Seminars Addressed Controlling Health Care Costs Through Implementing Consumer Driven Health Plans
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (March 23, 2005) — Workscape, Inc., a proven provider of outsourced human resource solutions, announced details of its recent seminar series held in conjunction with Deloitte Consulting. The seminars addressed controlling health care costs through Consumer Driven Health Plans (CDHPs) and were conducted during February at Deloitte Consulting in New York City and the Hilton Hotel in Parsippany, New Jersey and in March at The Boston Marriott Newton in Newton, Massachusetts.
Together, Workscape and Deloitte Consulting welcomed hundreds of human resource and benefits professionals. To kick off the events, Workscape Director of Product Marketing, Larry Concannon, delivered a formal greeting and introduced the educational agenda and theme entitled “Controlling Health & Welfare Spending - How to Make the Move to a Consumer Driven Health Plan and Achieve Employee Participation Goals.”
“Employer interest in Consumer Driven Health Plans is increasing as a means for reducing health insurance costs while improving the overall health of a workforce,” said Concannon. “By turning employees into educated health care consumers, a well-designed CDHP can rein in skyrocketing health insurance costs and provide employees with the appropriate level of quality health care they want. As such, Workscape is pleased to offer our expertise on this important and timely subject.”
Barbara Gniewek, Principal, Deloitte Consulting presented an overview of the state of the health care industry and the benefits that CDHPs can present to employers and employees. She shared reasons for employer interest and anatomy of a CDHP and well as examples of early adopter experiences.
Gniewek said, “CDHPs promote behavior changes, not cost shifting. They encourage employees to stay healthy and effectively manage their health. CDHPs also make employees financially responsible for more of their health care purchase decisions and motivate them to move from passive patients to engaged health care consumers of discretionary services.”
Following Gniewek’s presentation, Workscape’s Concannon shared information about implementation opportunities and how Web-based administration of CDHPs, when supported by comprehensive decision support tools and combined with a strong employee communication program, significantly increase employee participation in CDHPs.
Concannon added, “The primary challenge for employers implementing Consumer Driven Health Plans is overcoming the employees’ natural reluctance to this new form of health plan. The financial gain of CDHPs depends on employees choosing the CDHP rather than the traditional health plan, followed by each employee actively managing their health care finances and participating in employer sponsored health improvement programs.”
The seminars concluded with a discussion of best practices for implementing CDHPs in organizations and attendees sharing their benefits challenges in their own organizations and opportunities for initiating CDHPs.
About Workscape
Designed for the workforce, Workscape's solutions transform the delivery and adoption of HR services across the enterprise to enable a higher-performing organization. An innovator in HR self-service, Workscape provides a full range of online benefits and workforce management applications including employee self-service, manager self-service, compensation management, performance management and outsourced benefits administration, as well as an employee portal. Workscape's applications and services are configurable to support each client's unique business processes, easily integrated into multi-vendor environments to ensure protection of existing technology investments, and are available in multiple deployment options to enable rapid implementation and ROI. Workscape's award-winning solutions have been embraced by millions of employees worldwide at more than 180 major corporations. For more information, visit the company website at www.workscape.com or call (888) 605-9620.
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