Employers are getting smarter about holding down their healthcare costs and are taking steps to make sure they — and theirworkers — get the biggest bang for the buck.

That's the big take-away from an Aon Hewitt study that indicatesemployers expect to have greater control over the cost of health care coverage and will bedemanding better outcomes from their insurance providers.

Aon's survey sought input from 800 mid-to-large sized U.S.companies. In response to a general query about the ideal type ofcoverage they would like to offer employees, 53% said that “movingtoward provider payment models that promote cost-effective,high-quality health care results will be a part of their futurehealth care strategy.”

One in five said this was among their three highestpriorities.

Other results of the survey that support the conclusion thatemployers are getting smarter — and more aggressive— about purchasing coverage:

• Thirty-one percent said they currently decrease or increasehealth care vendor compensation based on specific performancetargets. Another 44% are considering doing so in the next three tofive years.
• Only 8% reported limiting plan reimbursements to a set dollaramount for certain medical services where wide cost variationexists. (Example: requiring participants to pay the full costdifference between a brand-name drug and its generic substitute.)But 62% “are considering adopting this type of reference-basedpricing model in the future.”

• Fifty-nine percent said they intend to “steer participants —through plan design or lower cost — to high-quality hospitals orphysicians for specific procedures or conditions.”

• Twenty-one percent said they now engage in coalition-basedpricing, or “cooperative purchasing efforts with other employers orgroups,” and 38% intend to do so in the near term.

“As health care costs continue to rise, a growing number ofemployers want to ensure that the health care services they arepaying for are actually leading to improved patient outcomes,” saidJim Winkler, chief innovation officer for health at Aon Hewitt.

“Employers are increasingly gaining comfort with the notion thatthey do not need to pay for the wide cost and quality variationsthat exist in today's health care system. Their efforts to reduceinefficiency and shift the payment focus toward services andproviders that produce higher quality outcomes is only just gettingstarted. It is a shift that our health care system certainlyneeds.”

This article was originally posted at LifeHealthPro.com, a sister siteof Credit Union Times.