Using Innovation to Control Healthcare Costs

With the goal of creating a cost-effective, high-quality healthcare system in California among our top priorities for 2012, the Council’s Healthcare Committee met recently with Peter Lee, Executive Director of the California Health Benefit Exchange, and Exchange Board member Paul Fearer to share with them best practices from the private sector for using innovation to control costs. The Exchange is a new state-based marketplace for private health insurance that will be the largest single purchaser of healthcare in the state. As the Exchange considers the types of products it will offer, Council Healthcare Committee members Steve McDermott, CEO of Hill Physicians Medical Group, and Paul Markovich, COO of Blue Shield of California, described the success of a partnership they formed with Catholic Healthcare West to control costs and improve quality for the state retirement system and how the Exchange can be structured to enable this valuable innovation.