Employers Challenged by Employee Engagement, Outcomes-based Health Incentives, and Price Transparency According to New Texas Business Group on Health Survey

Texas employers say their biggest challenges in 2014 include engaging and empowering employees to make better health and health care decisions, evaluating health exchanges, and dealing with the lack of health care price transparency.

A recent survey of 73 large- and mid-size Texas employers by the Texas Business Group on Health, an employer-sponsored health care coalition, revealed five primary concerns regarding health benefits:

• More than half mentioned the challenge of creating outcomes-based wellness incentives, meaning they would like to reward measurable health improvements rather than participation in wellness activities.
  
• About 42 percent said they wanted to improve employee engagement in their health and well-being.
  
• The same percentage identified lack of health care price transparency.
  
• Forty percent said evaluating the impact and opportunities afforded by private exchanges in the insurance marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act.
  
• About 38 percent named focused employee education on personal health and becoming well-informed health care consumers.

"Given the size and growth of the Texas economy, the challenges facing our employers most likely reflect the concerns of all U.S. businesses," said Marianne Fazen, chief executive officer of the Texas Business Group on Health and the Dallas-Fort Worth Business Group on Health. "This should be a wake-up call to the health services industry to focus on what's most important to employers to help them continue to sponsor health benefits to their employees."

A report on the survey can be found at here.