Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH)

We’re just a few days out from our Annual Summit in Austin, and we want to extend a big thank you to our sponsors.   Each year, we bring together employer sand public purchasers to work though some of health care’s toughest challenges around affordability, quality and access. The conversations, connections, and practical takeaways that come out of these events are made possible because of our sponsors, and we’re grateful for their support.   We’re looking forward to seeing everyone next week! For more information about the Annual Summit, visit: https://lnkd.in/g3UDdnzA #PBGHAnnualSummit2025

Cancer is a top concern for employers. Diagnoses are rising among working-age adults, and the costs keep climbing.   PBGH’s Supportive Cancer Care Employer Workgroup just released a new measure set to evaluate whether cancer benefits include the psychological, physical, and financial supports that help employees during and after treatment. Thank you to the The Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation and Healing Works Foundation for funding support to make this initiative possible.   Learn more about the Supportive Cancer Care Employer Measure Set: https://lnkd.in/ecPWsRv3

Health care's affordability crisis impacts all of us. And for the more than 165 million Americans who get insurance through work, it's becoming impossible to miss. Premiums keep climbing, but wages aren't keeping up. And when hospital and drug prices rise, workers end up carrying more of the cost. Congress is focused almost entirely on ACA subsidies while the employer market gets very little attention. That's a real problem. As our CEO Elizabeth Mitchell told POLITICO: "We all use the same delivery system, and if a hospital loses Medicaid coverage or other public coverage, they always seek to recoup those costs by passing them on to private coverage." Price transparency and consolidation are two of the biggest reasons health care continues to get more expensive, and addressing them has to be part of any serious effort to make coverage affordable. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eNGuAV8G

During PBGH's most recent Innovation Series webinar, The Wonderful Company shared how they're providing high-quality, accessible specialty care to their diverse, rural workforce. Faced with rising costs for musculoskeletal care, higher cancer rates, and expensive infusion drugs, their benefits team sought a solution that would offer care close to home, with multilingual support at every step. The Wonderful Company partnered with Lantern to create a Center of Excellence (COE) program that connects employees to top specialists and coordinates their care for complex conditions like cancer and joint replacements, while effectively managing costs. In this session, attendees learned: ► What drove The Wonderful Company's search for a COE solution ► How to choose a partner that offers high-quality care and can adapt to your organization's needs ► How they structured this benefit and the results they achieved since launch PBGH members can view the webinar recording here: https://lnkd.in/eEYgis5S #HealthcarePurchasing #BenefitsStrategy #CentersOfExcellence #EmployeeHealth

The agenda is now available for the 2025 PBGH Annual Summit on December 11 in Austin, Texas! Featuring nationally recognized keynote speaker, Dr. Will Flanary (aka Dr. Glaucomflecken), and actionable employer panels, this highly anticipated event will highlight strategies for data-informed procurement, purchaser-driven contracting, and policy activation for change. Limited sponsorships and non-member employer tickets remain. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/g3UDdnzA PBGH members can register for their complimentary tickets here: https://lnkd.in/g6j5SMhC

During our recent #Pharmacy Discussion Group, we explored the evolving GLP-1 landscape and employer and purchaser strategies for weight management. Dariush Mozaffarian MD DrPH, Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, shared the latest research on the effectiveness of these drugs, their potential side effects and challenges, as well as the role of #nutrition and lifestyle supports in improving patient outcomes. View the joint Advisory from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, the American Society for Nutrition, the #Obesity Medicine Association, and The Obesity Society here: https://lnkd.in/egKGXUNc PBGH members can access the webinar recording and materials here: https://lnkd.in/gqE4W58M

"It is about getting the data into the hands of those with an incentive to reduce costs, and that is the role of self-insured employers because they are paying for care." In this epidose of the Relentless Health Value Podcast, PBGH President and CEO, Elizabeth Mitchell, discusses how the results of our Health Care Data Demonstration Project are equipping employers and public purchasers with the insights needed to hold the industry accountable for fair prices and quality services. Thank you to Stacey Richter for inviting us as a guest and highlighting how this first-of-its-kind analysis is advancing transparency in the marketplace. View the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eDb-WXfX

Federal price #transparency rules implemented in 2021 and 2022 promised to illuminate a $4.9 trillion industry where prices are hidden until after care is delivered. The Hospital Price Transparency rule requires hospitals to publish standard charges (such as gross charges and payer-specific negotiated rates) for services, while the Transparency in Coverage rule mandates that group health plans and insurers disclose negotiated rates through machine-readable files (MRFs). However, despite these regulatory requirements, employers and public purchasers have found the data to be unusable to improve their #healthcare purchasing practices and reduce their costs because of the complex analytical work necessary to transform the raw data from the MRFs into actionable health care purchasing insights. Until now. In this video clip, Raymond Tsai, MD MS explores how PBGH's Health Care Data Demonstration Project proved that creating actionable information using the transparency data was both technically feasible and valued by employers. Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eDb-WXfX PBGH members can access the webinar recording here: https://lnkd.in/gG5zY3q9

Last week, California-based employers and public purchasers gathered in Oakland (and via Zoom) for a PBGH Regional Roundtable. During the event, benefits leaders shared current organizational priorities and opportunities for achieving health care value in the local market.     Building upon the advanced primary care (APC) common measure set and purchasing standards developed by PBGH members, the California Quality Collaborative discussed strategies for purchasers to drive primary care improvement for patients across the state. A case study presented by Joy Dionisio, MPH, Senior Equity and Quality Improvement Specialist, Covered California, described their experience contracting with health plans to strengthen primary care accountability and outcomes. Learn more about PBGH's advanced primary care resources, including California-specific initiatives, here: https://lnkd.in/gbNG7GWW

✨Would it be crazy if....?✨ This week the PBGH and California Quality Collaborative team participated in a two-day staff retreat to connect, strategize, and inspire how we will continue to push boundaries in transforming #healthcare with our employer and public purchaser members, and their plan and provider partners. Through collaborative dialogue, creative brainstorming sessions, and a boat-building competition (that required us to test our vessels in the pool), we clarified our vision for the future and left energized (and motivated) to create the aspirational changes required to achieve a more affordable, high-quality, and equitable health care system. We look forward to continuing the conversation at our Annual Summit on December 11 in Austin, Texas, and announcing what's to come in 2026. Learn more about opportunities to get engaged in our work: https://www.pbgh.org/