Currently there are many sophisticated as well as simple tools and programs available to employers to help them in an effort to reduce health care costs and improve the health and wellness attitudes of their employees.

These tools and programs include wellness and disease management, provider evaluation and outcome data along with Consumer Driven Health Plans (CDHP), Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRA), Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and many other consumer information sources.

HOWEVER, a number of surveys and studies have shown that:

Less than 45% of employees can define the basic terms of their health insurance coverage, e.g. they cannot define co-pay, have a difficult time with co-insurance and don’t understand what an annual out-of-pocket limit is or how its calculated.

Less than 52% of employers use the resources of, or have the “buy in” of their middle and senior management to help promote their initiatives for cost improvement and efficiencies in the medical plans and programs offered.

Just these two facts alone can prevent the most well designed plans and the best cost and budget strategies from having the desired effect on corporate medical plans.

At morgan/sigma partners we feel it is essential and necessary for an employer to have an effective educational plan in place to instruct, tutor and coach employees on the fundamentals of their plan (define terms, show them the process) as part of an overall strategy for cost efficiency and wellness. We also feel that the management closest to the employees as well as more senior executives need to be a part of the process and need to be educated on why they are important to any strategy’s success.