Pharmacy Benefits & Health Advocacy

On this week's program, the hosts talk about two of the most important topics this year in employer-sponsored health care: pharmacy benefits and health advocacy. But first, the hosts provide an overview in the first 10 minutes about an upcoming webinar for brokers.

For the first segment, the hosts will talk with Michael J. Romanzo, R.Ph., chief strategy officer, RxBenefits, a firm of strategic experts on pharmacy benefit procurement and administration. Employee pharmacy benefit programs are one of the most complex aspects of the self-insured medical plan; the pharmacy benefit represents approximately 20 to 25 percent of employers’ health plan cost today. The pharmacy marketplace not only consists of many moving parts, but the components of the pharmacy benefit are ever changing. To successfully navigate the complex pharmacy landscape, you should reconsider your approach. The million-dollar question is: are you utilizing smart pharmacy economics?

For the second segment, the hosts will talk with Dr. Abbie Leibowitz, co-president and chief medical officer, Health Advocate. With the ongoing and rapid rise of consumer-driven health care, it is more important than ever that employees are engaged in their health care and provided with resources to make informed decisions. By leveraging powerful analytics tools to understand and utilize available data, employers can strengthen employee engagement while improving outcomes and reducing health care costs. Data analytics can provide both employers and employees with actionable information that can be leveraged to create innovative solutions, such as powerful decision support tools, robust databases, targeted communications and more. In this segment, Dr. Leibowitz and the hosts will discuss how a data-driven approach to health care can impact employee behavior and decisions while increasing productivity and reducing costs.