Michael Taylor M.D., Chairman of the Board of the Center for Health Value Innovation, was recently interviewed by Human Resource Magazine regarding the use of data to drive outcomes.
Reprinted with permission of the Society for Human Resource Management (www.shrm.org), Alexandria, VA, publisher of HR Magazine. © SHRM
Laying Hands on Health Data
Vol. 55 No. 2
Acquiring the underlying facts and figures on your organization’s health costs may be easier than you think—and more worthwhile.
2/1/2010 By Joanne SammerHealth costs are up, so—not surprisingly—crunching numbers is in. Many employers want to look closely at their health care claims and utilization data to find ways to reduce health expenses. After all, employers can’t manage health costs unless they know what drives those costs. But many HR professionals aren’t sure what health data may be available and whether they can obtain such data cost-effectively—if at all.
The good news is that many health insurers and other health care vendors are making more data available, and not just to large employers. Certainly, major self-insured companies such as IBM have always had sufficient leverage wit h their plans’ administrators to obtain data. But employers with smaller payrolls, especially those that buy health coverage rather than self-insure, historically have been less successful. The reasons have ranged from insurers’ professed inability to segregate one client’s data from data for a multi-employer group, to a small employer’s lack of resources for analyzing such data. Today, howevr, employers of all sizes have more options than they may realize. Sometimes gaining access to information is simply a matter of asking insurers what data are or could be made available. The challenge comes in interpreting and acting on the information. HR executives must understand what they’re looking at and must become familiar with the methods and the rationales for the various ways health data can be cut, organized and interpreted.
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Tags: Caterpillar, Center for Health Value Innovation, SHRM, Taylor
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