How Employers Can Reduce Healthcare Costs

With healthcare costs dominating the conversation in recent years, the topic of employer-covered healthcare is a key issue. With most Americans getting their health insurance coverage through their employers, this is a key area that impacts how much people feel the burden of healthcare costs.

One way that employers are looking to reduce costs without impacting benefits is by turning to digital health platforms. However, the evidence is still unclear as to how much of a positive impact that these platforms actually have.

Pharmaceutical Executive spoke with Michael Abrams, managing partner at global healthcare consultancy Numerof & Associates about strategies employers are using to reduce costs while still providing effective coverage. He also discusses the impact of digital health and how it appears to actually be impacting the market.

Pharmaceutical Executive: What options do employers have to reduce healthcare costs?
Michael Abrams: These organizations are offering something genuinely valuable. In some cases they are providing care virtually — physical therapy, for example, can be delivered digitally in a number of clinical contexts, and adherence to drug therapies can be meaningfully improved through virtual engagement.

One of the most important features of what these companies offer is the ability to direct employees to the clinicians who are most effective and most economical in how they treat patients — the providers who consistently get the best results. That kind of intelligent navigation is extremely valuable, and it is precisely the kind of service you would have hoped traditional healthcare systems would provide. Generally speaking, they don't see it as being in their interest to do so.

That is the gap these digital health organizations have grown up to fill — and it is a meaningful one.