Are your healthcare programs delivering on your vendors’ promises?
Just as importantly, how can you hold vendors accountable if you’re not getting what you paid for?
Here’s one proven way – Create a vendor scorecard. Scorecards alone won’t bring down your health care costs. But they’ll at least help make certain your corporation â.” and staff members â.” get everything you’re compensating for.
The tool can help you measure plan performance with greater precision â.” and identify specific areas that need improvement. Best of all, any company can adopt the technique to fit their needs. Here is how it works.
1. Choose specific rating areas
Benefit pros who’ve successfully adopted the scorecard system recommend grading providers on five to 10 measurable areas, like -
o Claims processing. Are employees’ medical claims turned around in a timely fashion? Are you hearing complaints that the explanations of benefits (EOBs) are slow to arrive or hard to understand?
o Disputed and resolved claims. Do staff member questions and complaints about denied or still-pending claims get answered rapidly and thoroughly? Just how often are you forced to go to bat for employees?
o Accessibility. Are plan reps quick to answer phone calls? Do they attend regularly scheduled meetings?
o Reports. Do you receive timely paid claim and utilization reports?
o Open enrollment. Did you receive effective support preparing for and conducting open enrollment events?
o Employee education. Do your workforce find the written and/or one-on-one services provided through the plan helpful in answering questions about managing specific chronic diseases (such as diabetes or depression)? Do you receive support in educating your workforce to make healthy lifestyle choices, such as use of tobacco cessation?
2. Choose a workable rating scale
There are two schools of thought when it comes to selecting a rating method – subjective or objective. Many benefit pros â.” in particular those from smaller firms â.” use a simple pass/fail or 1 to 5 score to rate their satisfaction.
Others develop more elaborate, statistic-based ratings. One method – take the vendor’s guarantees (e.g., addressing disputed claims within 3-5 organization days) and then measure by percentage how often these objectives are met.
These rating data can be acquired through quarterly performance reports, employee surveys, issue and complaint files and, for larger plans, external audits.
3. Feedback causes improvement
It’s good practice to share your scorecard system with the vendor before meeting to review the results. Reason – This lets you iron out any vendor questions about the review categories and scoring system.
Once that’s settled, you are able to meet to go over the numbers and prioritize the areas that need improvement. A lot of firms then add a new scorecard category â.” providers’ followup.
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