With unemployment for college-educated people age 25 and above at just 2.2%, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a jobs market this tight. To attract and retain workers in this environment, growing companies are offering more than just competitive health benefits, and this is especially true for smaller companies forced to compete with [...]
Investment bank Morgan Stanley recently hired a Chief Medical Officer. General Motors made the Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System the only in-network option for 24,000 salaried employees in southeast Michigan. And, Apple joined many other large employers in using on-site clinics to provide more personalized care. These tactics are being used to address a combination [...]
Can the cost of a hip replacement in Philadelphia really vary from $11,000 to $125,000? From white papers to published books, much has been written about how difficult it can be to find out what a hospital stay or outpatient procedure will cost. And as Anna Wilde Mathews observed in her article Lifting the Veil [...]
You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure! With a self-funded healthcare plan and a good, independent TPA, access to claims data is standard operating procedure. Even more important, a good TPA like Diversified Group has the expertise to convert your data into intelligent, actionable strategies to manage your plan, monitor performance and modify plan design [...]
In August of 2017, Massachusetts passed H.3822 “An Act Further Regulating Employer Contributions to Health Care”. The purpose of the act is to reinforce the finances of the Commonwealth’s Medicaid and Children’ s Health Insurance (CHIP) programs (MassHealth). Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, many states have seen health coverage shift from private [...]
Paying more for less is never a good thing, especially when it comes to employee health care costs. And while many people have become almost numb to this trend, Diversified Group is doing more than ever to help self-funded health plan clients fight back. With cost transparency tools contained in programs such as Pharamasense and [...]
Health savings accounts are hot, with nearly two-thirds of respondents to a Plan Sponsor Council of America survey saying they believe that even those without a high deductible health plan should qualify. A benefit often cited by employers and employees alike is that HSAs can be a valuable part of one’s retirement strategy, since healthcare [...]
Experts agree that a lack of true price transparency has contributed significantly to the inefficiency in healthcare. Several websites compare the costs for certain procedures at varying hospitals, but it’s still very difficult, if not impossible, to make an informed choice when preparing for a non-emergency procedure. As a result, most people still go to [...]
The article below was published on May 1, 2017 by the Employee Benefit Adviser, written by Brian Kalish. Nearly half of all employees are covered by a self-insured group health plan. Many companies that offer these plans have separate stop-loss insurance policies to protect them against the risk of catastrophically high claims. Some states and [...]
The below article was posted by benefitspro.com on March 29, 2017 and was written by Marlene Y. Satter. Photo Source benefitspro.com If they want greater engagement from their insureds, health plans should tone down the communications about bills and fees, but that doesn’t mean insureds don’t want to hear from them. In fact, [...]
