Employers’ Opportunity to Improve Health Care Results
No doubt health care costs continue to reduce the bottom line of many small businesses. Even after pushing vendors hard and changine plans every few years, costs continue to climb and health outcomes measured by employee absenteeism and chronic ailments are stagnant or falling.
Like it or not, businesses will continue to be in the business of providing healthcare plans to employees for some time to come. Therefore, businesses need to look at different ways to “get their money’s worth” when it comes to healthcare.
Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School professor, suggests it is time for employers to think in terms of value and focus on better outcomes.
Porter suggests employers adopt four principles for providing healthcare to employees:
First, the best way truly to reduce health care cost is to improve its quality. Quality, defined in terms of outcomes, is the secret to success in health care.
Second, high-value care is delivered by integrated practice units including all the needed specialties that care for the patient’s medical condition over the full cycle of care.
Third, prevention and screening can dramatically improve value, as does ongoing disease management to prevent recurrences and setbacks.
Fourth, the only way truly to drive value is to measure patient outcomes for each medical condition.
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