To Our Shareholders, Customers and Communities:
At Anthem, we have a singular focus to improve the lives and health of the members and communities we serve. This is a commitment we have upheld for more than 75 years, and one that continues to guide our strategy, growth and success. 2015 was a year of tremendous change for our company, our industry and for health care consumers. More than ever, consumers are looking to us to help them navigate the complexities of health care and provide them with affordable, high-quality health benefit solutions. We truly embraced this responsibility last year, and our strong financial and operational results reflect our continued success in delivering on these important commitments.
Anthem remains focused on generating value for our customers and shareholders by expanding access, safeguarding affordability, improving quality and creating a more simplified and personalized health care experience for consumers. In 2015, we made meaningful progress on each of these fronts.
In terms of access, our goal is to help as many consumers as possible get and stay covered so they receive the care they need, when and where they need it. Our affiliated health plans deployed a diverse portfolio of products and services, and increased our membership by 1.1 million members, or 2.9 percent, over 2014. We now proudly serve more than 38.6 million members through individual and employer-sponsored plans and through the Medicare, Medicaid and Federal Employee Health Benefits programs. When you add in the members served by our specialty businesses and family of subsidiary companies, our work is directly and positively impacting the health of more than 72 million Americans nationwide.
Affordability remains a key priority for our health care system, and Anthem is committed to being an unwavering steward of health care affordability for our customers across all business lines. Drawing on a foundation of industry-leading analytic capabilities and the insights gained from the more than 700 million claims we process annually, our plans are managing the cost of care at both the individual and population levels. Last year, our plans deployed new approaches to health condition monitoring and management, we enhanced our fraud and abuse detection and recovery activities, optimized provider contracts and drug formularies, and honed in on clinical approaches like our AIM Specialty Health subsidiary’s specialty management capabilities and our catalog of care management programs. At the end of 2015, we achieved a cost of care savings of more than $1.4 billion through these and other initiatives.
We also built on our positive momentum and continued to launch innovative provider collaboration models to improve the quality of care and health outcomes of plan members. We maintain the industry’s largest footprint of collaborative relationships with more than 55 percent of our total spend tied to better quality and better outcomes for health plan members. And our plans are actively evolving these relationships into true value-based partnerships with providers through shared risk, information, and decision-making and shared accountability and reward for improving member health.
Ultimately, the aim of access, affordability and quality is to help the consumer. Once consumers are enrolled, we must help them access necessary health care and help them realize the full benefits of their health care coverage. We made great strides in this area in 2015, investing in new tools and technologies that help consumers make better informed health care decisions and give them the confidence, clarity and ease to better navigate the health care system.
We know that despite the progress we’ve made and the results we delivered in 2015, there is more work to be done. As we look to the future, there are certainly challenges on the horizon, both anticipated and unpredictable. But working from a solid foundation, we are confident we can deliver greater value for consumers while strengthening our health care system for future generations. In fact, this was a key impetus behind our decision in 2015 to agree to acquire Cigna Corporation.
This acquisition, once completed, will help promote affordability by more effectively managing the rapidly rising costs of health care treatments. It will expand consumer access to affordable, high-quality health benefits. And it will deepen our collaborative relationships with providers to advance accountable, value-based care. This acquisition is currently under regulatory review and we expect to finalize the transaction in the second half of 2016. Until then, Anthem and Cigna remain competitors and may not combine operations, systems or contractual relationships. In the meantime, there will be no disruption in our operations and service, and we will follow through on our commitments to our customers and provider partners before, during, and after the transaction.
More than anything else, what we achieved in 2015 is a reflection of the tremendous dedication, passion and hard work of our 53,000 associates nationwide. All of us at Anthem share a deep commitment to building the kind of health care system we can all be proud of—one that is inclusive, affordable, innovative, and one that strengthens the health of our nation. Together, we are working to transform health care and advance our vision of being America’s valued health partner.
Thank you for your interest, support and investment in Anthem.
Joseph R. Swedish
Chairman, President and CEO, Anthem, Inc.