Health plan shutdown will affect more than 30,000 federal employees

The George Washington University Health Plan, which covers more than 33,000 federal employees in the Washington metropolitan area, is shutting down, the group announced Wednesday. The plan, which includes a health-maintenance organization and a preferred provider organization, said it plans to close in early 2002 because it does not have the resources it needs to compete with larger managed care plans. "During the past several years, many health plans, typically smaller ones or university-sponsored plans such as ours, have gone out of business or been dissolved," said Dr. John F. Williams, GW Health Plan chairman. "The GW Health Plan has not been immune to these pressures." Health plans operated by Yale University and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. have closed recently. The health plan has stopped taking new patients, but current members will be covered at least through the end of this year, said Barbara Porter, a spokeswoman for the George Washington University Medical Center. The GW Health Plan covers 33,570 federal employees in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Affected members will be able to change to different health carriers during the 2001 open season from Nov. 12 to Dec. 10. "The timing [of the announcement] is right before open season, so federal employees will have other health plan options," Porter said. Porter said the target date for completely shutting down the health plan is Feb. 28, 2002. William Flynn, associate director of retirement and insurance services at the Office of Personnel Management, said that federal employees who have a pre-existing medical condition, such as HIV, and who are currently enrolled in the GW Health Plan, do not have to worry about changing their health carrier in November. Some health plans refuse to enroll people with pre-existing conditions, but the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) does not allow participating health plans to exclude members with such conditions. Other health plans in the Washington metropolitan region affiliated with FEHBP include Kaiser Permanente, Aetna U.S. Healthcare and CapitalCare. The Office of Personnel Management published a survey of FEHBP members last year that rated health plans across the country. Federal employees enrolled in the GW Health Plan gave it a "below average" rating in the "overall satisfaction" category. The GW Health Plan, which is part of the GW Medical Center, was founded in 1972 and has more than 70,000 members.