Health plan provider Asuris Northwest Health, which has about 56,000 members in Eastern Washington, says it's pleased with the response it's getting to a six-month-old plan, called Asuris Motivate, that enables members to earn virtual funds by making healthy lifestyle choices.

Brady Cass, Asuris' Spokane-based director of sales, says Motivate is best suited for employers intent on forging a cultural change toward wellness in their workplaces, and remains a comparatively small piece of Asuris' overall business.

He declines to provide the program's membership numbers, but says its growth rate is "about on par" with what Asuris had expected.

"The employers that have been purchasing the plan, their feedback is very strong," and the employees who are insured under the plan seem happy with it as well, Cass says, adding, "I would say over time, yeah, we're going to see more migration toward this."

Motivate is one of a number of health plans now available here that seek to promote healthy living by providing tools and resources, many of them online, to help members make informed choices and manage their health more effectively.

Cass says, though, that Asuris' Motivate and affiliate Regence's equivalent plan, called Regence Activate, offered in Idaho and Western Washington, are the only ones he's aware of in this region that offer reward points members can use to pay Asuris deductibles and coinsurance expenses.

Available for fully insured groups of two or more, Asuris Motivate allows members to earn the equivalent of up to $600 a year through points they receive by participating in any of 67 qualifying wellness activities and logging their activities on the myAsuris.com Web site.

They earn $200 of Member Choice Funds a year just by completing a 10-minute online health assessment that Cass says "gives the member a baseline understanding of their health status." They can earn the remaining $400 by accruing up to 50,000 points each quarter, based on their activities.

For example, participating in up to 19 listed physical activities over a month's time, at 500 points per activity, can earn them up to 9,500 points. Designed to accommodate people of all ages and athletic ability, qualifying activities range from low-key endeavors such as walking the dog, pushing a stroller, or taking yoga classes, to skiing, kayaking, biking, or participating in organized team sports.

Members also, though, can earn points for things such as getting an annual flu shot, attending a nutrition or healthy-cooking class, eating vegetables and fruits, taking vitamins, brushing and flossing their teeth regularly, staying tobacco-free, and reading online news articles about health.

Along with tools and information on a Web site that's designed to help them stay on track, they have access to a health coach and a round-the-clock nurse line, Cass says.

"The health-coaching component is a very important part of this. They will be as engaged and active as the member asks them to be. It's a very interactive dialogue," he says.

Of the plan's broader goal, he says, "We want some level of engagement by the employee. This is kind of a stepping-stone approach," with the health plan requiring more participation than most traditional plans but less participation than health savings accounts (HSAs).

A relatively new health plan alternative, HSAs are designed to put more spending decisions in the hands of consumers by allowing them to save expenses on a tax-free basis for future qualified medical and retiree health. They are coupled with high-deductible insurance plans that have low premiums and thus enable account holders to accumulate some of that saved money so they can tap it to pay medical expenses later.

Asuris Motivate has a higher monthly premium and lower annual deductible than an HSA, but a lower premium and higher deductible than a conventional health plan through a preferred-provider organization (PPO), Cass says.

The success of Asuris Motivate at the employee level "is directly tied to how well the employers promote the benefits of the program," he says. The program probably wouldn't be a good fit, he says, for employers who aren't fully committed to pushing a wellness-focused cultural change within their organizations.