Four Core Drivers Employers Can Use to Obtain High-Value Health Care
By Cheryl DeMars, President and CEO 
There are four core drivers that employers, as health care purchasers, can use to have a positive impact on health care cost and quality. These four core drivers provide the framework that The Alliance is using to move forward on their road to high-value health care.
The Four Core Drivers of High-Value Health Care:
- Transparency – Putting accurate, understandable, and easy-to-access information comparing cost and quality from different providers at consumers’ fingertips.
- Provider network design – Giving employers the ability to steer enrollees to high-value settings for health care delivery through steerage, tiering, and providing cash incentives – whatever fits them best.
- Payment reform – Using reference-based pricing and bundled pricing to cut waste and reward quality to provide our employer-members increased predictability, simplicity, and transparency.
- Benefit plan design – Using data analytics to create customized health benefit designs to maximize everything mentioned above and empower and incentivize your employees and their family members to take part in the push toward high-value health care.
The combination of these four core drivers form a framework that employers can use to gain access and steer employees and their families towards doctors and hospitals who provide high-value health care. And The Alliance employer-members are doing just that. Jeremy Ott, Vice President, Health Insurance Economics at WPS Insurance Corporation, discussed how they’ve designed plans to be member-centric and continuously make improvements to better meet customer needs.
Brakebush Brothers, Inc. created steerage programs for their health benefits plan in an effort to reduce health insurance losses and strive to reduce costs for both the company and their enrollees. Since implementing these steerage programs, Brakebush’s enrollee premiums have not increased within four of the past five years and their overall per member costs were lower in 2018 than in 2014. Brakebush shared their experiences in creating health benefits steerage programs in a case study.
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