Make a Commitment

Join American leaders in taking action to improve health and health care

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View Letter from the CEOs

 

Call to Action

The U.S. business community is a powerful force for change. Making national progress toward health care’s triple aim—better health, better quality care, and lower costs—will not only improve the health of the nation, it will also contribute to global competitiveness for U.S. companies. But this progress will require leadership and action. The CEO Council strongly endorses the many opportunities for both leadership and action that are detailed in this report, and urges employers to take note and take action.

Making a Commitment

CEO Council members call upon CEOs to join with them and commit to taking the following actions:

Recognize that good health and good health care require your efforts.

The changes that are required to achieve the goals of better health and better care will not happen without strong leadership from the business community. Employers are uniquely positioned to drive change in the health care system by exercising their purchasing power and by aligning and engaging with other employers, community leaders, and health care leaders around shared goals. CEO involvement is critically important if we are to improve the health of the American workforce and maintain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

Commit to meeting three goals within the next three years.

To improve the health and wellness of individuals, employers should implement comprehensive health and wellness programs for employees that address the following needs, and they should begin tracking and sharing outcomes to promote learning and improvement:

  •  Nutrition and physical activity
  •  Tobacco cessation
  •  Emotional and behavioral health
  •  Condition management, including chronic disease management

To improve the health of communities, employers should begin to understand and support the health of communities by reviewing metrics already being captured in the following areas and collaborating with local public- and private-sector leaders on programs designed to promote improvements in any or all of the following:

  •  Health behaviors—with a focus on physical activity—nutrition, and tobacco use
  •  Clinical care and health outcomes, with a focus on access to care, preventive services, and prevalence of chronic disease
  •  Social and economic factors that have been shown to improve the health of communities, with a focus on education, housing, access to fresh food, and childhood poverty

To improve the health care system, employers should make value-based purchasing a factor in their choice of health plans for their employees. For example, employers should:

Partner with health plans to:

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  • Increase the share of provider payments that are value-based and promote delivery system innovations that have been shown to deliver value
  • Promote reporting of meaningful performance data focused on quality, efficiency, productivity, patient engagement and satisfaction, and health outcomes
  • Support stronger relationships between individuals and primary care providers

Support employee and beneficiary health care decision-making by increasing the transparency of performance information, providing consumer education tools, and implementing value-based benefit design.

Share your strategies and outcomes with your peers.

Help spread innovation and proven strategies so that fellow employers can join the effort to improve health and health care. Share outcomes to facilitate learning and improvement.

Join the dialogue, use your influence, and stay involved.

This is not just a report. This is the beginning of a dialogue, a process, and a roadmap for moving forward. The strategies in this report have demonstrated success, but each can be improved and built on. Get involved. Build on these ideas, shape them for your own organization’s needs, and share the results. Use your influence to move toward better health and health care.

Accept our call to action: Make a commitment to improve health and health care in the United States.

Measuring Success

If adopted, the recommendations detailed in this report will yield measurable improvements in the health and well-being of the nation. The success of these efforts will be captured and shared in three ways: (1) by tracking the number and publicizing the names of employers who commit to and pursue action across any of the three pillars; (2) by tracking and sharing outcomes achieved; and (3) by measuring general employer progress.