Workforce January 9, 2020
Employers have found ways to manage health care costs, but need to step up their efforts to tackle a more vexing problem — eliminating wasteful medical care spending.
A recent Journal of the American Medical Association study found that 20 to 25 percent of medical spending is unnecessary.
“As long as we are in a fee-for-service world we will get services whether we need them or not,” said Mike Thompson, president and CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions. “We need to shift from paying for volume to paying for value, and employers need to put pressure on providers to get this right. They should be asking for spending reports from vendors, like Blue Cross Blue Shield, and...