Gaining key business insights ensures that the right people receive the right healthcare now and in the future.

With the financial decline of 2008 adversely affecting most sectors of the economy, the healthcare industry is feeling the wake of the economic turbulence. Health plan profitability is down, largely due to investment losses, and employers are aggressively seeking ways to control costs. Across the industry, organizations are being challenged to do more with less, and eliminate programs that cannot demonstrate a solid return on investment.

2009 Employee Survey Highlights

Average health care costs will increase 6% in 2009, according to the Towers Perrin 2009 Health Care Cost Survey. While the rate of growth is holding steady with prior-year increases, companies and their employees still face record-high costs in 2009. In flat dollar terms, gross health care expenditure will rise by an average of $532 per employee, to an average total cost of $9,552.

Executive Summary

During the mid 1980s, manufacturing giant Motorola developed an internal quality control process it dubbed “Six Sigma,” a method used to identify and eliminate manufacturing defects. The concepts behind the Six Sigma process clarified the role of quality control so well, they were widely adopted across the globe by companies, institutions and governments.

Healthcare performance management in a weak economy

Abstract

There are no times like tough times to make the case for performance management software. This white paper reviews the many hurdles faced by healthcare providers and healthcare payers in a down economy and explains how performance management solutions—such as those from IBM— can provide the kind of deep information and insight that decision-makers need to lead their organizations through critical challenges.

Executive Summary:
Escalating medical costs continue to burden employers and employees alike as health benefit plan prices rise at dramatic rates year over year. The ability of health plan managers to mitigate risk, reduce cost and improve healthcare outcomes for those covered by plans is dependent on access to accurate and timely information about key trends in targeted populations. In this report we examine the role played by the effective analysis of aggregate prescription drug (Rx) claims data.

Executive Summary:
In this report, we explore a new corporate discipline called healthcare performance management (HPM) that is achieving the dual objectives of reducing costs while improving healthcare outcomes. HPM is a technology-enabled business strategy that tackles the challenge of health care in much the same way that enterprises have approached the optimization of customer relations, supply chain management and enterprise resource management.