Health Insurance Daily

Tips For CDHP Roll-Outs

A few lessons have emerged for employers that plan to introduce a consumer-driven health plan in the near future. Ann Mond Johnson, president of Submimo, a Chicago-based firm that sells health care decision support systems and hospital evaluation tools, recommends starting employee communications early, understanding your company's goals and garnering support from higher ups.

"Visible executive support cannot be understated," she says. "People will follow those leaders. There seems to be sometimes a disconnect between the executive suite and the HR group." Additionally, she advises, "You need to decrease the noise and increase the value of what you say to employees."

Mistakes to avoid include rushing the implementation, focusing on cost alone and failing to analyze the options and costs to workers with specific examples before implementation, she adds.

Barbara Flitsch, senior consultant at Watson Wyatt, comments, "No amount of communication could fix" a poorly executed launch. Johnson agrees: "When you do it wrong, it can be expensive and difficult to recoup."

As an object lesson, Flitsch recalled one business that experienced problems after it introduced a consumer-driven health plan as the only option for workers, without anticipating employee resistance or using other strategies beyond consumerism to reduce health costs.

"Employees have a hard time assessing the risk and financial exposure" in consumer-driven health plans, Johnson observes, but online tools can help with that calculation.

Article written by BenefitNews - June 20, 2006

posted by Mike @ 8:46 AM