Issue #20 of Competitive Advantages
John Hansbrough, CEBS
Make benefits your Competitive Advantage | Healthcare Supply Chain Strategist | Mental Health & Suicide Prevention | Advocate & Speaker
And just like that, we're almost done with the first month of 2023! There continue to be interesting developments in benefits and healthcare that affect employers, and the pace of change is only increasing.
Let's dive into news from this week and I'll provide my thoughts on what this means for employers and people leaders.
Amazon to offer generic drugs for just a $5 monthly fee via RxPass
This new service will be called RxPass and it will allow Prime members to access multiple generic medications for a flat monthly fee of $5. Consumers then have access to low-cost generic drugs for over 80 chronic conditions.
This fee is on top of their Amazon Prime membership, which runs $139 per year of $14.99 per month. Deliveries will be free and the service is available in 42 states.
According to Amazon, about 150 million Americans take at least one of the available medications available with RxPass, and since the service isn't tied to insurance, this is a great resource for the uninsured or underinsured to access medications inexpensively.
This service builds on other discounted medication plays in the market today such as GoodRx and the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company (please just refer to it as MCCPDC thanks). In the case of GoodRx, their revenue involves payments from PBMs (Pharmacy Benefit Managers).
We're presenting more and more of these services to employees at our groups because these are all ways to reduce costs, get care and medications, and improve outcomes.
Webinar next Wednesday 2/1 on making DEI a Competitive Advantage
Next Wednesday, I'm chatting with Dr. Leroy D. Nunery II, NACD.DC about his work with Evolution Advisors in helping companies understand and act on the business case for diversity and inclusivity.
Why are we having this discussion? Besides the moral and ethical argument for greater diversity and inclusivity in the workplace, companies who embrace DEI benefit from the fact that:
? Job satisfaction is strongly tied to whether an organization supports DEI (80% vs 34%).
? Employees in a corporate culture that values inclusion and diversity report 70% higher well-being than others and are 25% less likely to experience anxiety and depression.
? Members of Gen Z are almost twice as loyal and want to stay at an organization if it promotes a positive impact on society.
Prioritizing DEI not only helps your bottom line but is also tied to employee retention and loyalty. Forget growth, even just the viability of your business will increasingly be tied to how it values inclusion, diversity, and practices empathy.
Join us next Wednesday as we talk through practical steps for mindful organizations today and how he uses assessments to measure and act on DEI initiatives for organizations!
You can RSVP for the webinar here and if you can't make it Wednesday, be sure to sign up for a recording!
For more reading on inclusive organizations and healthcare, Collective Health recently put out a good resource on What is Inclusive Healthcare.
Savings from Value-Based Care in Substance Abuse
Recall Value-Based Care, an alternative payment model for payers (employers, that includes you) that better aligns the way healthcare is paid for with incentives for achieving better outcomes for patients. VBC is an increasingly popular topic as healthcare costs continue to spiral upward without improvements in outcomes.
Substance-abuse disorders (SUD) are one condition ripe for VBC disruption. SUD is a condition that affects an estimated 16.5 percent of people over 12 or 46 million Americans.
Our friends over at Third Horizon (?? Ashley DeGarmo (she/her) and Cheryl Matochik !) conducted research and published a report on the potential savings that could be generated by implementing value-based care for substance-abuse disorders.
What's the opportunity here for employers?
Your employees are dealing with addiction disorders. So enhancing treatment and recovery services for these populations can put them on a path to recovery. And recovery is associated with improvements in physical health status that financially benefits employers.
The Alliance for Addiction Payment Reform created an interactive calculator to estimate the savings potential for implementing a VBC substance abuse care program. While 14% of Americans over 12 experience a SUD in a given year, they may represent 50% of your total healthcare spending.
Disregard this population and these solutions at your own peril.
Exploring the Mental Health Burden Athletes Face
The authors of Two Docs and a Stack explore the mental health and wellness of athletes in America, from childhood through professional ranks.
Our 'athletic-industrial complex' (great term btw) is designed to do a terrible job supporting athletes. Further, it is rife with misaligned incentives between athletes and organizations like colleges, travel teams, and pro teams.
Telehealth's Role in US Healthcare is Cemented
A positive side effect of the otherwise massively disruptive COVID-10 pandemic was the increased role telehealth began to play in healthcare. And telehealth is here to stay, according to this article in HBR.
At telehealth's peak during the pandemic, it represented 13% of all outpatient visits.
This article provides a good overview of the various ongoing issues and key points with telehealth, mostly on the regulatory mess we have around:
?? Licensing
?? Accepted modes of care
?? Permitted providers and services
?? Prescriptions
?? Reimbursements
And much more. Suffice to say, telehealth will continue to make a significant impact on health plans and it's worth considering how your plan makes virtual health available to your employees.
One Mind Psyber Guide
One Mind PsyberGuide is a neat non-profit website that compares mental health and wellness apps and resources. It grades them on credibility (research behind the technology and process), transparency, user experience, and professional reviews.
It's a project out of UC Irvine by Stephen Schueller and has reviews on many major mental health apps and resources. Take a look next time you're reviewing a resource for your team (and let us know!).
New Music of the Week: ?Téo?
I stumbled into ?Téo? last year and I fell in love with his music. He creates a really wonderful vibe with his music and he released a new song I'm really jamming to.
One of my go-to tricks for working from home effectively has been to create a playlist of music in foreign languages. This keeps me from following the lyrics too much and allows me to enter a good flow state for deep work. Here's a link to that playlist if you're interested.
That's it for this week's issue of Competitive Advantages! Subscribe to get future issues delivered directly to your inbox and for future updates.
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