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Mercer, a global consultant in advancing health, wealth and careers, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, published recommendations for employers regarding the US healthcare transformation.
In its report “Employer-led healthcare transformation: Vitals for a better tomorrow”, Mercer, recommends strategies in four core areas that employers should focus on as the ‘leaders of the required US healthcare transformation.’
“Employer-led healthcare transformation” provides support for employers to better use their unified voice and influence to drive the market forward in four areas: Pay for value (aligning reimbursement with value, not volume), drive to quality (delivering the right care at the right time, in the right setting and error free), personalize the experience (leveraging better data and technology to engage employees in the right behaviors every day) and embrace disruption (injecting change into the system, with internal stakeholders and external partners to be future-ready).
“Employers are pivotal players in today’s healthcare system, yet their role has remained remarkably passive. In fact, nearly two-thirds of all insured coverage is employer-provided, which translates into a nearly $1 trillion annual spend. The time has come for employers to work with other key stakeholders to translate this potential leverage into actual market transformation – and we see our point of view as the roadmap,” said Sharon Cunninghis, North American leader of Mercer’s health business.
This need for healthcare transformation is further highlighted by the fact that a healthy workforce is strongly aligned with business success in such areas as increased productivity, reduced absenteeism, higher retention, and better overall engagement. Still, the current market and system is too often failing its stakeholders, Mercer said.
Jean Moore, specialty practice leader for North America in Mercer’s health business, said: “Escalating costs, wasteful spending, significant quality gaps and poor satisfaction ratings are all driving the need for employer-led transformation, no matter how large or small the employer, and regardless of the platform used to deliver benefits.
“The ‘Employer-led healthcare transformation’ point of view addresses all of these issues with concrete action steps and strategic opportunities.”
Mercer has already created a number of solutions to support this transformation including Mercer Complete Care, a personalized advocacy and clinical care solution; a Specialty Pharmacy PBM Carve-out offering; and Mercer’s Quality Improvement Collaborative, an initiative that brings together employers with providers to try to improve the quality of hospital care.
“We will be developing more solutions to support this effort and we are very excited to work with our clients to bring meaningful change to the healthcare landscape,” said Moore.
Mercer, US, Healthcare, Marsh and McLennan Companies, Data analytics, Technology, IT, Risk management, Sharon Cunninghis, Jean Moore
