Chamber 2020

Much Ado About Healthcare

2007-10-02T09:18:08-07:00

Most of my posts on the blog thus far have dealt with the future of our Chamber. Last night I recieved what I thought was a very thoughtful message from Doug Whitley, the President & CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, and it made me think about starting a different channel of our discussion.

I thought now would be as good a time as ever to bring up healthcare. Any discussion of our future, as a Chamber, a community, a state or nation that avoids the issue of healthcare would be overly simplistic and shortsighted.

I'd like to use Doug Whitley's piece as a starting point because I think he raises a number of good points. Please read though his message and let me know your thoughts. I'm going to try to make a stop in Springfield, so I wont' be back and able to post until the end of the week.

Employers’ Perspective on Healthcare
By: Doug Whitley, President & CEO, Illinois Chamber of Commerce

While governors and presidential aspirants launch healthcare initiatives in a seemingly never-ending campaign for voter and media attention, the real champions of healthcare reform have been and continue to be private sector employers.

America’s business leaders recognized and began confronting rising healthcare costs long before the current political show horses entered the arena. The major differences are the approach to problem solving and the absence of a need for self-promotion.

Business leaders recognize costs as management issues and seek solutions. They are private sector innovators who innovate, pursue efficiencies, measure results, embrace change, invest in technology, are not afraid to apply market forces and understand long-term undertakings require continual improvement.

Where improving our nation’s health care issues are concerned, there is no quick fix, no silver bullet, no free lunch and no Santa Claus. The solutions require dedication, hard work, long-term investments and a willingness to take risks and make tough decisions. While in pursuit of cost reductions some successful action steps pioneered in the private sector have emerged that should be pursued and implemented to help everyone.

One component can best be characterized as management tools. Employers are implementing top-down tasks at varying paces across the country. Employers’ rising expectations for cost effective healthcare delivery and better patient outcomes are being applied to influence the health care provider community to change the way they do business.

In August 2006, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt helped focus attention on value-driven health initiatives by committing the federal government’s employees health programs to embrace the “Four Cornerstones of Value-Driven Healthcare. Secretary Leavitt champions pursuit of these goals by enlisting the support of private sector employers. The obvious objective is to establish a critical mass of influence coming from healthcare services purchasers to speed fundamental change on the part of the provider community.

Employers expect information about performance and quality of care from healthcare providers participating in company plans. Providing employees with information will help them make wiser choices.
Employers expect price and cost information from providers so employees can compare price and quality before making healthcare decisions.
Employers expect providers in company plans to adopt health information technology products and use common standards. Performance and cost reporting cannot occur without investment in technology and interoperability of data exchange.
Employers must provide incentives for employees to use the information and for providers to implement these measures to help achieve high-value healthcare.

The second component is applying market force economics to healthcare. Employers and unions learned long ago that where wages and benefits were concerned the extraordinary rise in the cost of healthcare was limiting choices for discretionary spending of profits. Something had to give and it turned out to be increasing employee co-payments.

Although an employee may not appreciate becoming a direct contributor to the financial equation, removal of the “free lunch” mentality long associated with employer-provided health care is significant. Many employee co-pays remain minimal and so don’t exert the degree of influence market economists might recommend for stimulating behavior change. Still, employee knowledge that healthcare is not free and that their wise use of quality and pricing information can influence the market may prove key to the future of American medicine.

The single most important factor that can influence health care costs is behavior change. A primary motivator for behavior change is economics. Making employees’ healthcare costs more transparent to them and increasing their financial obligation is an important first step toward other more significant improvement undertakings. It is important that the individual recognize that he or she is neither an inconsequential nor a passive actor in affecting these industries that now account for over 16% of the nation’s gross domestic product. On the contrary, it is incumbent upon the individual to undertake an active role in addressing and managing their situation.

While still very new and not commonly understood, health savings accounts have great potential for younger or health-conscious employees by offering financial rewards for sustained good health practices. Like Individual Retirement Accounts, the significance of HSAs will become more apparent over time.

The third component is personal responsibility. Lifestyle choices have an overwhelming influence on healthcare costs. The most significant change that must occur is consumer focus on wellness, disease prevention and disease management.

Progressive employers are investing in employees’ health. Establishing a culture of wellness and prevention returns dividends not only in reducing healthcare expenses, but also as investment in important human resource management measures such as morale, job satisfaction, absenteeism, productivity, and safety, all known to improve resulting from these initiatives.

Management goals are shifting from reducing costs to reducing the need for healthcare services. Thoughtful employers redefine what healthcare means to the company and its employees. Thought leaders no longer consider health benefits a mere recruitment or retention feature; they embrace consumer focused health plans as an overall business strategy. Healthy people cost less and are more productive, making them competitive assets.

While this approach may be a brand differentiator, it is not an inexpensive undertaking and requires long-term commitment, just as continuous improvement efforts that guide many production facilities.

First, there must be a commitment to provide information and education tools for individuals to take more responsibility for their health and life styles. Employees need to start with the diagnostic tests that provide base line health risk assessments. This data doesn’t disappear into HR files; it is the basis for employees’ improved health literacy and progress tracking with personal electronic medical records. Other employer investments include on-site exercise facilities, subsidized health club memberships, wellness coaches, and online tutorials and health information.

Diagnostic tests can detect life threatening conditions that if left undetected and untreated could lead to expensive treatments that easily exceed the tests’ costs. Preventive medicine works and is cost effective.

While it is illegal to take punitive action against employees who choose not to participate, there are opportunities to provide financial incentives, rewards, and other motivations to help employees see tangible benefits from engaging in self-directed health and wellness programs. Employees gain personally; companies can document cost-reducing behavior changes. Savings derived from wiser employee decisions such as fewer emergency room visits, shorter hospital stays, fewer workers’ compensation claims, increased choice of generic and mail-order drugs and successful preventive medical interventions may return to employees as higher wages, reduced premiums or lower co-pays. When successful, these change management initiatives clearly benefit employers and employees.

Employers need to step up and pay more attention to practices like those of Rochester, NY, where 70 employers with 25,000 employees have collaborated to improve quality of care, reduce costs, and improve health. We all need to wake up: most Americans are too sedentary, not making the best diet and lifestyle choices, and not being smart, active healthcare consumers.

The fourth component is the role of government. Because this is such a complex, multi-layered component including issues such as publicly funded programs, regulations, and proposed solutions from current office-holders and candidates, I will address it in a “part 2” on this topic in an upcoming President’s Message.

How'd we do?

2007-09-26T09:13:04-07:00

I will be out of the office for the rest of the week without ability to post anything. I'd like know to know what your thoughts are of the Chamber's 2020 workplan?

Until next week...

Sharing The Vision

2007-09-25T06:20:27-07:00

First I’d like to begin with a brief apology to all of you, I haven’t posted any thing on our blog for too long. We’ve been busy working on the dirty details of the plan which I’m happy to share with you today. Click here to download our work plan.

Secondly I want to thank the 180+ folks who drove down to Bolingbrook yesterday to attend our vision luncheon. I hope you enjoyed hearing from our three speakers, Ray Kinney (thanks again to Art Littlefield for being generous with his time), Jerry Roper and Debra Lellbach. Due to great interest I wanted to include a link for you to the “Shift Happens” movie.

As we’ve discussed, change is going to happen, we can wait for it to change our lives or we can adapt early and help dictate the pace of change our lives.

Also, yesterday I posted a link to my column I wrote for the September edition of the Current. I don’t know how many of you had a chance to read it. The Naperville Sun has an article on our luncheon yesterday.

Why Should a CEO Step Aside?

2007-09-24T14:24:00-07:00

This was taken from the Chamber's September Current

As you all know, I have made the decision to retire from the Chamber at the end of this year. A lot of people have asked me why I decided to do that since we have had some degree of success (thanks to all of you our Members) since I came here eleven years ago. A couple of life lessons came into play when I was thinking this whole thing through and I thought I might share them with you.

First, past success is not an indicator of future success in the world of today. Just look at my struggling Chicago White Sox and you can see how difficult it is to repeat as a champion. Many business teams and organizations assume that if we just do more of the same, we will get the same results - and that’s the problem. In today’s’ fast-paced world, that is a major fallacy. Continuing to do more of what you have done in the past will probably guarantee problems and disappointments, as other competing organizations around you are changing every day. Staying the same is actually falling behind.

Second, real organizational change starts at the very top of the organization. The Board of Directors needs to change the way they do business. And the CEO needs to change also. He/She can either change the way they do their work or you change the CEO. Fresh agendas and new plans require fresh energy and fresh enthusiasm. That’s the reason you see so many managerial changes in professional sports. If you can’t or don’t want to change the team, then change the leader and the plan for success and winning. You also need to make sure you have the “new” team assembled if you are going to keep the old manager.

Third, just like flying on an airplane, baggage is a problem. The more baggage you bring with you, the more difficult it will be to change. The longer the stay, the more you accumulate baggage. A fresh leader brings virtually no baggage with them. They don’t know how it was always done and hopefully, in many cases, they will not care how it was done in the past. They will only care about how it will be done going forward.

Lastly, a good leader knows when it time to leave and they make it happen rather than waiting for it to happen. After thinking about all of these issues, it became very apparent to me that this organization will move quicker and better with a new CEO. The next leader will be free to “go for it” and fully embrace a new vision, mission and work plan for this outstanding organization. He or she will have an energized Board of Directors, a great staff with some new and fresh faces and energy, and, most importantly, a phenomenal “five star” Membership base that has evolved over time and is committed to exceeding expectations for themselves. The stars are aligned for an exciting ride. Strap it on, folks.

The Rubber Meets the Road

2007-07-11T08:10:08-07:00

I’m happy to report that for the first time in 10 years the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce has a new strategic plan. At the Chamber’s Board of Directors meeting on July 9, 2007 the Chamber 2020 strategic plan was adopted. When I began my Chamber career in 1996, the Chamber’s board had just undertaken a strategic review and now as my time in the Chamber world comes to a close (insert link to press release), it’s fitting that we have just undertaken the process again.

I’d like to take a moment and share with you part of a letter that our 2020 Chair Brad McGuire wrote to the Chamber’s Board yesterday:

“Congratulations on taking the first steps toward building the Chamber of the future. The plan you have approved today is a living document that will continue to evolve over the next 10 years as it is distilled into working plans and annual budgets.

I am proud to be associated with a Board of Directors that recognizes that preparing for 2020 means acting now. The hardest parts will be putting in place the people at both the Board and Management level to act upon the recommendations and finding ways to fund the step changes we are calling for.”

Brad’s absolutely correct; the future of your Chamber will greatly depend on the leadership provided by you, our Members, through your engagement on the Board and in stepping up to leadership roles within our committees, alliances and partners.

My last major responsibility to you, our Members, during my remaining 170 days as your President & CEO, is to engage the Chamber’s staff in the first six months of the “strategic implementation” of the Chamber 2020 plan. We'll will be focused on transitioning the Chamber of today into the Chamber of 2020.

My leaving the organization is timed to give the organization an opportunity for a new leader to take the reigns at a perfect time. Our Chamber is entering a new phase and needs an executive to lead the charge to 2020.