The Rising Cost of Care
Healthcare benefits strategies have become a powerful tool for employers to attract and retain top talent in the wake of rising costs of healthcare. Across the nation, employers provide approximately 80% of health coverage. The continued rise in health care costs challenges employers to focus on their benefits strategies and sometimes forces them to make difficult decisions like cost-shifting to employees or dropping benefits completely. Add in rising inflation and fears of recession, and health benefits often take a back seat to payroll, rent and critical operational expenses. This goes for individuals, too. Food insecurity or risk of being unable to pay bills drives individuals to cut health care when times are tough.
The good news is employers don’t have to fall victim to these rising costs. Business leaders can reimagine health care for their workforce by implementing an Advanced Primary Care model. It all begins with providing access to an exceptional patient experience, which doesn’t have to be expensive, and ultimately leads to superior outcomes. By utilizing strategies that focus on access and quality, employers can combat the rising cost of health care, produce long-term savings, focus on employee recruitment and retention, increase productivity, and improve the health of their population.
Advanced Primary Care as a Solution
There are three things in healthcare that are difficult to simultaneously achieve: accessibility, high quality patient care and outcomes, and affordability. The Advanced Primary Care model is unique in that it first focuses on the fundamental principles of quality, coordination, patient experience, access, and prevention and then considers economics; compared to the traditional, fee-for-service primary care model, which is volume-driven. Advanced Primary Care is an elevated standard of primary care that is measured by improved health outcomes for patients, reduced total cost of care for employers and employees, and higher levels of patient satisfaction and engagement. Providers dedicate more time to each patient, allowing them to build trusted relationships, treat the whole patient, assess social determinants, ensure service excellence, and better coordinate care. At Proactive MD, the currency we deal with is trust. It’s important that patients trust that we have their best interest at heart and treat them the way we would treat a family member. We are only and always about the patient, and we make it our mission to continually fight for their greatest good.
There’s no better feeling than knowing you’re providing high-quality healthcare to your employees and their families – our partner, Lee Industries, has experienced this firsthand. A family-owned furniture manufacturing business, LEE Industries recognizes the importance of offering free, comprehensive care to their population. In the first year of our partnership, the LEE Health Center saw significant savings in chronic condition outcomes, averaging around $3,020 per engaged member with a targeted chronic condition. In fact, LEE broke even on investment in the first year of operations due to targeted focus on the chronically ill population. To achieve these results, our providers leverage the power of comprehensive data to identify and treat those patients at highest risk for chronic conditions, who also represent the highest percentage of healthcare costs. By identifying this high-risk group early, providers can intervene to reduce the risk of future emergency room visits and inpatient admissions. Preventive care is core to this model.
Advanced Primary Care is designed to be the front door to the healthcare ecosystem. What differentiates this model is its unique ability to practice medicine the way it was intended. Our care teams are true advocates acting on behalf of the best interest of the patient. They guide the patient through the entire continuum of care – essentially playing quarterback, coordinating specialty care and second opinions, managing high-value referrals, and coordinating all aspects of a patient’s care. Leveraging this design enables providers to deliver care in a way that’s affordable, achieving the Triple Aim.
How this Yields to Cost Savings
What many employers don’t realize is that there is no correlation between the price and quality of health care. In fact, in most cases, the highest quality of care is more affordable. The Advanced Primary Care design activates total cost of care savings, enabling employers to achieve up to 40% ROI within the first three years of implementation. Furthermore, performance guarantees help to balance the risk of employers against their benefits solution. Access to an Advanced Primary Care provider ensures proactive and wholistic patient care, early identification of disease, ongoing management of chronic conditions, referral management, and access to high value specialists as necessary, ultimately mitigating unnecessary costs. We have seen this model work time and time again based on data which proves significant reductions in health care costs for employers and employees as well improved health outcomes. Employers who make the decision to offer this benefit to their employees become heroes, generating trust, commitment, and a healthier workforce.
About John Collier, MBA, MHA:
John Collier has dedicated his career to advancing the healthcare landscape by partnering with employers to provide broad-scope Advanced Primary Care that extends beyond the clinic walls. He has over 18 years of experience in healthcare leadership through his background in healthcare administration, payor contracting, provider network development, and employer cost containment plan design. John Collier is the Founder and CEO of Proactive MD, an innovative Advanced Primary Care provider passionate about helping people live healthier lives, partnering with employers, and driving down healthcare costs. A native of Phoenix, Arizona, John Collier founded Proactive MD in 2016 with a vision to elevate the standard of primary care by reuniting the physician and patient, removing obstacles to care, and reducing healthcare costs. John has a Bachelor of Science in Pre-Medical Studies with a minor in Spanish from University of Arizona, and a MBA and MHA from Grand Canyon University.
