This 2014 report from the Bipartisan Policy Center’s CEO Council on Health and Innovation describes strategies from America’s business leaders to improve the health and wellness of individuals, improve the health of communities, and improve the nation’s health care system. The members of the nine-member CEO Council on Health and Innovation are the chief executives from Aetna, Bank of America, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Coca-Cola, Institute for Advanced Health, Johnson and Johnson, McKinsey, Verizon, and Walgreen. Together, their organizations employ nearly one million members of the U.S. workforce and are responsible for providing health insurance coverage to more than 150 million “covered lives” (employees, their families, and retirees covered by employer health insurance).
The sections of the report describe the challenges in improving the health and wellness of individuals, improving the health of communities, and improving the nation’s health care system, and how their companies are meeting those challenges. Among the strategies described are engaging employees in wellness programs, leveraging innovative uses of health information and communications technologies, building volunteerism among employees, re-prioritizing corporate philanthropy and community benefits, supporting practice improvements among contracted health care providers, applying business data analytics to health care, and participating in quality improvement and payment reform innovations such as accountable care organizations.
The CEO Council members call on the nation’s employers to join with them and commit to taking the following actions:
1. To improve the health and wellness of individuals, employers should implement comprehensive health and wellness programs for employees that address the following needs and begin tracking and sharing outcomes to promote learning and improvement:
- Nutrition and physical activity
- Tobacco cessation
- Emotional and behavioral health
- Condition management, including chronic disease management.
2. To improve the health of communities, employers should begin to understand and support the health of communities by reviewing metrics already being captured in the following areas and collaborating with local public- and private-sector leaders on programs designed to promote improvements in any or all of the following:
- Health behaviors, with a focus on physical activity, nutrition, and tobacco use
- Clinical care and health outcomes, with a focus on access to care, preventive services, and prevalence of chronic disease
- Social and economic factors that have been shown to improve the health of communities, with a focus on education, housing, access to nutritious foods and beverages, and childhood poverty.
3. To improve the health care system, employers should make value-based purchasing a factor in their choice of health plans for their employees and:
- Partner with health plans to increase the share of provider payments that are value-based and promote delivery system innovations that have been shown to deliver value; promote reporting of meaningful performance data focused on quality, efficiency, productivity, patient engagement and satisfaction, and health outcomes; and support stronger relationships between individuals and primary care providers
- Support employee and beneficiary health care decisionmaking by increasing the transparency of performance information, providing consumer education tools, and implementing value-based benefit design.
Ignatius Bau 