Here's what employers in Minnesota are concerned about this year
Rising health care costs are a top priority across the board, and costs in Minnesota are increasing faster than the national average.
For eight years, the Minnesota Health Action Group has been surveying employers on what is and isn’t working in their businesses. On employers’ minds this year: health care costs, workforce diversity, specialty drugs, wellness and engagement.
Sound familiar? The results of the 2018 annual Employer Benefits Survey, provide a pulse-check that resonates nationally while creating a benchmark against which Minnesota businesses can gauge their performance.
Rising health care costs are a top priority across the board. Costs in Minnesota are increasing faster than the national average (8.7 percent, including both employer and employee share, vs 7.4 percent nationally), and the increase in premiums—what employers passed along to employees after plan design changes—rose to 5.7 percent, with the national average just rising to 4.3 percent.
“While cost remains king, we also know that executives and benefits professionals are working purposefully toward goals to improve the health care system overall,” Carolyn Pare, president and CEO of Action Group President, says in the report. “While they realize the depth and complexity of health care industry challenges, they are facing the future with confidence, resolve and optimism.”
Employers are trying a range of tactics to deal with those rising costs, such as managing contribution rates, changes to prescription drug benefits and changes to overall plan design. Access to data is rising, but employers aren’t exactly rushing to use those data to guide health benefit strategies. They do rely most commonly on medical and pharmacy claims data (87 percent and 74 percent, respectively), but other information, such as absenteeism data, don’t get incorporated at the same rate (just 28 percent of employers use them) despite their potential usefulness in helping to measure productivity.
Employers’ focus when it comes to value-based care has also changed, according to the report. Topping this year’s list of innovations and services are telemedicine (74 percent using), financial wellness (65 percent) and centers of excellent (47 percent). Disease management, which held the top spot for the past four years, fell to fifth place on the list.
Specialty pharmacy is driving a substantial part of the health spend increase, with the percent of drug spend for specialty pharmacy totaling 36 percent for general industry employers and 34 percent for public employers. To try to control these costs, organizations use prior authorizations, partially filled orders, step therapy programs and Medication Therapy Management programs.
In addition, employers plan to devote more effort to employee mental health in 2018. Using communication, education and training for managers to cut the stigma around mental health, they’re also improving access to services via online solutions, enhanced benefits, telehealth services and expanded networks for mental health providers.
Beyond health care costs, employers are worried about changing workforce demographics, and as a result they’re making changes—such as adding voluntary benefits, using new technology to make it easier to access benefits, adding onsite programs and making better provisions for parental leave options.
Finally, Minnesota employers areconcerned about being able to attract and retain talent and to beef up essential skills being lost through a tide of retiring boomers. With workers having increasingly diverse needs, employers are increasingly being driven to accommodate them.