| Join Our List |
 |
| Upcoming Meetings | |
July 19-21 Boston |
|
|
|
Greetings!
Breaking news from Tennessee heads up this issue. Both the State and VW of America are making waves in the on-site industry. Both of the recent new developments are referenced in our first article and each has Tsunami implications.
Also, employers are finding that one of the most critical components to the success of their on-site clinic efforts at reducing costs is employee engagement. Over the last year or more, this term "engagement" has become a significant buzz word in the industry. Unfortunately, to-date, a road map for assuring engagement by the individual employee in his/her own health outcomes has been difficult to plot, at best. What works for one employee or group of employees, doesn't always work with others. Truth is, it has been a bit of a "trial-and-error" approach with incentives, disincentives, and everything in-between. Some very credible groups are trying hard to gauge what works and what doesn't - please read on. |
| Tennessee Tsunami in On-site Care | | | The State of Tennessee and VW Both Commit to Employer Managed Options
Recently, the industry was surprised by a request for information (RFI) which is a precursor, generally, to a more formal request for proposal. The document highlighted the State's intent to move forward with evaluation of their present clinic programming and to adopt "best in class" on-site programming for thier entire beneficiary pool of state employees and their dependants. This is at the "vision and planning stages," but it shows that on-site programs organized by the employer are moving to become a significant force in care provision.
The other big news item from Tennessee is the announcement that Erlanger Medical Center will put forth funds to build on the new VW production site. Capital, hospitals, caregivers, and cars - this is either one step beyond or one step behind what Toyota did a couple of years ago. Any program that is connected by purse strings to a health system may limit its choices in the areas that have the most potential for payback. However, VW is a smart company, and they have sharp people at the helm who have seen these programs go up from the ground level, and we would expect this project to be more than just another showpiece, ambulatory access site. We will keep you posted on program design and progress as the facts become available. Meanwhile, read the article. Congratulations to Erlanger and VW of America. |
| "Employee Focus Group Research" Results | | |
The Midwest Business Group on Health (one of the founding members of the National Business Group on Health), with 100 employer members who have more than three million lives to cover, released some of the findings of the "2010 Employee Focus Group Research" at its annual conference earlier this month.
The research was sponsored by Merck and Novartis, but conducted by the ROC Group. There were about 170 participants in the study, which is a continuing part of the MBGH's efforts at understanding the use of value-based benefit design strategies by employers. Some important initial findings: Family can play a critical, positive or negative role in the employee's adoption of life-style choices; the employee's physician is considered by him/her to be the most reliable source of health information; employees prefer incentives over disincentives and "fear of pain/risk aversion is a greater motivator to change" than either an incentive or disincentive; focusing only on health risk factors alone won't get it; etc.
More research will continue to be done in this area, and it will prove helpful to employers in their never-ending search for ways to improve engagement. The robust on-site clinic seems to us to be the best way to reach employees on all levels. A wellness program alone, or a health assessment tool by itself, can't accomplish nearly as much. But, the on-site clinic needs those components to work, also. So, on-going research in the areas of what works and what doesn't to motivate employees to buy-in to becoming more "engaged" in managing their own healthcare will be of tremendous value. We look forward to hearing more from the MBGH and others in this regard. |
| Ingenix Introduces TrendView Benefits Cost Analyzer | | |
In a recent press release, Ingenix announced the release of a new product, the "TrendView Benefits Cost Analyzer." Apparently made to be run on any desktop computer with little advance training, this software is described as putting ". . you in control of massive amounts of health are information." In the past, initial evaluation of claims data, from a wide variety of data bases and sources (with multiple plans to choose from at some employers, the data can be nearly impossible to array in any meaningful way) has made predicting costs and savings associated with the operation of an on-site clinic extremely difficult and fraught with a higher level of uncertainty than many employers would like.
This tool apparently interfaces with multiple data sources, promises to be so user-friendly that training can be accomplished in as little as two hours, and requires only a PC and a browser to use it. Sounds like it has great potential for those employers who have tons of external data to analyze in a cost-effective and efficient fashion. For more information on TrendView, click here. |
| For more on-site clinic news, visit our Web site at www.onsiteclinics.org . | |
|
|
|
ON-SITE CLINIC NEWSLETTER