When we began our Health Impact program three years ago, we aimed to build a network of organizations that shared our goal of bringing higher value health care to consumers and that had the power to reach millions of consumers with Consumer Reports' trusted content and messages.
 
Partnerships with employers were new to us at Consumer Reports, but our experiment is working: We now partner with more than 20 national and regional business coalitions as well as with health care collaboratives that include local employers.
 
We hope their employees also will benefit from some interesting pilot projects that provide resources such as Hospital Ratings, Choosing Wisely, and Best Buy Drugs. These projects are in partnership with technology platforms like Castlight Health and large employers like IBM.   We plan to leverage the lessons we've learned from some of these implementations and to pass them on to others.  Keep an eye out for the "Making Healthy Choices" employee toolset, which is just one example.  We're also hearing from employee benefits consultants that Consumer Reports information is valuable for employers themselves as well as the employees covered by the plans and programs they provide.
 
Over the next few weeks, we'll be attending a couple of forums where we hope to meet many of our employer partners and begin conversations with many more. Please look for us at the National Business Group on Health's Business Health Agenda conference in Washington, DC, from March 4 to 6 (Consumer Reports will be on a panel discussing appropriate use). We'll be with the Connecticut Choosing Wisely Collaborative on March 13.  And we're looking forward to returning to the Health & Benefits Leadership Conference in Las Vegas from April 8 to 10.
 
Let us know if there are other employer events where we can meet you this year!