Employer Success Stories
Working Together in Wisconsin
summary
The Business Health Care Group (BHCG) is working to make southeast Wisconsin’s health care delivery system more competitive with better cost containment and improved outcomes.
Soaring Costs Endanger Region’s Competitiveness
Health care costs in Southeastern Wisconsin outpace national averages. In Milwaukee, the average cost for health care coverage in 2005 was more than $9,300 per employee. Nationally, the figure was $5,000—or almost half Milwaukee’s average. That substantial difference put an economically viable and competitive business region at risk.
Change had to happen. How could meaningful and sustainable health care reform be implemented while decreasing costs? To get there, reform had to address the root of the problem, not just the symptoms. Collaboration among businesses and providers was essential to strengthening the region’s economy and creating a health care system that allowed affordable access to high quality care.
The Business Health Care Group
The Business Health Care Group (BHCG) is working to make southeast Wisconsin’s health care delivery system more competitive with better cost containment and improved outcomes. Formed in 2003, the organization has become a powerful resource through which businesses take action to move the market for long-term change. BHCG represents more than 300 business employers in Southeastern Wisconsin.
Promising Results
To date, BHCG has helped educate consumers with price transparency tools so they can make informed decisions about their care. In fact, the Business Health Care Group saw a 15 percent drop in medical costs per health plan member in the first half of 2006, which translates into a conservative annualized savings of $26 million. When taking into account annualized cost increase trends, greater savings were achieved totaling an estimated $42 million. An independent third-party research firm compiled the results based on data from 88 percent of BHCG’s self-insured businesses for the period comparing January through June 2005 to the same period in 2006.
Also, BHCG exceeded its first-year goal of 75,000 members using Humana Preferred and its high-performance network. Humana had approximately 118,000 members through the BHCG, and of that total approximately 83,000 members are using the high-performance network as of January 1, 2007.
“The BHCG’s strategy to promote a market driven health care delivery system in Southeastern Wisconsin is working,” says Dianne Kiehl, executive director. “The cost savings among this majority of our members illustrates that, through collaborative efforts, we are beginning to move the market.”
