nurses who provide support, information, and personalized coaching designed to educate participants and provide them with the tools to help them achieve their optimal level of health. In addition, LifeMasters' sophisticated data analysis system regularly monitors participants and gaps in their recommended care and notifies a participant's personal physician if a clinically validated change occurs.

To kick-off the company's anniversary observance, LifeMasters will host a series of celebrations at each of the companies three satellite locations; South San Francisco, CA Rancho Cordova, CA and Albuquerque, NM.

"We wanted to mark our 10th anniversary by recognizing our professional staff - the registered nurses and health educators - who are on the frontlines of a healthcare revolution," said Selecky. "We not only have some of the smartest people on our team, we have some of the most compassionate people who truly care about the impact they can have on the lives of our program participants and, in turn, on the overall cost of healthcare."

Among recent achievements, LifeMasters was honored with the 2004 AstraZeneca-National Managed Health Care Congress (NMHCC) Partnership Award at the 16th Annual National Managed Healthcare Congress in Washington, DC. The award recognized the partnership between LifeMasters and the State of Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA). LifeMasters and AHCA have been working together since September of 2000, in one of the disease management industry's first ever public-private collaborations, to provide Medicaid beneficiaries in northern Florida with disease management services for congestive heart failure and all related conditions and co-morbidities including diabetes, COPD, hypertension, and depression. In the first two years of the program, the LifeMasters/AHCA partnership reduced health care costs for Florida's Medicaid program by $12.6 million dollars, representing a 16.3 percent decline in health care costs for the covered population.

LifeMasters' 10th anniversary coincides with the installation of Ms. Selecky to the position of president of the Disease Management Association of America (DMAA), which will occur in October 2004, at the Association's Sixth Annual Disease Management Leadership Forum, in Orlando, Florida.

For More Information Contact:

Denise Apcar LifeMasters, Inc (650) 829-6217 pr@lifemasters.com