Is your business having a hard time keeping up with rising healthcare costs while your overall revenue is declining? You are not alone. This is a national trend. Businesses are at a crossroads and face important decisions about healthcare delivery and healthcare benefits. Available options

• Stop offering benefits: In most cases, this is unrealistic. Medical benefits are often the most important benefit for most employees and one of the main reasons employees stay with a company.
• Business as usual: If many employers follow the same path, the results will be the same. Health care costs are expected to double by 2015 if corrective action is not taken.
• Find a new way: It requires not only thinking outside the box but also around the corner.

Health and healthcare is a top management problem, not a human resource problem.

A recently completed survey by a healthcare consulting firm reported that companies that do a good job of controlling healthcare costs are more invested in health and healthcare benefits. These employers currently view a productive workforce as a critical business advantage and are much more likely to offer cutting-edge healthcare programs. The main concern of innovative employers is the management of the health and productivity of their employees and dependents. They strongly believe that a healthy workforce is a significant asset in today’s tough economy. What do these innovative employers know that you might not? They understand the facts.

• Up to 70% of all medical costs and disabilities are the result of preventative conditions.
• Approximately 5% of the population spends 60% of healthcare dollars.
• 80% of the covered population spends less than 1% of health care dollars.
• Only about 55% of medical patients receive proper care.
• Only 5% of medical expenses go to disease prevention and health maintenance.
• 66% of the covered population spends less than $1,000 a year on medical claims.

Two independent surveys – identical results

Survey #1 (115 companies: 3.7 million employees) “……. Employers with the lowest comparative healthcare costs have strong clinical programs to improve health outcomes and manage critical risks By contrast, employers who rely on traditional health benefit acquisition strategies have the highest comparative health costs.The use or absence of some basic practices in employee health management could explain the differences cost savings of up to 50% between two otherwise comparable employers. SHPS Health Practices Study 2007

Survey #2 (450 companies) “….Revealed that nearly 2/3 of surveyed employers plan to take more aggressive steps over several years to help employees improve their health through increased education efforts, implementing condition management programs and using data analytics and other cutting-edge programs to improve health and productivity while holding participants accountable for their behaviors.” Hewitt & Associates Emerging Health Trends 2007

Innovative Employers: A Profile

• Successful firm cost containment have the following common features
• Written healthcare strategy
• Long-term focus on business and workforce issues
• Health-based and data-driven strategies
• Focus on quality and IT health
• Focus on managing the population, not the profit plan

Rome was not conquered overnight. The problem did not develop overnight and it will not be fixed overnight. Success will be realized with incremental gains over a period of time. Employers willing to think outside the box and implement new strategies will benefit from higher workforce productivity and lower healthcare premiums.