Are healthcare costs costing you too much

As a business owner you have probably asked yourself the question of if you can afford healthcare benefits for your employees because of the rising cost of healthcare benefits. Many employers are starting to feel that with the rising costs of healthcare benefits they are becoming too expensive to continue providing them as a benefit to all employees.

Even if your employee based healthcare programs are costing your business a lot of money it is almost impossible to get rid of them. The main reason that getting rid of employee healthcare benefits is impossible is because no matter what happens the business is going to suffer. If you get rid of healthcare benefits you will end up with sick employees or you will have early retirement of skilled contributing workers. In fact it has been estimated that employers spend about 200 to 300 percent more on indirect costs of poor health from employees, than they do on the healthcare benefits that they provide the employees with. The reason for this is that your healthcare costs for employee benefits are only going to increase with chronic conditions such as heart disease and respiratory problems. However, you will not be able to save money on these costs even if you eliminated healthcare benefits because those costs are still going to remain the same in terms of your employees.

Here are some things that you need to think about to determining if healthcare benefits that you are giving your employees are costing your business too much money.

Number one:
One way to reduce healthcare costs is to improve the quality of healthcare that your employees are receiving. This is going to include things such as better diagnoses, timely treatments, and getting right to the center of things with little or no complications. In order to accomplish this you are going to need to take a proactive approach to wellness programs, screenings, and trying to better manage chronic conditions.

Number two:
You can improve the structure of healthcare delivery, which is going to improve its overall quality. What this means is that the emphasis would shift from cost reduction to quality and value. This means that employers should expect health plans to start directing its patients to excellent providers, rather than just directing their patients to the cheapest providers. This is important because cheap providers may not always do the best job, so you can get more for your money by using excellent providers.

Number three:
Today providers are paid by the visit through whatever specialty they are practicing. They are also paid by procedure through DRGs that are often times too narrow to grasp the full scope of the necessary care that is required. As an employer what you can do is to accelerate change in how the providers are reimbursed for the care that they are providing. What this change will do is link financial success for the providers to clinical success for the patients, meaning that the doctors will get paid what they are worth and the patients will receive the proper care that the need.

While it is true that employee healthcare benefits are costing you more money than you would like as an employer, too eliminate them all together is going to cost you just as much or even more money than what healthcare costs. Your best bet is to cut your costs by trying and getting quality healthcare so that your employees get the right care the first time around instead of having to go to the doctor over and over again.

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Categories: Health Care Costs,

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