The survey included 39 employer participants that are headquartered or have employees in Minnesota and about 228,000 Minnesota employees.
Here are 11 key findings from the survey:
1. The average healthcare costs in the state — including both the employer and employee share — increased by 6.2 percent this year, close to the national average increase of 6.4 percent.
2. Similar to last year, Minnesota employers ranked high costs related to specialty drugs as a lead driver of employee benefit costs.
3. To cut specialty drug costs, employers are initiating strategies like authorizations, partial order filling, step therapy and delaying or not covering new drugs.
4. Forty-five percent of employers said lower cost is the top reason they changed health plans.
5. Ten percent of employers cited better member service as a reason they switched health plans.
6. About 25 percent of employers said they will change healthcare vendors next year.
7. The two most common programs used by employers to mitigate costs and improve health outcomes are disease management and telemedicine.
8. To control healthcare spending, for the third year in a row employers said they use consumer education the most, followed by consumer-directed health plans.
9. Thirty-eight out of 39 employers surveyed offer a wellness benefit program to their employees. The most frequently offered wellness benefit programs were health risk assessments, nurse lines and online wellness programs.
10. Roughly 89 percent of employers surveyed offered employees an incentive to participate in wellness programs.
11. Many employers are thinking about increasing deductibles, copayments and coinsurance, consolidating plan designs and reconsidering dependent and spousal eligibility status.
More articles on payer issues:
Aetna sells Connecticut property for $1.4M
In Minnesota, BCBS to ditch individual health plans
Calif. insurance commissioner says Aetna-Humana merger is anti-competitive
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