Cracking Health Costs - How to Cut Your Company's Costs and Provide Employees Better Care

Cracking Health Costs reveals the best ways for companies and small businesses to fight back, right now, against rising health care costs. This book proposes multiple, practical steps that you can take to control costs and increase the effectiveness of the health benefit. The book is all about rolling back health care costs to save companies and employees money. Working hand-in-hand with their employees, businesses need to ensure that, whenever feasible, employees with the most expensive diagnoses get optimal treatment at hospitals not practicing "volume-driven" medicine for higher profits. Less than 10% of employees incur 80% of costs. About 20% of patients have been completely misdiagnosed, while many others are simply the victims of surgeons who are either practicing bad medicine or overtreating for profit. For example, some companies, such as Walmart and Lowe's, are turning to the "Centers of Excellence" approach author Tom Emerick helped to pioneer while running benefits for Walmart. By determining which hospitals are adopting the highest standards of care, benefits managers can reduce the number of unnecessary high-cost surgeries and improve employees' overall health. The solution-based approach offered by the book is unique, because it can be implemented by businesses today. Praise for Cracking Health Costs "In their new book, Cracking Health Costs , Tom Emerick and Al Lewis manage to gore everyone's ox in such a delightful way that you will laugh out loud even while you are cringing at some of the ways you too have fallen into the traps they so vividly describe. They blow up myths about the benefits of wellness, prevention, screening, PBMs and much more. And they name names, provide links, and references to support their suppositions, and most important, they do the math. Even if you don't agree with everything they posit, you will want to read this book at least a couple of times to not only mine the nuggets, but also to enjoy the humor." --Patricia Salber, MD, MBA; Host, The Doctor Weighs In and CEO of Health Tech Hatch "Tom Emerick is one of the nation's most experienced and successful benefits managers. He is offering guideposts to avoiding overpricing and overtreatment in health plans. The need for such guideposts is a reproach to the American health care system. Nonetheless, the insights are profound for benefits managers and beneficial for employees."--Nortin M. Hadler, MD, MACP, MACR, FACOEM, Professor of Medicine and Microbiology/Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill " Cracking Health Costs is a myth shattering book that opens Pandora's Box! While many administrators, patients and healthcare workers are caught in the cultural web of unnecessary procedures, accidents, waste and poor quality, Emerick and Lewis empower health benefits managers to call the shots by debunking common myths and illuminating a clear, practical roadmap for change. Knowledge is power, and power is within these pages. This book will transform Health Care." --Kathleen Bartholomew, RN, MN Author and Nurse Leader " Cracking Health Costs debunks the fads in corporate health benefit management and provides a roadmap for executives who want to their employees have top quality care at an affordable price." --Rosemary Gibson, Author of The Treatment Trap: How the Overuse of Medical Care is Wrecking Your Health and What You Can Do to Prevent It