BlueCHIP expands gym offerings

Responding to requests from many of its BlueCHIP members, Blue Cross Blue Shield Rhode Island has added the YMCA of Greater Providence to the list of facilities where $5 a month brings gym privileges.

A Medicare supplement program run by BCBSRI, BlueCHIP has been offering low-cost gym memberships as part of its program since 2004. According to Corey McCarty, managing director of government programs for BCBSRI, the gym membership option is an increasingly popular one, a development that the company would like to see continue.

“We’re at about 7.5 percent who take advantage, and we’d like to get to 15 to 20 percent,” McCarty said. “For 2013, we had about 2500 members enrolled in the program.”

The program is intended to help seniors’ health needs in more ways than one.

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“Fitness and wellness is a key component of any program that we build,” McCarty said. “Particularly with seniors, it allows us to offer a benefit that allows them to improve their physical health. And beyond their physical health this allows our members to interact with other seniors, which serves to improve the physical and mental health of our seniors.”

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