16 Employer Benefit Trends for 2019 From Mercer Thought Leaders

1. AI everywhere! Healthcare will be the next industry to be transformed by AI.
2. Account-based plans create buzz. 
3. Personalization of health care.
4. Value on investment: The new yardstick for benefits will be how they affect employees' perception of their employer.
5. Transparency in Rx pricing. 
6. Getting family-friendly fast.
7. Extreme claims get real.   A number of factors are driving an increase in both the prevalence and the size of extreme claims
8. More stop loss. With the severity and frequency of catastrophic claims, employers will up their stop loss insurance levels and those that don't buy it now will reconsider.
9. More outsourcing.  HR and health and wellbeing functions will increasingly be outsourced
10. Midsized employers doing something really different.  While jumbo employers are typically the trailblazers, this year midsized employers will take the lead with a couple of truly radical benefit strat
11. Moderate cost growth allows longer-term focus.
12. Big things for behavioral health Change is happening in the behavioral health care delivery system.
13. Specialty drugs will command attention.
14. Rx management gets yet more complicated. PBMs, carriers, pharma companies, and wholesalers will continue to face intense scrutiny regarding profits, delivery models and alignment (or lack of alignment
15. Employers mix it up with clinical services.
16. The issue of bill coding will surface. As doctors and hospitals become health systems, they are hiring coding experts at an increasingly rapid rate as a means of maximizing reimbursements.

Source: MCOLBlog: A Tour of 2019 Healthcare Predictions
Source URL: http://www.mcolblog.com/kcblog/2019/1/4/a-tour-of-2019-healt...

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