Toolkits
Partnership for Value Driven Health Care Purchaser Guide
The Partnership for Value-driven Health Care, a consortium of influential U.S. business groups including NBCH, has developed “The Purchaser Guide to Value-driven Health Care.” Designed to help employers make value-driven health care a priority in purchasing health care services for employees, The Purchaser Guide contains actionable information that will help organizations meet U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt’s call for value-driven health care. There are four cornerstones of Value-driven Health Care, defined by the Secretary. They are the utilization of health information technology; the measurement and publishing of quality information; measurement and publishing of price information; and, the creation of positive incentives for high-quality, efficient health care.
The Purchaser Guide provides strategies that employers and other health care purchasers can employ to meet each of Secretary Leavitt’s four cornerstones. The first section of the Guide is a quick reference section broken down by cornerstone; beneath each cornerstone is a list of actions purchasers can take and, where applicable, a list of existing initiatives. The second section provides detailed narratives about each of the cornerstones and the ways that purchasers can achieve their goals. To see the guide, click here.
How's Your Health (Health Risk Assesment):
The information in this toolkit is designed to desribe this resource the survey tool and how the tool is being used along with helpful samples and information to aid in planning, implementation, and use of results from How's Your Health? (HYH). The National Business Coalition on Health with support from the Commonwealth Fund has developed these materials to encourage the use of How's Your Health? as one of the tools that NBCH makes available to support its members with:
- Providing businesses and their employees with tools and information to increase their ability to prevent and manage health care conditions or diseases either directly or indirectly by with health care providers and insurers
- Value-based health care purchasing - obtaining the highest quality care at the most reasonable cost;
- Measuring the comparative quality and efficiency of hospitals, physicians, and health plans in the community to identify the best value;
- Creating incentives to provide higher-value care through integrated delivery systems and continuous quality improvement; and
- Improving the overall health of the community.
To view the toolkit, click here.
HRHealth America: Employer Chronic Disease Management Tools
Many chronic medical diseases compete for a business' limited health care
dollars. Though a business' most valuable asset often is its personnel, many
companies do not know how extensively chronic diseases, such as diabetes and
cardiovascular disease, can impact their employees' productivity and thereby
drastically influence the bottom line. With employees spending more than
one-third of their waking hours on the job, employers are in a unique
position to address side-effects which arise from chronic diseases and that
may affect health care spending, productivity, and overall employee health
and wellness.
The National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH), through an unrestricted
educational grant provided by Novo Nordisk, is pleased to host HRHealth
America, an online interactive chronic disease management resource for
employers and their employees. Good health benefits everyone in a company,
and, once the scope of a condition is understood, positive interventions by
both the employee and the employer can follow. HRHealth America is a
comprehensive resource to help businesses and their employees better manage
chronic disease at work vie numerous interactive tool kits such as the
Employer Diabetes Management Health Plan Impact Calculation Model, as well
as the latest research and human resource news. The site also provides a
directory of chronic disease, government and employer health association
contacts, in addition to assistance in finding the right employee assistance
provider (EAP) or chronic disease educator. We hope our coalition members,
their employer members and employees find this site to be reliable resource
for their chronic disease-related questions and concerns. Click here to
connect to HRHealthAmerica.com.
Bridges to Excellence Resources for Coalitions & Purchasers
With generous financial support from sanofi-aventis, Novo Nordisk, Merck, Merck-Schering Plough, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, NBCH has launched an initiative to help local business coalitions take a leadership role in the implementation of "Bridges to Excellence" (BTE), a physician incentive program designed to improve quality and conserve health care resources. Working with BTE’s general contractor, MedStat, NBCH has developed a set of materials to help coalitions and purchasers better understand BTE for implementation within their communities, and will provide technical assistance to coalitions moving BTE forward in their markets.
BTE is built on the idea that appropriate financial incentives can shape health care behavior among physicians and patients. Initially, BTE is focusing on three critical areas: diabetes, cardiac care, and office systems in physician practices. By demonstrating adherence to guidelines and principles of evidence-based practice, physicians can earn significant financial rewards. Employers will benefit through lower direct health care costs for their employees, as well as enhance productivity that results from improved health status.
More general information on BTE is available at www.bridgestoexcellence.com, or click here to access a host of coalition and employer-specific materials.
Depression Calculator — Treatment Cost Savings
Recently, in a unique collaboration the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Psychiatric Association, the Institute for Health and Productivity Management the Mid-America Coalition on Healthcare (a NBCH member coalition), and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) joined together in announcing the depression calculator, technically called the Productivity Impact Model. The calculator was commissioned by PhRMA and developed by the HSM Group, Ltd., which used detailed algorithms based on established clinical research to develop the model.
The purpose of the tool is to help business quantify the bottom-line impact of depression in their workforce. How much is depression costing your company? How much would you save if your employees got treatment? The "depression calculator," a free online tool, enables employers to estimate the costs and savings they could reap if employees suffering from depression receive effective treatment.
Coalitions and employers may find the calculator to be a very useful business tool, which can be accessed free online either at www.depressioncalculator.com or at www.workplacementalhealth.org.
Additionally, for those of you not familiar with the National Partnership for Workplace Mental Health, it is a partnership of the American Psychiatric Foundation, the American Psychiatric Association, prominent corporations and federal government agencies. You are invited to subscribe, free of charge, to its quarterly newsletter Mental HealthWorks which addresses mental health issues in the workplace. For more information, visit www.workplacementalhealth.org or contact Clare Miller at 703-907-8673 or cmiller@psych.org.
The Leapfrog Group Incentives and Rewards Compendium
The Leapfrog Group launched The Leapfrog Group Incentives and Rewards Compendium, a Web-based collection of quality incentive and reward programs aimed at improving health care in both the inpatient and outpatient care settings. This is believed to be the first public online database of its kind.
For additional information, please click on the following news release announcing the launch of this project, as well as the descriptive project flier. To review the actual Compendium, please click on the link to the Leapfrog Group’s Web site to the Compendium.
Benefit Directions
Antibiotic Utilization Education
Click on the links below for a complete package of user-friendly tools for coalitions and employers to use implementing a health education campaign on antibiotic utilization.
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