The Consumer-Driven Approach: Defining and Measuring Success
by Pete Maillet and Steve Halterman, CEBS
Employers' reluctance to implement consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) is at least in part due to their not understanding how to define and measure the success of CDHPs. To assist employers, the authors define potential points of success for CDHPs in the areas of consumer engagement, consumer financial considerations and employee health and productivity. They then offer ways of measuring success in those areas, as well as in the area of employer cost control. By taking a carefully considered approach to the decision of whether to offer a CDHP, employers can grasp potential opportunities to control health care costs.
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Consumer-Driven Health Care: The Future Is Now
by Ronald E. Bachman
Given that managed care seems to have run its course, employers are forced to deal with escalating health care costs by reducing benefits and lowering pay—or are they? Why not bring the power of the responsible, informed consumer to health care? Consumer-driven health care offers a new, economically rational direction that can simultaneously address the needs of both employers and employees. This article reviews the factors leading to the need for consumer-driven health care and describes the characteristics and benefits of its current and next generations of development.
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Consumer-Driven Health Plans: Design Features to Promote Quality Improvement
by Jack Meyer
The most prevalent form of consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) presents risks in terms of the cost, quality and appropriate use of health care. This article identifies those risks and shows employers how they can reduce them without compromising the overall cost-control potential of CDHPs. A good CDHP strategy should work on both the demand and supply sides of the market.
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reDefined Contribution Health Care
by Tamra Lair
To combat rising health care costs and a society increasingly unsatisfied with employer-sponsored health care services, reDefined Contribution Health Care suggests a process to create a more consumer-driven health care market. To create this value-sensitive market requires a planned, staged approach that will include immediate actions and work toward fundamental, long-term changes.
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Engaging Employees in Health Care Can Contain Costs and Improve Quality
by Richard Ostuw
Employers need to do much more to change some of the deep-seated employee attitudes and behaviors that are driving health care costs. This article debunks common employer misconceptions about employees' attitudes and behaviors with regard to health care. It then discusses the results employers can obtain by taking specific initiatives that provide employees with the motivation and resources they need to effectively manage health risks and make informed health care decisions.
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Consumer-Driven Health Care: Tangible Employer Actions
by
Thomas R. Beauregard
In response to double-digit health care cost increases, leading employers are aiming aggressive strategies at changing participant and provider behaviors—strategies that go well beyond the narrow idea of a new cost-sharing design. This article describes the elements of a comprehensive consumer-driven health care strategy and provides examples of tangible consumer-driven health care initiatives in the areas of design, pricing, contracting, support and public policy
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Defined Contribution Health Plan to Consumer-Driven Health Benefits: Evolution and Experience
by Martha Priddy Patterson
Today, the idea of placing more choice on employees “consuming” health care and giving them more responsibility and incentive to control health care costs and utilization is alive and thriving in the form of consumer-driven health care. This article examines the evolution of consumer-driven health benefits—including the experience of the first generation of “defined contribution” health care participants (i.e., retirees) and the results of different approaches employers have taken to early consumer-driven plan designs. The author then describes what's needed to answer the question: “Can consumer-driven health care control health cost?”
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