by Dianne Kiehl

With your help, the Business Health Care Group is exerting ever-stronger impact on the way health care is used, managed and delivered. To improve our health care costs problem, we're reaching out to a wide range of public and private organizations throughout southeastern Wisconsin.

How is your support helping to control costs? Here are just a few of the things we're doing:

• Providing cost information on 30 inpatient and 26 outpatient procedures to help consumers more easily make health care cost comparisons.
• Developing a series of online modules that help consumers understand the health care system so they can make better health care decisions.
• Sponsoring disease management initiatives aimed at reducing the demand for costly health care services in the long-run.
• Assisting Humana in developing transparency tools such as the Hospital Cost Estimator, which provides comprehensive episode-of-care fee information for all network providers.
• Requiring provider action plans to promote provider accountability in cost savings initiatives.
• Supporting statewide transparency efforts to gather and publish health care costs and effectiveness data.
• Partnering with Humana to create a high-performance health care network that helps hold down costs and ensure quality care for member companies and their employees.

Meanwhile, we continue communicating our message throughout southeast Wisconsin to attract new members. I’ve recently given presentations about BHCG at the Downtown Milwaukee Rotary Club and at the Kenosha Area Business Association with U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, among others.

The BHCG model continues to catch the eye of those outside the area as well. I presented at the Consumer Health World Conference in Las Vegas and spoke at the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH) in Philadelphia in May.

Please help us continue to spread the word about the BHCG. As more organizations join our collaborative, we’re gaining more leverage to make a positive impact on health care costs. And we need all the collaborative strength we can muster.

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