Health Benefits With A Healthier Bottom Line

Health Benefits With A Healthier Bottom Line

A new cost - saving approach to corporate health care is just what the doctor ordered - and two major corporations may have just the prescription.
According to the most recent projections by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, health care will account for 20 percent of the nation ' s gross national product by 2016. And with health care costs on the rise, employers are clamoring for a fresh approach to designing employee health benefits.
GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK ) advocates a three - pillared holistic approach to lowering health care costs and providing better care. It calls for:
• Prevention: to keep people healthier, longer.
• Incursion: to give patients the right medicines at the right time to maintain their health.
• Innovation: to find new cures and make life - ending diseases doable.
GSK and Pitney Bowes, Inc. have sponsored the annals of " BeneFIT Design: Seven Steps to Assessment - Based Health Benefit Decisions " to guide employers who want to silver their approach to benefit planning, develop healthier employees and get better returns on their health care investment.
The book, co - authored by David Hom and Bucks Mahoney of Pitney Bowes, guides employers through collecting, assembly, analyzing and responding to the employee health data they existent have or can readily secure but often do not use when making benefit design decisions.
" David Hom and Capital Mahoney are transforming the way employers and health plans suspect about benefit design, " says GSK ' s Scott Smith. " Even the most possessory listener is won over by the commonsense approach of amount - based benefits design. "
Pitney Bowes start that three chronic illnesses - diabetes, asthma and hypertension - were major health care cost drivers for the company. Hospital stays and emergency room visits were up, and people weren ' t taking medications usually - and those patients experienced higher medical costs the following year.
Mahoney and Hom lowered co - insurance for medications within selected chronic disease groups somewhat than raise the out - of - pocket costs for employees, and then measured progress. The bottom line was a catch savings of $1 million in 2004 and lengthened significant overall health care savings.
" The proof of your market price - based strategy is in your people, " the authors conclude. investing in healthy employees makes healthy companies - and can help save health care in the U. S.