Community Health Plan announced Wednesday its intent to withdraw from the health insurance market.

The company, begun by Heartland Health almost 15 years ago, has signed an agreement with Aetna Health Plans that will create a new company, Community Health Improvement Solutions. This new company will allow CHP employees to keep their jobs and remain in their location at 801 Faraon St. It also will continue to provide the wellness programs CHP offered the businesses that contracted with it — such as on-site health-risk assessment screenings and counseling — while selling Aetna health insurance policies.

“We see this as really strengthening what we had with Community Health Plan,” administrator Linda Bahrke said. “ ... There’s no other place in the country where Aetna is making a partnership like this. If you really think about it, what’s exciting is that we still have Community Health Plan, but we also have a national insurer coming in.”

Aetna’s financial status allows it to offer resources such as an extensive Web site with wellness tools and personal health records, she added — something CHP would never have had the funds to create and maintain. In addition, those with Aetna insurance can seek care from thousands of providers throughout the country, instead of only locally. And what Ms. Bahrke sees CHP bringing to the new company is a strong local presence and a very “high-touch” way of serving its clients.

“We think that what Community Health Plan is doing in its approach to wellness is very forward-thinking,” E. Scot Roskelley, director of communications for Aetna’s north central region, added. “ ... (Community Health Improvement Solutions) is like creating a hybrid that addresses both of our strengths and weaknesses.”

Ms. Bahrke wrote in a letter to customers that CHP’s decision to leave the market came due to market conditions evolving and changing. It will begin its exit process July 1, but will cover customers throughout the duration of their contracts, she added. Anyone whose contract expires before Nov. 1 who would like to renew it for another year is free to do so.

Ms. Bahrke noted that “it was really never a desire of Heartland to be in the insurance business,” but that it created CHP as a way to control insurance premiums when it couldn’t find an insurance company in the mid-’90s that would partner with it and share data. The decision cost Heartland in CHP’s early years, when the insurance company experienced significant financial losses. Heartland also drew criticism from those who saw a hospital owning an insurance company as a conflict of interest.

“The net effect can be to raise insurance costs in an area, and the evidence is there that insurance costs in Northwest Missouri are higher than elsewhere in the state,” said State Rep. Dr. Rob Schaaf, a St. Joseph Republican who proposed a bill several years ago opposing hospitals owning insurance companies.

But despite the financial losses and criticism Heartland has experienced due to CHP, Ms. Bahrke feels that Heartland maintaining the company so long has been worth it.

“We would not be here today, being able to offer this really great product to Northwest Missouri, if we hadn’t gone through the Community Health Plan journey,” she said.

Erin Wisdom can be reached at ewisdom@npgco.com.