Survey: Healthcare orgs taking a second look at historically generous employee health benefits

Hospital PR departments frustrated with ACA employer mandate
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As healthcare costs continue to rise, hospitals and other healthcare organizations--which historically provide more generous employee benefits than in other industries--are scrutinizing the health insurance they offer their own employees.

Hospitals surveyed in five states--New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware--reported an average 3.6 percent yearly increase per employee, which is one of the lowest increases within the past few years, according to a hospital benefits survey by Cammack Health.

But the survey also found that many hospitals' HR teams are fed up with the intricacies of the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate. 

Seventy-two percent of the polled hospitals already offer coverage to employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, while many hospitals expressed concern that employees who are actually classified as part-time may accidentally fall into full-time classification and collect benefits.

Other key findings: One third of hospitals plan to establish an accountable care organization and half plan to implement urgent care facilities with separate copays for these services.

"We have definitely noticed a trend ... of leveraging internal resources to impact health outcomes in a positive way," Frank Lonardo, partner at Cammack Health, said in the announcement." We see this trend growing over time as hospitals take on more risk for managing the health of the community."

For more:
- here's the announcement

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