Message from CEO

Corporate America is at a crossroads in addressing the growing employee healthcare crisis. With unrelenting increases in employee healthcare costs, employers will continue to shift healthcare benefit costs to employees either by increased contributions or plan design. However, benefits executives realize that this strategy alone will not deliver a sustainable long-term solution. Rather a long-term solution will require employers to promote improved employee health, more efficient utilization of medical resources, and consumerism. Such a comprehensive solution can be termed “total employee health management” and offers employers a meaningful and sustainable healthcare cost containment strategy.  However, despite its enormous promise in curbing runaway healthcare costs, “total employee health management” is surrounded with uncertainty. Many companies continue to be skeptical of how to turn this concept into real reductions in medical claims. And in fact, most return on investment analysis are based on indirect measurements and hyper-inflated claims. So how does a benefits executive, broker, consultant, third party administrator, or insurance carrier make sense of it all?

I believe the first thing to understand is that corporations need to identify their liabilities. In other words, the health risks of the population and the associated medical utilization patterns need to be measured and analyzed through the collection of data via health assessments and biometric screenings. In addition, this data needs to be integrated with historical claims data to create a clearer picture of the forces driving medical utilization patterns.

Next, organizations must understand that holistic, company wide wellness initiatives are not the complete solution, but only a foundation necessary to build a culture of wellness. Corporate fitness centers, healthier corporate dining menus, wellness challenges, and other well meaning general wellness initiatives will not in themselves drive claims reductions, but are necessary to “prime the pump” so to speak for more targeted employee health and wellness programs.

By far the most challenging step is the final one – building intelligently designed “cost containment” programs. Organizations must go back to the results of their analysis of health risks and medical utilization patterns to begin the formulation of a unique solution whose goal is to optimally control healthcare claims in the most effective manner possible. The final plan design, though individualized per corporation, is built on a set of fundamental building blocks that are common to all designs. What makes each design unique is how these building blocks are combined and applied. Below is a list of these fundamental building blocks:

  • • Prevention
  • • Consumer Driven Health
  • • Personal Health Management
  • • Pre-Disease Management
  • • Disease Management
  • • Optimal Utilization of Medical Resources


InHouse Physicians workplace health solutions provide many of the tools necessary for employers to execute their cost containment programs successfully. From our biometric screenings to our data driving analytics to our workplace health clinics, InHouse Physicians enables employers, brokers, TPA’s, and carriers in building and executing intelligently designed cost containment strategies that realize measurable healthcare cost savings, increased employee productivity, and stronger employee retention and recruitment results. This is InHouse Physicians’ mission and we strive every day to be your partner in achieving real results that improve your bottom line.

- Jonathan Spero, M.D.

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