Regulatory Efforts Aim to Address Healthcare Quality, Costs

A state panel is scheduled to hear recommendations in June for new healthcare insurance plan designs in an effort to drive higher quality and lower costs.
The Value-Based Insurance Design Consortium recently finished its work on the first round  of plan design templates for self-insured employers, also with guidance  for the fully insured market.
VBID is one of a number of workgroups within the State Innovation Model, a state regulatory effort aimed at addressing quality and cost issues in the state’s healthcare system.
The VBID group is of particular importance to the employer community, with its efforts focused on the utilization of high value healthcare services through plan designs,  incentives or other tools.
One of the goals of the group is to increase adoption of VBIDs among self-insured employers.

Some of Connecticut's self-insured employers already utilize VBID design in their plans, with insurance carriers also moving in this direction.
The templates are draft plan designs that employers may choose to implement and are not a mandate from the state.
VBIDs have been utilized by self-insured (typically larger) employers because they can help move toward a healthier population with lower costs.
While fully insured (typically smaller) employers do not benefit from the same bottom line impact, flexible VBID-like options may offer the opportunity for positive changes in that market..
Stay tuned: the templates finalized by the VBID Consortium will be presented to the SIM Steering Committee in June and then more information on next steps will be available.
The other SIM workgroups—including Community Health Worker, Equity & Access, Health Information, Population Health, Quality, Practice Transformation, and MAPOC Care Management—continue to meet on their specific topics, with the steering committee scheduled to meet June 9.

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For more information, contact CBIA’s Jennifer Herz (860.970.4404) | @CBIAjherz