Improving Healthcare, Life & Specialty Ventures Partners with Harvard

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., March 28, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Life & Specialty Ventures, LLC (LSV), an ancillary insurance carrier headquartered in Little Rock, Ark., helped establish the Initiative to Integrate Oral Health and Medicine sponsored by the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. This initiative convenes business and academic leaders to advance ideas and pursue research on improving health outcomes through integration of oral and primary healthcare.

LSV works with its Blue Cross and Blue Shield partners to provide integrated programs that improve the health and well-being of their members. Central among these are LSV's Dental4Health^® and LSV Connected Care^® programs, which coordinate dental and medical coverage to improve health outcomes and drive down medical costs.

Ed Murphy, LSV executive vice president, is a founding board member of the Harvard initiative and collaborative figure in bringing together the wide range of industry leaders that participate in the initiative. Sol Brotman, D.D.S, LSV vice president of national clinical operations, joined the initiative in 2018 as a board member.

Included among the initiative's accomplishments is a project co-led by Murphy to establish a national, multicarrier repository of medical and dental claims data, as well as a data science team to research the intersection of health and dental care. The Harvard Medical School is also a participant in this work, along with LSV, its Blue Cross and Blue Shield partners, and other national multiline carriers.

"The data repository will allow us to examine large amounts of information to determine the best ways to improve overall health through better dental health, as well as prove the economic imperative of integrating dentistry and primary care medicine," said Murphy. "LSV and our partners are uniquely positioned to use this data to improve the health of our members through our Dental4Health and LSV Connected Care programs."

For more information about Dental4Health, visit DentalXtra¹ (Ark.), Oral Health for Overall Health² (Fla.) or Oral Health for Total Health³ (Hawaii).

About Life & Specialty Ventures

Life & Specialty Ventures, LLC is an ancillary insurance company offering life, disability, and supplemental insurance coverage under the USAble Life brand, as well as dental insurance in partnership with select Blue Cross® and Blue Shield® plans. Uniquely owned by a joint venture of independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies, LSV employs almost 480 people with offices in Little Rock, Ark., Honolulu, Hawaii, Jacksonville, Fla., and Nashville, Tenn.

¹DentalXtra is used with the consent of USAble Mutual Insurance Company (ABCBS).
²Oral Health for Overall Health is used with the consent of Florida Blue.
³Oral Health for Total Health is used with the consent of Hawaii Medical Services Association.

SOURCE Life & Specialty Ventures, LLC