Employee Health Plans: Beyond Kicking the Tires

“It also provides a valuable baseline,” he says. “Two years from now, we’ll be able to look at the data to see which health plans have improved their performance, which have stayed status quo, or which have dropped off.”

But Montreuil also stresses that eValue8 is just one piece of a larger evaluation strategy companies should use to compare health plans. “You still need to look at things like costs by geographic area, claim-systems functionality, fees, and other factors,” he says. “But eValue8 is a good supplementary tool for making buying decisions.”

Says Pare: “It’s not designed to replace hiring consultants to assess plan price or other factors, but rather to [assist in purchasing] and streamline the decision-making process.”

Some organizations find eValue8 results give them greater leverage with insurers. For example, one plan might have higher prices than a competitor, but be rated lower in a category like diabetes management. An employer seeking strong performance in that area could use the results to negotiate a lower price.

A few companies outside of Minnesota, including Pitney Bowes and General Motors, also have used eValue8 scores to determine the portion of an employee’s health care premium that they will pay—employees get financial encouragement to choose highly rated plans. “Employers will often pay a bit more for higher-quality plans with higher customer satisfaction scores,” says Pare, believing they’ll recover those costs in improved efficiency and quality of care.

Strategic-Planning Tool

In addition to its benefits to Minnesota employers, eValue8 is also proving to be a catalyst for health insurers’ own continuous improvement efforts. With comparative scores in hand, and with customers having sent a clear signal about which performance areas matter most to them, more health plans are using eValue8 as part of their strategic planning processes.

“It is very much a part of our forward-looking improvement strategy,” says Medica’s Bussey. “It points out things not only that individual health plans can do better, but how the medical community as a whole can collaborate in ways that benefit everyone.”

Says Walsh of HealthPartners: “If we lose points in one category, we focus on what we might do to improve in that area for the following year.”

In fact, once a health plan submits its data and it has been verified, eValue8 team members meet with individual health plan leaders to review plan results and identify areas for improvement. Insurers say that process, along with their own follow-up efforts, helps them apply resources more efficiently to performance areas that customers say matter most to them.