Dive Brief:
- A growing number of employers expect to achieve better health outcomes for employees at lower cost and the way they plan to do that is through value-based reimbursement and payment arrangements with their health insurers and medical service providers, according to a new survey.
- Willis Towers Watson's 21st Annual Best Practices in Health Care Employer Survey also found that more employers are embracing plan design features that encourage employees to use higher-quality, more efficient and lower-cost services.
- For example, 45% of employers today give employees access to centers of excellence (COEs) for specialty situations such as back, knee, diabetes, cardiac and infertility issues, a rise from 37% in 2015, with 32% more planning to do so by 2018. Also, 97% of employers who established COEs did so working with their health plans. Finally, while just 17% of employers reduce employee cost sharing at a COE today, that could triple to 54% by 2018.
Dive Insight:
Balancing lower healthcare cost with quality care has continued to plague employers, so the trend that surfaced in the survey is not surprising. More employers have access to tools now that can provide ratings of medical providers that reflect both cost and quality, and many are using incentives to try and encourage their employees to actually use them.
Right now, these strategies are more easily adopted in areas where employers have large employee groups or where cost-efficient medical providers are available and willing to engage in these emerging models. The main challenge for HR leaders is not only getting employees to use value-based services but also to find health care plans and providers that can deliver them. That means using a combination of communication, decision support and the aforementioned incentives to make sure employees understand what COEs are and encourage their use.
