Corporate Systems Administration examines new ways to reduce health care budgets

 

Imagine employees saving up wellness benefits much like a retirement plan. As health care costs have continued to spiral, the newest cost containment incentive plans radically challenge the status quo of managed care.

 

Employers, facing double-digit inflation in health care costs, have been reluctant to eliminate benefits or to pass on much of the financial burden to employees. One strategy has been to implement tiers of pharmacy benefits to encourage treatment with less costly generics or older medications. But research is showing that some of the newer, more expensive medications lead to better results, which reduce the need for more medical services and reduce costs.

 

Benefit tiers have worked to educate employees about prescription costs. Better education, employee incentives and interventions, which really help reduce high-risk behaviors that lead to chronic illness, are all very important for long term cost containment.

 

Using online services is an excellent way to enhance employee education. At our Web site, www.csabenefits.com, Corporate Systems Administration Inc. offers automated services to improve the accuracy, consistency and speed of claims processing. In addition, both employer and employees can go online to keep track of their health care expenses on a daily basis – a decision support tool that helps employees take control and responsibility for managing benefits.

 

According to a recent Watson Wyatt survey on the Changing Role of Health Care Benefits, more than half of employers responding to a survey said they plan to beef up efforts to provide decision support.

 

Another trend is converging to radically encourage employee “consumerism” – plans designed to let employees actually self manage and personally choose and pay for services. Some plans reward healthy employees by allowing them to share in the benefit of money left over in their personal “care account.”

 

According to a report by Ernst & Young, “The trillion-dollar American health care market is on the brink of its biggest transformation yet. The primary force behind this change is not technology or managed care, but the growing mass of educated and empowered health care consumers.”

 

- end -

 

Visit CSA on the World Wide Web at www.csabenefits.com