Episode #49 – Part I: Building a Value-based Employee Health Program with David Contorno

What is happening in the employer healthcare market is astounding – perhaps revolutionary.  Most of the experts I have spoken with agree that it’s the employers who will be the primary disruptors in the healthcare delivery ecosystem.  One only need look at Amazon and it’s new collaboration with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, or Apple or Google or Comcast or General Motors, or hundreds of other innovative employers, and employer coalitions such as the Health Transformation Alliance. These employers are taking their employee’s health into their own hands by partnering with vendors that aggressively work to lower costs, improve outcomes, and elevate the consumer experience.  

Our speaker today is an incredibly rare expert & professional in this regard. Contorno has 24 years of experience in the employee health space. He was a highly successful employee health benefits broker – making a sizable salary based on commission. And, then he had an ethical & moral crisis – as he tells it; which drove him to completely change the way he thought about and deployed employee health benefits and programs. As a founding advisor to Health Rosetta, he and the Health Rosetta team have developed methods to assist with the adoption of simple, practical, cost effective employee benefits and healthcare programs. In 2016, Forbes named David as “One of America’s Most Innovative Benefits Leaders.” There is nothing hypothetical about his approach. He is actively and successfully implementing this cost-savings system.   

What you’ll hear will include:

• David’s “aha” moment that led him to make the change to align his compensation completely with the actual benefit he brought to employees.

• The simple and practical programs David has deployed to dramatically reduce healthcare costs while improving access, quality and outcomes.

• How primary care is the most broken part of the healthcare delivery model and how he thinks we can fix it.

• David’s radically different take on Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s) and why he thinks they’re a scam…

I have to say that I am surprised and impressed with the knowledge and wisdom that David has amassed. While so many employers are struggling to manage these unsustainable costs of care, David and his colleagues at Health Rosetta have laid out a doable and effective plan.  What I admire and respect the most is that instead of shifting the responsibility to the employees to make cost effective and clinically effective decisions, which is wholly unrealistic; they put the responsibility back on the employers and benefits advisors, to institute supportive benefits that drive the appropriate utilization of quality clinical programs.  

Whether you’re an employer, an employee, a health benefits manager or advisor; or you just want to understand how we can optimally manage what amounts to over one-third of the American healthcare spend, these two episodes (#49 and #50), with David Contorna, will equip you with an in-depth understanding and some specific steps to take.