Services Related to Consumerism and Consumer Driven Health Plans

As the cost of providing health care benefits to employees grows, CFOs have listed health care cost trend among their biggest concerns for the future financial strength of their organizations. Most plan sponsors believe that getting participants more involved in health care decisions and making them more aware of the true cost of care are essential to controlling health care costs in the future. This movement towards creating better health care "consumers" has gained considerable strength over the past few years, with almost half of plan sponsors offering or planning to offer a Consumer Driven Health Plan by 2007 and the government predicting more than 14 million enrollees in Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) by 2010.

Faced with continuous pressure to reduce and control plan costs, many human resource executives are turning to consumer driven health plans (CDHPs) in hopes of controlling cost without cutting benefits and/or raising contributions. However, the implementation of a CDHP involves a significant effort on the part of the plan sponsor, and should not be done without consideration of the changes it would require from employees in terms of utilizing their coverage. In addition, deciding on the proper plan design - whether it be a Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) based plan or an HSA option coupled with a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) - and understanding the administrative and compliance challenges associated with each can be both confusing and challenging.

Sibson Consulting can help you decide on the best way to introduce health care consumerism to your plan participants. This may involve implementing a CDHP, modifying your current plan designs to increase participant cost awareness, embarking on a communications campaign for conscious decision making, or some combination of these methods. Health care consumerism is not simply a plan design; it is a campaign dedicated to making participants better educated consumers of care. Sibson Consulting can create the right strategy for your organization, utilizing such services as are listed below:

• CDHP Feasibility Study - assessing the readiness of your organization for these new plans
• Underwriting/Plan Design Modeling - understanding the value and costs associated with a CDHP, and the impact one may have on your overall health benefit costs
• Design of a CDH strategy, with long and short term goals to ensure success
• Vendor Selection - choosing the right vendors for your plan is crucial
• Communication Assessment and Strategy - even more than with traditional health plans, crafting the right messages and ensuring that participants understand what is expected from them are critical to success
• Communications design - plans that are properly designed and communicated engage participants in making conscious decisions regarding:
  • Which health plan they pick
  • Which treatment option they choose
  • Which doctor they choose
  • What lifestyle choices they make.
• Compliance guidance and review - with new CDHP plans come a host of new rules
• Insight into other organizations plans regarding consumerism, gained from our annual survey

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