What Excites Health Execs About the Evolution of Employee Benefits

From left to right: Kate Huey, partner, business transformation leader for health care, Ernst & Young; Jeffrey Ries, executive director, JPMorgan Chase & Co.; Chris Turner, CEO, HealthBook+; Bipinchandra (Bipin) Mistry, MD, chief medical officer, Alight Solutions

It’s a challenging time for employer-sponsored insurance, between the rise in healthcare costs and the difficulty in managing multiple point solutions. But there are areas to be excited about as well, including value-based care and data, health executives shared during a panel discussion last week.

The panel was part of the MedCity News INVEST Digital Health conference held in Dallas. It was moderated by Kate Huey, partner and business transformation leader for health care at Ernst & Young. The panelists were Dr. Bipinchandra Mistry, chief medical officer of Alight Solutions; Jeffrey Ries, executive director of JPMorgan Chase & Co.; and Chris Turner, CEO of HealthBook+. The session was sponsored by HealthBook+.

For Mistry, value-based care is one area of healthcare that gets him excited about the future of employer-sponsored insurance. The adoption of value-based care has been slower in the employer-sponsored insurance space than in other areas. A recent survey found that many employers don’t understand value-based care, but are more supportive of it when provided the definition. But according to Mistry, employers are starting to talk about value-based care more.

“[Employers are] demanding it from the health plans and they’re trying to figure out, ‘How do we create an ecosystem that makes sense, that drives value for my employees?’ I’m really excited about that,” Mistry said.

He added that he’s also excited about the potential that data presents in reducing disparities in healthcare.

“When you start to use data, AI and social determinants, you can start to break the barriers of equity and inclusion and access,” Mistry said. “I’m excited by that too because it pairs very nicely with the value-based care journey.”

Ries of JPMorgan agreed that value-based care and data are the areas that he’s most excited about. Turner of HealthBook+ also echoed the importance of data.

“Access to data just keeps getting better and better and better,” Turner said. “Who would have known that we’d have this wearable that has so many crazy cool things, that we can now get data on our phone, that we can leverage access to EHR data so much easier and claims data? Everything’s just easier today than it was a couple of years ago. That means we can do a lot of great things with that data and build really cool AI models and help people understand what they should do next.”

Mistry added to Turner’s comments, explaining that according to Alight’s research there is a higher willingness among employees to share data, which is a “complete change from where it was 5-10 years ago.”

Photo: MedCity News