Basic Principles
I. An Employer Health & Benefits Collaborative
The leadership group established a set of “Basic Principles” as core to the project of creating an employer health & benefits collaborative. To establish a compatible network of participants and users, the following basic principles are the foundational beliefs of the founding members.
A. Basic Principles
1. Collaborative – establish a collaborative network to improve the ability of employers to share ideas that promote healthier lifestyles among employees and their families, improve outcomes, and drive down the cost of health insurance.
2. Employer-centric - The information, research, ideas, and examples must be for the benefit of employer benefit mangers. Examples of success must be rooted in employer testimony. Participating employers must be willing to share benefit design, information, tools, and examples of what works and what has not worked within their companies.
3. Relevant – provide information that is relevant to benefit managers dealing with current cost, quality, and access issues.
4. Evidence Based – collect, house, and share best practices on health management, condition management, employee education, communication, and plan designs. Content must be validated and outcomes based on specific metrics.
5. Open Access – enable the broadest number of employers access to new ideas and information. Allow participation for all employer segments, sizes, and degrees of readiness for change.
6. Simplicity – the information available must be simple to use, easily identified, efficiently searched, and quickly summarized.
7. Use of Technology - use of business network technology as the platform qualified with state of the art Knowledge Management standards and techniques.
8. Rapid Adoption of Successes – reduce the time from idea, early adoption, fast followers, and general acceptance of health benefit plan design ideas.
B. Potential Outcomes
By following established principles and agreed to core values, there are a number of targeted and potential outcomes from the project initiative.
1. Lower Costs – reduced benefit costs through understanding effective design, education, behavior modification, and implementation strategies.
2. Improved Plan Performance – avoid start up errors, stop re-inventing the wheel, and minimize rework in benefit designs.
3. Create Healthier Membership – earlier adoption of qualified ideas regarding wellness, prevention, and early intervention.
4. Improved Productivity – recognition and measurements of better health on corporate productivity, absenteeism, impaired presenteeism, unscheduled sick days, disability, and workers compensation claims.
5. Transparency – clarity of information related to costs, quality, and services provide by suppliers, vendors, and providers.
6. Benchmarking – known relationship to best practices with similarly situated plans.
7. Rapid Adoption of Successes – reduce the time from idea, early adoption, fast followers, and general acceptance of health benefit plan design ideas.
II. Goals
The rapid diffusion of ideas that work to support a 21st Century Intelligent Health Plan through a business health & benefits collaborative. This “Employer Learning Cooperative” will be a self-organizing, self-monitoring, business-oriented “Social/Community Network” established to:
• Share Problems
• Share Solutions
• Identify Best Practices
• Share Vendor Experiences/Capabilities
• Share Employee Reactions/Feedback
• Identify Metrics that Work
III. Responsibilities
The Center for Health Transformation will:
Assist and facilitate the creation, development, and adoption of an effective self-organizing health & benefits collaborative.
The founding thought leaders will:
Act as the Board of Directors to lead the project effort as the core participants in supporting, recruiting new participants, and overseeing the action plan, and proposing expansion ideas.
