Strengthening Health Equity through Primary Care Transformation

September 30th, 2024
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Primary care serves as the cornerstone of health care delivery, especially when addressing long-standing disparities in access and quality. To fully realize its potential in advancing health equity, the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), in collaboration with Mathematica, highlights the importance of investing in primary care through a new report. The report emphasizes that while primary care is critical, underfunding and systemic barriers continue to limit its effectiveness.

To change this, key stakeholders, including providers, health plans and purchasers, must focus on actionable steps to improve care access, quality and equity.

California Advanced Primary Care Initiative

The CHCF report cites the California Advanced Primary Care Initiative as a prime example of how collaboration among health plans, providers and purchasers can successfully address health inequities. Launched by PBGH’s California Quality Collaborative (CQC) and the Integrated Healthcare Association, the initiative aims to redefine primary care by focusing on high-value care that is accessible, coordinated and patient-centered. The initiative sets clear goals to improve quality, reduce costs and target disparities in underserved populations.

The California Advanced Primary Care Initiative offers a model that includes:

Recommendations for Health Care Industry Stakeholders

The CHCF report offers the following recommendations for providers, health plans and purchasers:

  1. For Health Care Providers
  1. For Health Plans
  1. For Purchasers

Learn more about the California Advanced Primary Care Initiative.

Purchaser Business Group on Health Releases Maternity Care Common Purchasing Agreement to Improve Outcomes for Mothers and Newborns

May 14th, 2024
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PBGH and its members pledge to drive change to reverse maternal mortality rates in the United States.

OAKLAND, Calif (May 14, 2024)—The Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH), a coalition representing 40 of the country’s largest private employers and public entities, today announced the release of its Comprehensive Maternity Care Common Purchasing Agreement. With benefits leaders from Qualcomm and Walmart serving as co-chairs of the initiative, this resource seeks to improve maternal care and birth equity through a collective commitment among employers and public purchasers of health care.

“The U.S. is facing a maternal morbidity and mortality crisis, and the inequities in access to quality care are unacceptable,” explained Nancy Jester, Senior Manager of Benefits and Wellbeing for Walmart. “Through the Common Purchasing Agreement, PBGH and its member organizations aim to reverse these trends by driving the adoption of evidence-based and innovative practices that support improved maternal health and birth equity.”

With employer-sponsored insurance covering over half of all births in the nation annually, the impetus is on employers to drive change. Despite education, income or employment status, outcomes continue to be especially dire for Black and Brown mothers and newborns.

“Through the Comprehensive Maternity Care Common Purchasing Agreement, we are not just setting the bar for quality care, we are creating pathways that lead towards measurable improvements and accountability in maternity care,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, PBGH’s president and CEO. “We are determined to make the U.S. a safe place for all people to give birth.”

The agreement centers on achieving five key principles of comprehensive maternity care:

The purchasing agreement embodies a consensus among employers and public purchasers on what constitutes high-value, affordable and equitable maternity services and establishes specific expectations for health plans and providers. The goal is to materialize strategies that ensure comprehensive care, encapsulating collaboration, evidence-based practices and innovations in the field of maternal health.

“PBGH has played an instrumental role in helping us design higher quality and more equitable maternal health benefits for our workers and their families. This initiative seeks not only to drive change but also to establish PBGH employers and public purchasers as trailblazers in achieving a health care model that is both fair and effective for every family,” said Melissa Real, Senior Director, Americas Region Benefits and Global Wellbeing for Qualcomm Incorporated. “We look forward to continuing to collaborate with partners, including health plans, providers, vendor solutions, and community organizations to put these strategies into practice.”

As a next step in advancing this important work, PBGH will be hosting a multi-stakeholder Maternal Health and Birth Equity Summit on September 18, 2024 in Denver, Colorado.

To learn more about the Comprehensive Maternity Care Common Purchasing Agreement and the PBGH’s commitment to maternity care and birth equity, please click here.

 

A Journey of Resilience and Advocacy in a Complex Health Care Landscape

April 17th, 2024
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In early 2015, during a routine doctor’s appointment, David Ford’s physician recommended a colonoscopy. However, it wasn’t until three months later, when Ford, a senior government relations manager with Southern California Edison, experienced rectal bleeding on his way to work, that the urgency of his situation became apparent. An emergency surgery revealed a tumor on his intestines, leading to a diagnosis of colorectal cancer — the second leading cause of death from cancer in the United States.

Navigating the Delivery System

Ford was thrust into a challenging health care journey, facing the intricacies of cancer treatment. Navigating the health care system added another layer of complexity. Ford had to coordinate appointments across different health care providers, understand the nuances of his insurance coverage and make informed decisions about his treatment options. The difficulty of this process was exacerbated by the need to decipher medical jargon and understand the implications of different medical procedures and tests.

Throughout his treatment, Ford, a Black man, became acutely aware of the disparities in health care access and the additional challenges faced by those in minority communities. Black Americans have a 20% higher incidence of colorectal cancer and a 40% higher death rate from the disease than white Americans, underlining the urgent need for action to reduce these inequities. During a recent PBGH California Quality Collaborative (CQC) webinar that explored disparities in colorectal cancer care, Ford shared his story, recounting his delay in undergoing a colonoscopy and how his experience may have been different had he been more proactive about undergoing the screening test.

During an annual physical exam in 2018, Ford’s physician conducted a test that revealed elevated prostate-specific antigen numbers, leading to a diagnosis of prostate cancer. After undergoing radiation treatment, he was able to make a full recovery. Ford’s experience underscores the critical need for proactive health management and screening for early detection through tools such as the EpiSwitch Prostate Screening (PSE), especially in communities of color, where distrust in the health care system and barriers to accessing care are common.

A Voice for Advocacy and Change

Today, Ford serves as a member of the Cancer Action Network board, actively engaged in lobbying and advocacy efforts. His experience has fueled his commitment to cancer research, funding and policy change, making him a vocal advocate for equitable access to care.

“There’s more advocacy and education to do through outreach and connection with community-based groups, churches and national organizations to get behind this campaign because I do think that this is a civil rights crisis, particularly in the African American community,” said Ford. Ford emphasizes the importance of early detection, especially given today’s innovative technology and testing options which are less invasive and allow for greater accuracy: “Cancer is much easier to treat and deal with if it’s early… get in to see someone as soon as possible when you think something is wrong.”

Strategies to Combat Colorectal Cancer Disparities

The following key strategies can help reduce disparities in colorectal cancer care within the delivery system:

CQC is working to advance health equity through programs like Equity and Quality at Independent Practices in LA County, a quality improvement collaborative for primary care practices and independent physician associations focused on reducing health disparities for Medi-Cal enrollees of color.

To learn more about disparities in colorectal cancer care and what patients, providers, health plans and purchasers can do to advance equitable care, view a recording of CQC’s latest webinar Addressing Disparities in Colorectal Cancer and access our guide to designing an effective colorectal cancer outreach campaign.

 

Empowering Care: The Role of Alternative Payment Model Design in Advancing Equity

January 25th, 2024
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Alternative Payment Models (APMs), incentivizing clinicians to provide high-quality, cost-efficient care beyond traditional fee-for-service payments, hold immense potential to revolutionize health care delivery, expanding access, improving outcomes and addressing health disparities. However, to unleash their transformative power, APMs must be thoughtfully designed to prioritize health equity and mitigate unintended negative consequences. Factors such as poverty, institutional racism, education, economic opportunities, insurance coverage and the living environment significantly influence health equity. When capitated payments and performance incentives fail to account for the necessary resources to provide adequate care, practices serving populations with higher medical and social risks may face financial challenges, ultimately impacting health outcomes negatively.

Multi-Stakeholder Alignment

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is pivotal in aligning the design and implementation of a payment model that champions health equity. Through the California Advanced Primary Care Initiative, PBGH’s California Quality Collaborative (CQC) and partner Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA) bring together health care payers to collectively strengthen primary care delivery. The initiative aims to facilitate the delivery of high-performing, value-based care, reducing costs while enhancing quality and equity. CQC and IHA collaborated with health plans to develop a common hybrid primary care payment model, incorporating key recommendations from subject matter experts in payment model design and health equity intended to strengthen health equity in APM design and implementation, regardless of geography. The payment model is comprised of three key elements: direct patient care payment, population health payment and performance-based payment.

Recommendations to Advance Equity

Element 1: Direct Patient Care Payment

Element 2: Population Health Management Payment

Element 3: Performance-Based Payment

APMs, with intentional design considerations for health equity, can uniquely contribute to addressing health disparities. Direct investments and dedicated support are crucial elements, ensuring that practices serving rural or underserved areas have a viable path to success within the payment model. Multi-stakeholder alignment and ongoing collaboration are key to driving cooperative changes and improving the delivery of care. The journey toward APMs requires collective efforts and guidance from diverse stakeholders, from payers and providers to community-based organizations and those receiving care.

For a more detailed look at the recommendations, read our latest issue brief.

Advanced Primary Care Key to Reducing Health Inequities

June 14th, 2023
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Robust, comprehensive primary care – a critical foundation for a more cost-effective, high-functioning health system – is equally important in helping boost health equity, a new report states.

The report, produced by the California Health Care Foundation, underscores the variety of ways in which advanced primary care can advance equity in care access and quality for underserved populations. Yet it also warns of significant barriers that continue to thwart primary care’s potential in California and nationwide.

In the face of these obstacles, employers can take steps today to strengthen primary care and reduce health care inequities. Actions can include expanding primary care locations, pushing insurers to strengthen financial support for primary care and increasing telehealth capabilities.

Unlocking Health Equity through Advanced Primary Care

Long-standing racial and economic discrimination in health and social policy has fostered pervasive health gaps for people of color. These disparities range from greater disease burdens and more mental health problems for racially minoritized populations to increased mortality and shorter life expectancies. Historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups also contend with less insurance coverage and reduced access to care.

The good news is that the key components of advanced primary care are particularly well-suited for reversing systemic health care inequities, according to the California Health Care Foundation report. Primary care’s capabilities and resulting benefits include:

Advanced primary care’s power to mitigate health inequities highlights the wider benefits it can produce. Adults who regularly see a primary care physician have 33% lower health care costs and reduced odds of dying prematurely than those who see only a specialist. Every $1 increase in primary care spending produces $13 in savings.

Despite these critical advantages, primary care remains woefully under-resourced, accounting for 35% of health care visits yet only receiving 5.4% of all spending on health care in the U.S. Reimbursement for Medicaid services for low-income, at-risk populations is significantly less than Medicare and commercial rates. As a result, many young doctors burdened with student debt opt for better-paying specialties, exacerbating an already severe primary care clinician shortage.

Employers Can Take Steps to Bolster Primary Care and Advance Health Equity

Notwithstanding these challenges, employers can take steps today to accelerate advanced primary care to help reverse inequities and improve overall employee health, including:

Transforming Health Care Through Primary Care

Given advanced primary care’s unmatched ability to both address inequity and transform our health system, consensus is building around efforts to overcome longstanding financial barriers and dramatically strengthen the nation’s primary care infrastructure.

The California Health Care Foundation report, for example, calls for a new paradigm that includes programs to increase recruiting and training of primary care physicians, increased primary care spending, improved Medicaid reimbursement and expanded primary care hours and locations. Employers can play an essential role in pushing payers to invest in primary care, as well as encourage providers to use the investment to realize and extend the many benefits advanced primary care offers.

Ultimately, it is about increasing equal access to high-quality primary care for all. Having access is equity.

 

Special thanks to Rishi Manchanda, M.D., co-author of the CHCF report.

 

Maternity Deserts an Alarming Trend in the U.S.

May 1st, 2023
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Maternity units across the country continue to close at increasing rates, leaving women at a heightened risk of maternal mortality. In fact, 47% of rural community hospitals report having no obstetric services in 2020. According to a report by the March of Dimes, more than 2.2 million women of childbearing age live in maternity care deserts, affecting nearly 150,000 babies.

Maternity care deserts are counties in which access to maternity health care services is limited or absent, either through lack of services or barriers to a woman’s ability to access that care. Living in a maternity care desert contributes significantly to a woman’s risk of maternal mortality. Studies show that this risk is even higher for women in rural areas, who have fewer options for prenatal care and fewer health care providers available to deliver their babies. This creates longer wait times and longer travel times to seek care.

The reasons behind these closures are complex, but many hospitals with obstetrics units are closing due to financial pressures, such as low reimbursement rates and high malpractice insurance costs. Additionally, the aging population of health care providers, particularly among obstetricians and midwives, creates additional challenges for rural communities. This results in fewer obstetricians and midwives available to provide prenatal care and deliver babies.

What’s the Solution?

Intervention from policymakers, including legislation, may be necessary to address the underlying causes of maternity deserts. Policy efforts should focus on ensuring all women have access to quality prenatal care and a safe environment for delivering their babies. Federal and state governments can invest in programs to recruit and retain physicians and midwives in rural areas, and the root causes of these closures can be addressed by offering financial incentives, such as loan forgiveness and tax incentives, to hospitals that offer obstetric services.

Several state Medicaid programs and major health systems in New Mexico, Missouri and Utah are leveraging telemedicine and remote monitoring and developing hub and spoke models of care in which obstetricians or maternal fetal medicine specialists in urban areas provide education and support to rural providers, who are more likely to be family medicine physicians and nurse practitioners than obstetricians.

Since obstetric unit closures in rural hospitals are often due to inadequate payments from private insurers, it’s time to rethink the way we pay for maternity care in these settings. The Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform has proposed a new strategy which could create sweeping change – paying rural hospitals a monthly fee for each insured woman of childbearing age in the community, in addition to paying service-based fees directly related to pregnancy, delivery and postpartum.

Employers also have a critical role to play and know that improving maternal health outcomes in the U.S. and reducing disparities will require changes to the existing system of care to make it more patient-centered.

Here’s what employers can do to mitigate the trend of increased maternity deserts:

 

Read more about employer strategies to promote high-value maternity care.

A Vicious Circle: Food Insecurity Both a Cause and Effect of Higher Health Care Costs

February 23rd, 2023
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More than 34 million people, including nine million children, lack reliable access to enough food to live active, healthy lives. Grinding inflation and rising health care costs are making life even more difficult for food-insecure Americans – undermining health and forcing risky tradeoffs between sustenance and medical care.

Factors contributing to food insecurity include poverty, a lack of affordable housing, racial discrimination, chronic health conditions and poor health care access.

Fueling Higher Costs

As a major social determinant of health, food insecurity contributes to chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease and diabetes. For children, food insecurity and chronic hunger create a higher risk of both developmental and behavioral health problems.

A 2019 study by Feeding America estimated that food insecurity costs the U.S. health care system an additional $53 billion annually by triggering or exacerbating chronic diseases and fueling emergency room visits, hospitalizations and readmissions.

It also results in higher family health care expenditures. A recent study found that food-insecure families paid about 20% – an average of $2,500 – more annually in health care costs than families with sufficient food.

Health care costs were higher regardless of the type of health care coverage the family had, from $1,855 more with public insurance and $2,107 more with private insurance to $3,531 more with no insurance or a mix of different coverages.

Choosing Between Food and Care

For many living near or below the poverty line, inflation’s steep rise over the past two years has led to increasingly difficult choices between food and health care. According to a recent survey conducted by the Harris Poll, nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) have skipped meals or did not buy groceries due to high inflation (including 28% of Gen Z and 23% of millennials).

At the same time, 14% have cancelled or postponed plans to see a medical specialist, 11% have skipped an annual physical, and 10% have not taken prescribed medication due to inflation. 

Minorities, Single Moms Disproportionately Affected

Food insecurity affects a little over 10% of U.S. households, according to the USDA. However, rates among single-mom households and Black and Hispanic households are substantially higher than the national average at 24%, 20% and 16%, respectively. Rates also differ significantly from state to state due to population characteristics, governmental policies and economic conditions. Between 2019 and 2021, food insecurity rates ranged from a low of 5.4% of households in New Hampshire to a high of 15.3% in Mississippi.

Food insecurity needs to be a bigger part of the conversation around health equity and efforts to decrease health disparities. As employers, purchasers and policymakers continue to navigate and combat ever-rising health care costs in this country, it’s important to remember that there are working Americans who must choose between putting food on the table and getting necessary medical care and prescription drugs.

4 Key Employer Health Trends for 2023

January 4th, 2023
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With the pandemic’s grip finally easing, employers are shifting their focus toward key objectives that can support sustained improvements in health care quality and meaningful reductions in cost. Here, the top four trends for large health care purchasers to watch as we head into 2023.

1. Improving health equity

COVID-19 exposed major disparities in the U.S. health care system and helped fuel an employer commitment to tackle the systemic inequities faced by underserved and minority communities. Employers understand that by focusing on health plan design, care access and social determinants of care, they can make important strides toward providing more equitable and cost-effective care.

In the coming year, more large companies will be looking to cover preventive medications and services, supporting pregnancies through doula services, developing data capabilities to identify and help address social determinants, improving remote chronic disease management, and making benefits and health care simpler to access and navigate for underserved populations.

 

2. Strengthening primary care

Employers realize that robust primary care provides the foundation for a healthy workforce and is an essential starting point of high-value health care system. Studies show that advanced primary care, or primary care systems that incentivize integrated and coordinated care, can lower overall health utilization, improve outcomes and reduce costs.

Key strategies employers are expected to target to bolster primary care include supporting consistent advanced primary care standards for payers, providers and health care purchasers to incentivize high-quality, lower-cost primary care. Other employer efforts are likely to focus on working with policymakers to advance the development and application of alternative payment models that support and enable advanced primary care. Equally important will be the continued evolution of tools and systems that enhance consistent access to behavioral mental health in the primary care setting.

To support purchasers in their efforts to identify and work with top-performing primary care practices, PBGH recently issued a first-of-its-kind collective request for information (RFI) on behalf of members to identify provider practices that meet established standards of advanced primary care and that are willing to partner — the results of which will be used in network design and/or in direct contracting arrangements.

 

3. Taking fiduciary responsibility for health care

The Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) of 2021 imposes fiduciary obligations for employers who self-insure under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). That means self-insured employers will need to demonstrate that the health care services they purchase for employees are cost-effective and high-quality. As a result, employers will be working to harness newly available hospital price information to drive cost-effective, quality care. Critical to these efforts will be tools that can make newly transparent price data meaningful and actionable. In addition, collective employer efforts to identify specific examples of overpricing will likely emerge to support negotiating leverage with hospitals and providers. Ultimately, employers’ new fiduciary obligations may spawn a shared national database with companion analytics that purchasers can use for evaluating pricing variation to help determine fair prices.

 

4. Reforming pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)

A key legislative objective for purchasers in 2023 will be passage of legislation similar to the last Congress’s Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act of 2022. Comprehensive federal legislation would empower the Federal Trade Commission to increase drug pricing transparency and hold PBMs accountable for numerous unfair and deceptive practices that increase consumer costs and limit access of prescription drugs. In addition to expected action from Congress, a Federal Trade Commission investigation into PBM business practices is underway. Employers, meanwhile, will increasingly be looking to new market entrants that promise more transparent PBM services and put employers in control of their data to gain greater control over rising drug costs and employee access to quality care. PBGH is working across multiple channels to raise awareness about the extent to which PBMs have distorted the prescription drug supply chain – actions which put lives at risk, constrain employee access to medications and add billions of unnecessary costs to employers’ health care expenses.

Better Data Collection Essential to Understanding and Addressing Health Inequities

December 14th, 2022
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The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated the weaknesses of the U.S. health care system and highlighted long-standing inequities for minority communities. Highlighted during this period was the profound impact of economic stability, education, social and community life, one’s neighborhood and access to high-quality health care—social determinants of health—on the overall health and well-being of communities.

As a result, addressing health inequities has become a top priority for many employers, purchasers and health care providers. The ability to effectively collect a range of data points about patients and the care they receive is an essential component to creating meaningful change and ensuring populations achieve their full health potential.

Looking at health quality data by race, ethnicity, language and other patient characteristics, is crucial for understanding how long-standing systems of privilege and oppression impact the health of minority populations and communities. However, patient self-reported race, ethnicity and language (REaL) data across health insurance markets is widely variable and overall limited. While race and ethnicity data in California’s Medicaid program (called Medi-Cal) is broadly available likely because of legislation requiring health plans to collect this information starting in 2009, corresponding data for the majority of patients who receive health benefits through the commercial market – via employers or on the private market –is low or absent.

These limitations of known race and ethnicity data hinder the ability to see where disparities exist and for the health system to react with meaningful interventions. For health plans and large employers and purchasers, who provide health benefits for more than half the U.S., it is crucial to uncover variation in the access to care and the quality and experience of care being provided.

With better self-reported patient demographic information, employers, purchasers, payers and providers can tie this data to health care access, quality, patient experience and outcomes to illuminate exactly where disparities exist. These insights can enable tailored interventions and support for improvement.

How to Improve Data Collection

Legislation, Policy and Regulation

Legislation and regulations can incentivize or require health plans, providers and other health system organizations to increase the collection and quality of self-reported demographic data. Legislation and statute also have the potential to enforce standardization for data fields and definitions, which enables largescale purchasers of health care to align with their health plan and provider industry partners and enhance their ability to share, aggregate or disaggregate data to identify trends and implement plans for improvement.

It is crucial to ensure that national and state standards do not contradict each other.

Contracting and Business Relationships

Contracting requirements and incentives as part of large-scale public and private purchaser and payer programs can increase the collection, reporting and use of REaL data and thereby bolster efforts to mitigate disparities. Large purchasers could add incentive payouts if plans are able to stratify measures across self-reported REaL data. Health plans, provider organizations and other payers that contract within the health system can use incentive payouts for better data collection and stratification and other efforts to reduce disparities. Another approach is to build tiered networks that point patients to providers who have proven to be stronger at collecting, reporting and using REaL data.

It is important for purchasers and payers to avoid siloed initiatives that conflict with each other.

Organizational Leadership, Systems Structure and Culture

Organizations that pay for services at the point of care (e.g., health plans and independent physician associations, or IPAs) have the potential to increase REaL data collection, reporting and use by assessing and enhancing data collection opportunities, sharing data internally and creating a culture that values the collection of this information. This starts with organizational leadership. It is important to normalize data collection into regular workflows to improve the quality and ensure the most accurate information possible.

Purchasers, health plans and provider organizations can increase patient self-reporting by increasing awareness of how the data will be used and educating enrollment counselors and other staff with direct patient interaction on why it is important to collect this data.

Certification Requirements

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) has required plans to report their percentage of self-reported REaL data for certain key measures, with a goal of 80% self-reported data. Additional accrediting organizations, purchasers and others could adopt similar certification requirements to support reporting and stratification for the same measures and self-reported data goals as NCQA. This would increase the consequences for not aligning and support the overall goal of greater availability of self-reported REaL data.

 

Read more in our latest issue brief.

Looking Toward the Horizon: Top 7 Health Care Trends for Employers in 2022

January 6th, 2022
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At the recent PBGH year-end roundtable, noted health care futurist Ian Morrison discussed key health care trends that both he and PBGH believe will be most relevant to purchasers in the year ahead. Morrison is the author of several books on health care and has worked with more than 100 Fortune 500 companies in health care, manufacturing, information technology and financial services. 

Here, the top 7 trends for large health care purchasers to watch as we head into 2022.

 

1. The workforce will remain in upheaval

Providers and other employers continue to grapple with the unfolding impact of the Great Resignation. Difficulty recruiting and retaining staff will remain an ongoing problem for many provider organizations. One consequence will be the continued ascendance of telehealth and other virtual care services. Separately, the loss of employer-based insurance for many workers who’ve left their jobs will likely increase self-pay, health exchange and Medicaid patients, resulting in a worsening payer mix and continued financial pressure on providers.  

 

2. Providers depend on employers for profits

According to a recent RAND study, hospitals charge employers, on average, about 250% of Medicare rates. The premium over Medicare can range for 130% in Iowa to 300% in California. The reality is that providers are dependent on self-insured and commercial payers for their entire margin; purchasers that can’t or won’t consider shifting provider networks to compel some level of competition will continue to be subjected to the highest charges.  

 

3. Choice has been conflated with quality

Employers are beginning to understand that in opting for broad, open provider networks over the years, they’ve undermined their own ability to direct employees and members to the highest-quality, most efficient provider organizations. This recognition is supported by surveys that show consumers themselves are willing to trade choice for quality.  

That’s why, increasingly, large employers/purchasers are measuring and contracting with teams and individuals that meet their standards for quality and service and respond to their concerns, stepping away from one-size-fits-all arrangements with large health systems. PBGH members, for example, report quantified success through direct purchasing relationships with systems that are eager to innovate and demonstrate quality. Passively accepting health plan reports is a thing of the past as employers gain the experience and data needed to scale new approaches. 

 

4. Consolidation will continue

Mergers and acquisitions across all levels of health care will continue as organizations negatively impacted by the pandemic are picked up by those interested in broadening their footprint or extending vertical integration. This trend will increase the market share of the most powerful health systems and reduce potentially more cost-effective alternatives for purchasers.  

 

5. Investment in digital point solutions will keep growing

Venture capital investment in digital health solutions has doubled over the past several years to approximately $14.7 billion this year, and the trend is expected to continue. Fundamental questions remain about whether these solutions are truly adding value or simply increasing fragmentation and cost across the system. Employers are overwhelmed by the sales pitches they receive from new companies vying for their business and are looking for trusted sources that use clinical rigor and data-based outcomes to help them assess their value and create needed standards in the market for new entrants.  

 

6. Addressing the health care inequities exposed by the pandemic will become a priority for providers and purchasers alike

The risks of hospitalization and death for marginalized people in the U.S. are two-to-three times higher than for white people. Organizations will continue looking for opportunities to close this gap by improving access and finding innovative ways to address social determinants of health. Such efforts can include innovative maternity care that reduces disparities and improves quality and outcomes and the broad adoption of patient-reported outcomes, which offer an ideal means for gaining insight into the care process and how its experienced by patients.  

 

7. Employers have an historic opportunity to impose greater control over the health care supply chain

Because the pandemic has caused significant upheaval across the health care system and created financial stress for many provider organizations, purchasers have an unprecedented opening to leverage their buying power in pursuit of higher-quality, lower-cost care. However, they can have an impact only if they’re willing to act in concert. Alignment on priorities and implementation is critical to advancing the change we need. Purchasers must become more aggressive in designing benefits that favor high-value delivery partners.