Employer Strategy

Health systems typically consider their “customers” to be their patients (and perhaps their patients’ families and perhaps proximate residents, in general). Across all patients, those covered by commercial insurance are the most profitable (or at least have the most attractive contract rates), so this has led to payor contracting as being a key element of health system success. However, for most commercial lives, the payors are merely the financial intermediary for employers who are self-insured (meaning that the “health plan” bears minimal risk, if at all).

Until recently, employers have been “left out” of the “health care discussion”, serving only to finance the US healthcare system.  Health systems typically lack any substantial service offering for employers, so entire mini-industries have been created to meet the needs of employers.  This includes:

• Health screens and health risk assessments

• Onsite clinics (primary care with onsite dispensing)

• Workers’ compensation

• Disease management

• Packaged elective surgery

However, Health systems are actually ideally-suited to meet these (and many other) needs, but that requires a new mindset and set of capabilities.  We help health systems to pursue and serve local employers, with the expressed goal of increasing commercial market share.