While facing the ongoing and worsening challenge of reining in health care costs, it's critical your clients understand the influence they have in transforming health care, controlling plan options and improving affordability. But the success and sustainability of these efforts rely heavily on partnerships created within the system: productive engagements with providers, health systems, health plans and even other employers that share this vision. Here's an overview of what you can do.

The allure of alliances

Since traditional health insurers bring in billions each year, there's little incentive for many of them to lower premiums for employers or negotiate the best rates for value-based providers. This is why it's incumbent upon employers, who hold the purse strings, to demand more. And that starts with engaging new types of collaborations for shared solutions, like working more closely with providers and their health plans. 

Proactive strategies built around strong alliances can help:

• Employers negotiate directly or work with their health plan for better per-unit costs with quality providers and hold providers accountable for improved outcomes and quality of care
• Providers improve clinical and data access and spend more quality time with patients
• Patients get easier access to comprehensive health services within an integrated system and the health benefits of seamless, coordinated care 
• The system reduces fragmented, redundant care to lower costs and improve outcomes

How to start connecting

Brokers and advisors can help clients get started by taking stock of what's important to their employees and their company. Is affordability the pain point? Access to care? Specific health care gaps to address? And are there certain types of services or solutions that would meet those needs? (This is where the deep data transparency of a self-insured plan can provide would be essential.)