A message from Dr. Gretchen Goltz, medical director, Provider Engagement
New virtual primary care benefit designed to meet the needs of our members and customers

Our customers, particularly the employer groups I work with, recognize the importance of a primary care relationship. Many of them want all their employees to establish a care relationship with a primary care provider. At Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, we agree with that line of thinking. We know that our members who have a primary care doctor they see regularly for preventive health care and appropriate screenings have better overall health outcomes.

In response to the needs of our members and customers, we launched a Blue Care Network virtual primary care plan in January of this year. For details, see the article on this page of the November-December 2022 issue of BCN Provider News or read this blog on MI Blues Perspectives.

We plan to launch the Blue Cross commercial counterpart to the BCN offering in January 2024. Unlike the BCN solution, which is a health plan product, the Blue Cross commercial solution will be an optional benefit that some members may decide to use.

This benefit for our Blue Cross commercial members, called Virtual Primary Care, is available to eligible members and family members on their plan who are 18 and older. The offering will be supported by Teladoc Health^®, an independent company that contracts with Blue Cross to provide virtual primary care solutions.

More and more of our members and customers have been demanding virtual solutions over the past few years — a trend driven in large part by the COVID-19 pandemic — and we want to do what we can to accommodate their needs. As I write this column, more than 650,000 of our members living in Michigan are still unattributed to a primary care physician. We hope this new virtual primary care benefit will be especially helpful to members who aren’t currently seeing a primary care physician.

Starting Jan. 1, 2024, members who have Virtual Primary Care will be able to select a board-certified primary care physician by logging in to their member account, clicking on Your Choices for Care and following the prompts to the Virtual Care tab.

Medical visits are with a board-certified physician and are primarily delivered by video. Patients can also communicate with their care team by phone or in-app messaging. Those who register for Teladoc Health and schedule a first appointment will receive a blood pressure monitor and cuff.

When necessary, Teladoc Health will refer patients to specialists for in-person care. They won’t call primary care practices to refer patients to in-person care, but if a patient needs to see a PCP in person, Teladoc Health will work with the patient to find appropriate care using our Find a Doctor search tool.

It’s not our intention to disrupt the PCP-patient relationship in any way by offering these virtual primary care solutions. Most of the patients we expect to use this solution are unattributed members who aren’t currently seeking in-person care.

We recognize that many of our in-network primary care physicians currently offer virtual care options to their patients. And we’re working with our provider organizations to support the primary care provider-patient relationship by exploring additional opportunities to optimize virtual primary care.

To learn more about Virtual Primary Care, I encourage you to check out this flyer.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network are nonprofit corporations and independent licensees of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.