Guidance for Patient-Centered Benefit Design

Seemingly everyone agrees that consumers should have a stronger voice in value-driven health care and how benefit plans are designed. What hasn't been clear, until now, is how to ensure this.

The Health Care Transformation Task Force, a consortium of well-known payers, providers, purchasers and patient groups dedicated to speeding the field's move to value-based care, offers six guiding principles to ensure that consumers are at the center of benefit design.

These broad principles recommend that payers, providers and purchasers collaborate to create high-performing networks that drive patient-centered care, with consumer input driving the redesign process and with a focus on outcomes and consumer experience. The guidance also notes that value-based arrangements should include explicit accountability for member experience and outcomes. Another principle covers the need for organizations to develop multimodal communication strategies that both educate and engage beneficiaries around payment and care delivery options.

Jeff Micklos, the task force's executive director, says the task force has a different group developing a consumer perspective on high-deductible plans.