Several years ago, Mercer identified four areas where we believe change is most needed to create a more rational health care marketplace. They are: pay for value, drive to quality, personalize the experience and embrace disruption. What exactly do we mean by embrace disruption? Well…. it means leveraging constant changes in the system with internal stakeholders and external partners to the best advantage of your employees and your organization.
The list of possible external partners is changing all the time. In addition to several large hospital system mergers currently in process, there have been some interesting announcements lately:
These announcements invite us to ponder what each could bring to the market that might not exist today. We like to quote one of our colleagues at Oliver Wyman, who said: “Within three years, 1 in 3 Americans will be buying a different insurance product than they do today, through a channel that didn’t exist three years ago, receiving 30% of their care outside of a traditional health system.”
That’s disruption!
So what steps you can begin to take to prepare the benefits team and your internal stakeholders to embrace the healthcare disruption that is already underway, as well the change we can’t foresee? Here are three ideas:
Change is often difficult. But with enough drive, opportunity and supporting data, you can use change to make something good happen. And that, my friends, is the kind of disruption we want and need.
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