With hours to go before the county’s employees had to start searching for new doctors, the Fayette County Commission approved swapping the county’s health insurance plan to CIGNA.

On Friday, the County Commission met to deal with the health insurance crisis after Blue Cross/Blue Shield broke off negotiations with Piedmont Hospital and sent letters to county employees stating they could no longer receive covered services at Piedmont Fayette Hospital.

“We have a commitment letter from CIGNA that our employees can use until new ID cards are available,” said Guy Morrison, who is a consultant for the county’s insurance services.

Morrison said the deal would go into place at midnight Friday unless a deal was reached between the insurance giant and Piedmont. But when no deal was reached, Fayette County employees woke up Saturday knowing they still had insurance coverage.

Morrison said 1,191 members are covered by the county’s health insurance plan, and only 57 employees currently go to doctors outside of CIGNA’s network. Of those employees, 53 go to three doctors, who will be invited to join the network.

“There’s no guarantee that they will join, but we’re still looking at 95.2 percent who won’t have to swap doctors,” Morrison added.

Commission Chairman Greg Dunn had been on the phone Friday morning trying to see if a deal would come through at the last minute. Dunn said there were nine issues separating the two parties.

“(Insurance Commissioner) John Oxendine said it would take an act of God for a deal to happen,” Dunn added.

Morrisson also said the swap to CIGNA should not significantly affect the employees’ wallets or the county’s budget coffers. CIGNA is matching the premiums from Blue Cross and is actually providing $2,500 to help cover the administrative costs of swapping to the new insurance provider.

Piedmont Fayette Community Hospital CEO Darrell Cutts was also on hand during the meeting and pledged to help residents get the care they needed.

“We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure the county’s employees are served.”

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