How Employers Can Catalyze Change in the Health Care Industry

Few employers have a strategic approach to health, says Elizabeth Teisberg, a leading figure in the value-based health care strategy movement

By Bonny Chu

Transforming health care to deliver better health outcomes for people is the goal that Professor Elizabeth Teisberg works toward every day. She’s the executive director of the Value Institute for Health and Care at Dell Medical School and the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. At her April 20 talk “Rethink Employer Health Care Spending,” she called for employers to embrace their power to catalyze real change in health care delivery.

Teisberg’s presentation focused on ways employers can help move the health care system in a new direction.

“Few employers really have a strategic approach to health,” Teisberg says. “They tend to focus on cost rather than value. Unlike the rest of their business, they’re not asking, ‘Are we getting our money’s worth for the money we’re putting in?’ They’re just asking, ‘Can we put in less money?’”

Thinking only about costs leads to poor employee health, Teisberg says, which in turn leads to productivity losses for employers in the form of employee sick days, time spent accessing health care, disability, early retirement, and even “presenteeism,” or working while sick or distracted.

“If you look at what employers are spending,” Teisberg says, “the loss of productivity from poor health costs between two and seven times more than the direct cost of health care.”

Employers can learn about the drivers of poor health in their employees, create a strategy built around these needs, and work with plans to offer benefits that provide effective, efficient, and convenient solutions. But they cannot only improve the health and productivity of their employees, they can also affect real change in the system.

Having a health strategy also defeats the nihilism that many employers feel about health care. We are too small or too scattered to do anything. Or we have too little influence or it’s not our job. But waiting for someone else to fix the system won’t work.

“Employers thought maybe that health plans or providers would make these changes,” Teisberg explains. But it’s actually going to take people coming from many different perspectives, including the public and private sectors as well as visionary providers and companies. “From wherever you stand,” she concludes, “there are steps you can take that will catalyze change.”