Employers have been largely responsible for the healthcare coverage of Americans since World War II, when employers starting paying for healthcare coverage as a means of supplementing workers beyond wage limits.
Yet, in recent years, this historical benefit has become more and more costly for employers, with U. S. employers spending approximately $9,560 per employee in 2014, according to Towers Watson. As a result, in the last decade, employers have been using a few tactics to rein in growing healthcare spending.
According to Shawn Leavitt, senior vice president of global benefits at Comcast NBCUniversal, employers have adjusted plan design, implemented health and wellbeing programs and, most recently, relied on increasing cost sharing, to contain costs. They haven’t, however, focused much attention to reducing the waste in care delivery.
Waste employers can target include unnecessary and duplicative services, but also services that are provided at a higher-cost site of care than necessary. Mr. Leavitt, speaking at the 11th Annual World Health Care Congress in National Harbor, Md., on April 8th, explained that employers have a “huge opportunity to think about ‘how do we take all the unnecessary services, all the unnecessary care out of the system?’
“That’s where the big dollars are,” he added.
A recent analysis by Comcast NBCUniversal uncovered the company could save $245 million on its $1.1 billion health plan by reducing emergency room visits to only those that represented true emergencies, shifting half of specialty visits to primary care providers, and reduce inpatient visits to a more “appropriate” level for the number of covered lives.
Mr. Leavitt expects the industry will experience “a new trend for large employers, to make sure our employees get the right care, for the right provider, in the right place, at the right time.”
Telemedicine is also likely to be embraced by large employers, as it allows greater access and means the employee is “never leaving the office.” Currently, most telemedicine services aren’t reimbursed, but many expect that to change, as insurers and employers seek lower-cost sites of care.
What’s so interesting about healthcare, Mr. Leavitt noted, is that so much focus by employers is spent on the front-end. Employers and patients are forced to analyze multiple plan options with different premiums, benefits and cost-sharing, when all that matters is the quality of the care. When more employers start focusing on reducing waste and improving quality in the care provided, and not just the plans offered, we can certainly expect big impacts for providers: those with efficient, coordinated care will prosper, and those without it will face a rough road ahead.