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Buyers Health Care Action Group and Health and Performance Improvement Advisors, LLC Advance Employer Imperative

Posted on: Friday, 4 May 2007, 09:00 CDT

The Buyers Health Care Action Group (BHCAG) announced today it will host a daylong series of regional meetings built around value-based benefit designs that pinpoint healthy living and working strategies, as well as designate healthy performance best practices to achieve better health outcomes and business performance results.

The inaugural BHCAG Employer Leadership Summit: Healthy Living and Healthy Working -- Employers Helping Employees to Better Health will be held June 21, 2007 from 8:30 am to 6:30 pm at the Park Plaza Hotel Bloomington, Bloomington, Minn.

Charles Montreuil, BHCAG chairman and vice president of corporate human resources for Carlson Companies in Minneapolis, Minnesota, indicated that one of the difficulties employers face is "finding ways to quantify and put into practice employee-focused success stories about how healthy living and working help to increase an employee's work-life balance, while, at the same time, impacting an employer's bottom line, their enterprise-wide performance and their capacity to compete in a global economy."

The Summit will feature innovative approaches to health and performance improvement from an array of organizations. Companies sharing their employee-centered strategies and evidence-based best practices include: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, Carlson Companies, Employer-Based Pharmaceutical Strategies, LLC., Employers Association, Inc., HealthPartners, HPI Advisors, LLC, Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement, Lincoln Industries, Miall Consulting, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and Wellpoint, Inc. Leading firms who are sponsors of the Summit to date include: Healthways, Inc., Mercer Health & Benefits, Pfizer, Inc. and sanofi-aventis.

An article recently published by the Professionals in Human Resources Association noted that healthy employees are simply able to do more, thereby improving the employer's bottom line. When corporations tie performance improvement to healthy employees and job satisfaction expectations, experts agree that everyone benefits. Jobs stay in America. The economy flourishes. Employees are healthy. And exorbitant health care costs are avoided.

At the Summit, there will be a community roundtable exploring healthy living, healthy working and performance. A participant Sanne Magnan, MD, PhD, president of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement (ICSI) in Bloomington, Minn., notes, "Our employees, patients, families and communities deserve prevention and treatment that work. Let's make keeping people healthy a good business strategy for everyone." ICSI is a clinical collaboration whose mission is to champion quality and accelerate improvement in the value of health care for populations.

Adds Carolyn Pare, chief executive officer of the BHCAG in Bloomington, Minn., "It's a simple fact that keeping people healthy is crucial to business. The million-dollar question: How do you help employers mobilize a rapid response team to build and roll-out a business strategy and action plan that results in healthier employees?"

She suggests that working with BHCAG employers and community stakeholders will encourage the rapid transformation of advanced ideas that will make a difference in the value of health in the Midwest market. Most importantly, it is expected to maximize employee health and business results from integrated health and performance improvement programs.

Les C. Meyer, president and CEO of HPI Advisors, LLC believes that transforming the nation's health care system by means of a rapid response team approach will require success across hundreds of thousands of employers of all sizes and industry segments. "Minnesota has a long-standing reputation for inspiring innovation in health care's evolution," he says, "and now the Summit provides an opportunity to focus on transforming the health and performance improvement revolution to benefit employers, employees and their dependents."

Bruce Sherman, MD, medical director, global services, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio, notes that the Summit is focused on investing wisely in a company's human resources so that employee populations can achieve a better work-life balance. Doing so will empower employees to live healthier lifestyles, and achieve peak performance at work and home.

"Human resources, benefits professionals, human capital experts and benefits consultants need support, too," he says, "in order to be able to bring that kind of strategic thinking to the table, which is what the employer leadership summit is designed to help them do."

About BHCAG

The vision of the Buyers Health Care Action Group is that health care consumers get the care they need at the right time, in the right place, at the right price. Our mission is to recreate the health care system to focus on a collective goal of optimal health and total value. We accomplish our mission, and create value for our members, by pursuing strategies that: openly challenge conventional practice and foster innovation; aggressively pursue performance improvement; actively influence the behavior of all stakeholders to achieve alignment in providing and purchasing health care; and proactively engage and connect our members to initiatives that further a goal of optimal health and total value. For more information go to: www.bhcag.com.

About HPI Advisors, LLC

HPI Advisors, LLC is a think tank of national experts creating answers to the upward spiral of out of control health care costs and the downward spiral of the overall health of our nation's people. The company's mission is to facilitate community-based, collaborative projects with employers and all stakeholders that are built around value-based benefit designs that pinpoint healthy living and working strategies, and designate healthy performance best practices to achieve better health outcomes and business performance results. For more information go to: www.healthandperformance.info.

Source: Business Wire

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