QualChoice of Arkansas Inc.*

Every industry has experienced tremendous change in the past couple of decades, but few have faced the fundamental changes that are staring down the health insurance industry.

With health care costs consuming 18 percent of gross domestic product and rising, the fee-for-service model has become “unsustainable,” Chief Operating Officer Haley Wilson said. As the methods for pricing and paying for health care services change, so must the providers.

“You are seeing consolidation in the provider marketplace so that people will be in position for the changes that are coming from the payers,” Wilson said.

And QualChoice is in position to be part of that brave new future. Originally formed in 1994 by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences as a third-party administrator, the company has continued to grow its products and services.

Today the company operates a provider network, administers corporate benefits and markets health care insurance and other ancillary coverage.

“We’ve really set ourselves up to be a driver, a change-maker here in Arkansas of all those components,” Wilson said.

QualChoice has 180 employees spread through its five subsidiaries, and it had premium revenue of $150 million in 2010. Those numbers are expected to grow with the advent of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act — federal health care reform — and not just because more Arkansans will be required to carry health insurance.

“We will be changing from a traditional health insurance company in which money comes in and money goes out,” Wilson said, “to a health management company, where we’re not only providing insurance but we’re also providing the means and tools for our members to be able to manage their health.”