Benefits

Employers

The Situation

When your team is spread out across multiple companies, each using disparate information systems, sharing patient information in a timely and HIPAA compliant manner is costly and challenging. This leads to a fragmented health care value chain and the kind of severe operational inefficiencies that so adversely affect all stakeholders in Workers’ Comp.

Employers need better clinical management of employee injuries, reduced costs from better-managed care, and quicker return to work for their employees. They are using HCN to initiate a case, to better monitor the employee recovery progress and better manage the information they need to make informed, timely management decisions in near-real time about their ill and injured employees’ Work Comp care.

Secure, Timely Communication Critical

For many Employers, the communication burden is exacerbated by the wide range of executives who are responsible for the overall productivity and profitability of an organization; medical directors, who are responsible for maintaining and managing the good health and productivity of the employees at large; human resources and administrative personnel (corporate risk managers), who are responsible for benefits and managing processes involved in Work Comp, and Supervisors who say: “Hey, when am I going to get this employee back? 6 weeks? 8 weeks?”  For all, timely, secure communication is critical.

In-Network vs. Out-of-Network Recent studies conducted by Dr. Ed Bernacki, MD, MPH at Johns Hopkins University have shown that even in employee-choice states, by preferentially referring injured workers to Providers/Practices already “in network” vs. out-of-network, they can drive transactions through the system. Also, as with the model for Providers/Practices, a single core-Employer deployment of the HCN system can help drive uptake by regional Providers/Practices and Payers, spur regional expansion as Provider deployment provides further access to additional Employers, and so on.
Complex Cost Structure For all Employers, Work Comp involves paying premiums, providing care for injured employees, and paying disability wages for lost time due to injuries. The implications are that more injuries and higher healthcare costs mean higher premiums, and slow, mismanaged, or disorganized recovery/disability time includes a higher cost for lost employee productivity.  Employers have the added costs of paying replacement wages. In addition, there is a definite human resources toll due to administering Work Comp in terms of managing the flow of information.
Health Connections Networks | Copyright 2012