Survey: High-performance insights – best practices in healthcare

This survey examines the actions US employers are taking to enhance the performance of health plans for their employees. It considers a number of strategies to reduce costs; improve efficiency; and achieve a healthy, high-performing workforce.

Key findings:

• The top health priorities for employers over the next three years are improve health engagement, expanding the use of analytics and enhancing the employee experience.
• Employers expect healthcare costs to increase by 5.5 per cent in 2018, up from a 4.6 per cent increase in 2017.
• The best-performing companies have created a cost advantage of more than $2,000 per employee per year over the national average, by adding value through a broad set of activities to control costs and improve workforce health.
• Increasingly, organisations view their health and wellbeing programmes as a key factor to attract talent, and many plan to broaden their efforts to support employees’ physical, emotional and financial wellbeing.

The 22^nd Annual Willis Towers Watson Best Practices in Health Care Employer Survey was completed by 698 US employers between June and July 2017. It reflects respondents’ 2017 health programme decisions and strategies.