Letter form our Board Chair
Dear Colleague,
As Human Resources Director for Mitsubishi Polyester Film for 13 years, I have watched rising healthcare costs become an increasingly urgent challenge for business. Three years ago, Mitsubishi established an internal task force to address these costs and implemented a number of initiatives which has resulted in reducing healthcare costs. It soon became clear, however, that one company alone can do only so much, and it was not enough simply to benchmark best practices with other employers. We realized that whole systems thinking was required to fix our piece of the broken healthcare system.
Some disturbing facts illustrate the depth of the problem:
- Medical costs are second only to energy costs on their impact on businesses, and the percent of employers providing health coverage continues to decline.
- While we spend over $5,000 a year per person in the US on healthcare, our collective health is near the bottom of the industrialized world. We spend more than any other country on healthcare, but do not even rank among the top 25 countries in healthcare performance.
- Group premiums for family coverage have grown nearly 60% in the past six years compared to an underlying inflation rate of 9.7% over the same period (The Kaiser Foundation).
- Medical errors are the fifth leading cause of death in the US (IOM Report), and patients get the recommended treatment only about 50% of the time (Rand Study).
A group of stakeholders in employee healthcare – employers, healthcare providers, brokers, and insurance companies – came together last year to form the non-profit South Carolina Business Coalition on Health. What started as a project to reduce employer healthcare costs soon evolved into a quest to improve value, defined as a function of cost and quality. The SCBCH is designed to be a collaborative effort whose goals are to realize: improved healthcare quality and efficiency, greater consumer responsibility, healthier people, and improved business competitiveness.
Through this innovative collaboration of our stakeholders, I sincerely believe that we have an opportunity here in South Carolina to develop a healthcare model that will benefit our citizens and potentially serve as a model for other states. We envision a South Carolina where worker productivity is the highest in the nation; where people take responsibility for their lifestyle and are wise consumers of healthcare services; and where providers are transparent about their quality while continually improving their quality and efficiency.
If these goals resonate with you and you want to be a part of the transformation of health care in South Carolina, we invite you to join us in this endeavor.
Sincerely,
Bob Baugh
Chair, South Carolina Business Coalition on Health