Project Summary
The National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (National Alliance), formally NBCH, is focused on improving health, well-being and value for companies and communities across the country. They offer a unique and very diverse national/regional structure to facilitate the engagement and dissemination of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR)/comparative-effectiveness research (CER) findings. Utilizing distributed change agents with a deep knowledge of healthcare issues through an established alliance of approximately 50 healthcare purchaser-led coalitions across the country, they offer unparalleled collaboration and objectivity in the current changing healthcare marketplace. In addition, the National Alliance and its coalitions have a strong network of relationships with diverse stakeholders both nationally and in communities across the country.
Because of its established broad and highly diversified reach, the National Alliance will, as part of this project, identify existing and emerging PCOR/CER findings highly relevant to the purchaser community, prioritize dissemination and determine implications for purchasers and related stakeholders. To accomplish this, National Alliance will bring together a panel of coalition leaders and purchasers to review findings, execute a plan for dissemination and evaluate its effectiveness.
As background, purchasers (public and private employers, Taft-Hartley Funds) are a primary source of funding of PCOR research but have not been widely engaged to benefit from findings. Employer-purchasers have the fiduciary duty to represent their employees in supporting high value health care benefits. The complexity and lack of transparency of the health care system have lead purchasers to decisions that are not always in the best interest of their employees. Employers should know how to make effective decisions based on evidence so they can sufficiently answer the questions “Why did we take action?” and “How do we know we are successful?”.
The outcomes of this project seek to educate and inform healthcare benefits professionals to help shift their current practices and those of their vendors towards a stronger evidence-based approach in their healthcare decision-making. Through this project, employers will have access to educational resources (e.g. issues briefs, webinars) and other information to support their efforts. As employers utilize the most relevant findings/strategies in their company’s approach, this will lead to new practices and outcomes that can be assessed based on performance. As a result, we anticipate a systematic improvement that includes the health care system, the community and the health of the workforce through the patient-centered experiences.