If you’re an HR or health benefits manager, Catalyst for Payment Reform is on a mission to empower you to take the next step in your career. We know you already play an outsized role in your organization, impacting everything from an individual employee’s health and wellbeing to the overall financial viability of your company. But having worked with large employers on purchasing strategies for many years here at CPR, we also know that you can take further steps to shape the health care market place for the better.
Here are five tips to help you get started:
- Be active, not passive. 147 million people in the U.S. receive their health care from their employer. As potential movers and shakers within the commercial market, employers and other health care purchasers can proactively influence the cost and quality of the health care they buy, even if it doesn’t always feel like it. CPR can help you understand what it means to become an “active” health care purchaser.
- Understand the why. Benefit managers operating within the complex health care market place may face outcomes, like rising health care costs, without fully understanding the causal forces at play. To design effective strategies, benefit managers can get a leg up if they understand the latest trends related to cost, access, and quality, and shape their health care strategy accordingly.
- Ask the right questions. Should your organization be fully insured or self-insured? What specific demands should you make of your health plan? Are you getting the most from your broker or benefit consultant? You can’t get the answers you need without asking the right questions, which may not always be intuitive.
- Know how to use data. These days, we are inundated with data. So why is it that fully and self-insured employers alike face challenges getting access to meaningful health care data or understanding what insights to draw from the data they have? Learning how to analyze demographic and health care spending data can help benefit managers address specific needs within their population.
- Learn strategies, not tactics. For many years, benefit managers focused on improving costs by negotiating better rates with their health plans, who in turn negotiated discounts from providers in return for patient volume. As premiums continue to rise, it’s time employers looked to other strategies to put to pressure on the system. Benefit managers should be savvy about the payment reforms, benefit designs and provider network designs available today, along with knowing what’s working and not working.
Are you ready to get started? CPR has designed online education to arm you, or your benefits team, with the knowledge and skills needed to step up your game. Summer School is in session!
By Emily Roesing
Director of Business Development