- Center on Health Equity & Access
- Clinical
- Health Care Cost
- Health Care Delivery
- Insurance
- Policy
- Technology
- Value-Based Care
Edmund Pezalla, MD, Discusses How Consumers Can Have a More Active Role in Healthcare Decision Making
Edmund J. Pezalla, MD, MPH, national medical director, Aetna Pharmacy Management, says Aetna engages consumers in decision-making in a variety of ways.
Edmund J. Pezalla, MD, MPH, national medical director, Aetna Pharmacy Management, says Aetna engages consumers in decision-making in a variety of ways. The insurer provides tools for the employed population, which include virtual people and other digital programs about benefit designs. They also offer tools for the general population, which include iTriage to help them find a provider or facility. All of the health plan’s tools increase consumers’ access and allow them to compare costs.
“For patients who are in the exchanges, both the public and the private exchanges, [these tools] help them to make decisions about what kind of benefit will work for them in their point of life,” Dr Pezalla says. “There’s a lot of things that can help them to choose a plan—and it’s not just a matter of cost or choosing just on ‘I’ve heard of that doctor and hospital’—but choosing a plan that will work for them, both in terms of their medical situation and their financial situation.”
)
Managed Care Reflections: A Q&A With A. Mark Fendrick, MD, and Michael E. Chernew, PhD
December 2nd 2025To mark the 30th anniversary of The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), each issue in 2025 includes a special feature: reflections from a thought leader on what has changed—and what has not—over the past 3 decades and what’s next for managed care. The December issue features a conversation with AJMC Co–Editors in Chief A. Mark Fendrick, MD, director of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design and a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and Michael E. Chernew, PhD, the Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy and the director of the Healthcare Markets and Regulation Lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
Read More
