MBGH Survey Shows Employers Shifting Their Perspective on Employers’ Health Care Benefits

This is one of the findings in a national survey of employers’ views on the value of health released by the nonprofit Midwest Business Group on Health (MBGH) at its 28th Annual Conference held May 1–2. Select results of the “Readiness to Change Survey” are available on the MBGH Web site.

“There is a growing trend toward the use of value-based benefit strategies, providing financial incentives to motivate healthy behavior changes and improving access to proven, clinically beneficial care,” explained Larry Boress, president and CEO of MBGH. “Additionally, employers are focusing on preventive care and the use of incentives to get people engaged, as opposed to the cost shifting we’ve seen in recent years.”

The survey revealed that employers’ key benefit priorities for 2008 include getting employees more engaged in maintaining their health; improving chronic disease management; reducing the cost of benefits; growing the use of preventive services; incorporating incentive programs to increase the use of wellness/health promotion programs; and educating employees on how to manage their health care finances.

Other survey findings include:

• Value-based benefit designs are gaining in popularity, and there is an increasing trend to provide incentives for participation in wellness, disease management, and adherence programs. Employers are reducing cost share to employees. For instance, 62 percent of employers will waive co-pays or reduce costs for certain drugs to get employees to participate in disease management programs.
• Quality information is still lacking. However, it’s of growing importance to employers and consumers. For example, 85 percent of employers want health plans to provide members with the cost of physician and hospital services, and a majority of employers agree information is not available for employees to make informed choices on quality of physicians (64 percent), effectiveness of drugs (56 percent), and quality of safety of hospitals (54 percent). More than half of all employers believe that employees would switch to better-performing providers if they understood how quality varies among providers and affects outcomes.
• Employers see value in collecting productivity data, yet few are doing it. While about two-thirds of employers see value in surveying employees on how their health impacts their performance at work, only 12 percent of employers gather productivity data, and 64 percent of these employers collect productivity data through a Health Risk Assessment. Company data and experience is the top influencer (95 percent) of benefit design strategy.