Health Care Trends

Editorial by Thomas Ebert, M.D., Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Health New England

If you or a family member is sick, you want the best care possible: comprehensive, continuous, accessible, coordinated, family-centered, and compassionate. The joint principles developed by the primary care medical societies is just that. Many GIC members are currently benefiting from these programs or will in the future.

Paul Mendis, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Neighborhood Health Plan, discusses the benefits of using community health and urgent care centers for minor acute illnesses in place of an emergency room.

Charlie Baker, President and CEO, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care discussed the dearth of publicly available information on healthcare policy and cost.

The GIC continues to attack the factors that are driving up health care costs, producing results for both the Commonwealth and its employees and retirees. The results have paid off with the GIC consistently keeping health care premium increases below both the state and the national averages.

Rising health care costs are in the news daily. If you have skipped by these articles, or glossed over them, here's the problem in a nutshell - health care cost escalation is back, and it is causing employers grave concern about how to deal with this serious problem.