Las Vegas is a weird setting for a workers comp conference. The hyperactive, eternally lit, wildly exciting town that is ‘Vegas’ makes for a bizarre counterpoint to the world of risk management – a business that works very hard to be steady, buttoned-down, predictable, and is certainly not glamorous.
Then again, the boom-and-bust that plays out every minute on the felt of the craps tables and poker games is workers comp in miniature.
Right now the sense seems to be the comp industry is starting to recover from the years-long soft market. Vendors throughout the hall are seeing employers and insurers focusing more tightly on cost drivers, on risk management and loss prevention. Risk managers are looking for new answers, different ways to attack the problem of rising medical costs that has been the one constant in this highly cyclical industry. The vendors’ perspective is borne out in conversations with managed care execs, who are getting much more attention from large employers interested in ‘real managed care’, who want to delve into the details, the workflows, outcomes, and results. No longer satisfied with ‘yeah, we’ve got that managed care stuff’, employers are (finally) getting serious.
About time.
For too long employers have been satisfied with ‘me, too’, cookie-cutter approaches to managed care. Most every large payer uses the same network, the same case management and UR schemes, pretty generic bill review and some amalgamation of specialty managed care vendors. They’ve been talking about outcomes oriented networks for years, and far too complacent when vendors have consistently failed to deliver on their promises to actually build them.
Yet employers haven’t been completely complacent. While the market’s been soft, employers have beat the bejesus out of their TPAs and carriers, demanding more and more coverage and service at ever-lower costs.
Now it’s coming back to them. Medical costs are rising, the power is shifting to the other side of the table, and there are few new and promising answers.
The good news – there are a few answers. I’ll talk about them later today.
Nov
20
