LVBCH Marks 45 Years Helping Employers Save On Health Care
Read the Article by Stacy Wescoe, Lehigh Valley Business
The Lehigh Valley Business Coalition on Healthcare is celebrating 45 years of helping employers save money on employee health insurance while helping to educate and advocate for best practices in health care.
Carl Seitz, president of the coalition, said it was founded in 1980 with a mission to control cost, quality and access for employers, their employees and the community.
While the coalition’s work has been a vital tool to help maintain health care for hundreds of thousands of people in the community, Seitz said there still remains some confusion about what exactly the organization does.
“Sometimes there is confusion,” he said. “We’re not a broker, we’re employer led. We’re employers making decisions to save money for employees.”
According to Seitz, the coalition works with brokers and negotiates contracts with preferred partners to get the best deals available for employee health benefits.
He said they do that by bringing lives to the table.
The coalition represents employers with staff sizes ranging from 10,000 to 50, but with them all negotiating together they are able to get better rates and services that might not be available to smaller employers.
Members of the coalition include Dick’s Sporting Goods, East Penn Manufacturing, Crayola, Mack and others. Primarily, Seitz said, they work with employers that are self-insured.
He gave the example of the dental coverage the coalition can offer its members.
With 230,000 people being part of the contract, he said LVBCH can negotiate much better rates tan even a company with 10,000 employees can.
“Pricing is one of the first things we’re looking for. There may be various charges that we can negotiate out,” Seitz said.
A good part of finding those deals comes from developing preferred partners, that are willing to work with the coalition to offer the best services for the best value.
For example, Employee Assistance Programs (EAPS) often have service fees for such things as onsite education or counseling after an incident.
The coalition can work to reduce or eliminate those extra fees.
The coalition recently selected Health Care Originals (HCO) as the Coalition’s exclusive Virtual Respiratory Care services provider through HCO’s Nightingale program.
In making this selection, Seitz said the LVBCH Board of Directors endorsed Health Care Originals as a Preferred Partner for Virtual Respiratory Care Services.
“We are thrilled to partner with LVBCH in bringing our program to employers of all sizes. We engage on either a risk basis or case-rate/engaged basis which gives employer members great options,” said Sharon Samjitsingh, CEO and co-founder of Health Care Originals. “We offer employers unique insight into effectively managing visible and hidden costs, and productivity issues they face because of asthma and COPD.”
Seitz said they are also finalizing a partnership with a company called Progeny, which provides fertility and women’s health care.
“We’re bringing in these things for employers that are cutting edge innovations in health care,” he said.
Such partnerships are generally for terms of a few years, but Seitz said the coalition regularly goes to market with requests for proposals to make sure they are getting the best deals and services that are currently available on the market.
But education and advocacy are also a part of LVBCH’s work.
The coalition works with the Leapfrog group on its grading of hospital safety and helps make sure not just Lehigh Valley, but all Pennsylvania hospitals participate in the ranking to show the quality of the work they do.
“We give them updates and help with background work to encourage participation,” Seitz said.
Education programs range from obesity to women’s health and are available to member employers, who also have a number of networking opportunities throughout the years to help learn what others are doing with their employee health benefits.
There are many options employers can choose from when it comes to benefits they can offer their staff. Besides general health insurance, Seitz said LVBCH negotiates contracts for services ranging from corporate wellness to vision, dental, EAP and pharmacy.