Health systems continually work to provide quality of care at the lowest cost. Success comes from the ability to excel at competencies like care management, case management, utilization management and utilization review. These four related competencies share a common goal: providing the appropriate level of care to patients in the most appropriate setting to produce the desired clinical outcome based on patients’ medical condition and needs. When your hospital or health system is able to achieve that goal, what you’re doing is the definition of value. You are producing the best possible outcome at the lowest possible cost as cost is directly tied to utilization of medical services.

Business Group on Health’s (BGH) latest annual Large Employers’ Health Care Strategy and Plan Design Survey illustrates the need for tighter controls over utilization if you want to control healthcare costs.

They surveyed 122 large employers, representing more than nine million covered lives regarding their 2021 employee benefit strategies in the midst of the pandemic. The employers said they expect employees’ healthcare costs to rise 6.1 percent next year, but they also said they can reduce that to 5.3 percent with effective changes in their health plan benefits design for workers.

Whether those changes produce the savings employers expect will depend on employees getting more engaged with their own health. Of the surveyed employers, 45 percent said their healthcare strategy moving forward is an integral part of their overall workforce strategy. That’s up from 36 percent who expressed that same sentiment in 2019. “This is spurred in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, shining a light on the connection between employee health and well-being and overall business performance,” the BGH said.

So what benefits design changes are they planning to make to spend less without reducing the quality of care for their employees? Thirty-one percent cited a more focused strategy on high-cost medical and prescription drug claims as the way forward. In short, care management. It was the third-highest priority cited by the companies after making more virtual care solutions available to employees and expanding employees’ access to mental health services.

Further, most employers said they aren’t waiting to be passive recipients of delivery reforms to act on those changes. Sixty percent said they are implementing virtual and digital care point solutions, navigation and concierge services, or implementing alternative payment and delivery models or both simultaneously to give their employees more control over their own health.  In 2021, 51 percent said they will offer at least one advanced primary care strategy.