May 21
2019
How Can Employees Become The Change Maker That Our Healthcare System Is Promised?
By Abhinav Shashank, president and co-founder, Innovaccer.
What makes anyone identify the best health plan for themselves? In today’s world, having health insurance is very important. You might end up paying significantly more for a doctor’s visit if you don’t have insurance than if you had it. You could rack up paying hundreds of dollars for a major injury or if you go for a costly treatment. And in this flock of health insurances, employer-sponsored health plans make up a significant percentage.
How does employer-sponsored health plans fit into the situation?
Employee health and well-being is not just essential, but also foundational to business success. Only a healthy team could deliver profitable outcomes. For this reason, among the list of many, most of employed Americans have their health insurance covered by their employers.
According to a survey, 92 percent of respondents were confident that their organization will continue to sponsor health care benefits for the next five years.
High-performance Insights- Best Practices in Health Care, 2017 22nd Annual Willis Towers Watson Best Practices in Health Care Employer Services
Is employer-sponsored healthcare on the verge of breaking or is it broken already?
Employer-provided healthcare is underleveraged. Currently, employer-sponsored healthcare is facing a lot of complications, including:
- New market entrants add more complexity to employer decisions
- As financial responsibility for care shifts to employees, an increase in self-rationing may drive poor outcomes
- Pharmacy remains an area of unchecked rising cost, especially with regard to high- cost biogenetic (specialty) drugs, among many
What is haunting the large employers and how is the market ripe for innovation?
“Interestingly, 70 percent of employers believe new market entrants from outside the healthcare industry are needed to disrupt health care in a positive way. These disruptors include innovators from Silicon Valley and elsewhere, and employer coalitions,” said Brian Marcotte, president and CEO, National Group on Health.
Fifty-five percent of employers are concerned about prescription opioid abuse and working with partners to implement safe prescribing patterns and alternative therapies. The innovation we need to resolve this issue starts with data. With the launch of CURES 2.0 database, healthcare in the state of California achieved a milestone in curbing the opioid epidemic.
The role of activated data in enhancing the employer-sponsored health plan is that of an initiator to a revolutionary change in the field. Once the organizations have the right data, they can gain crucial insights into their employees and devise better plans to enhance their health and productivity.