Medical trend—the year-over-year change in per-employee healthcare costs—is the single metric that determines whether your benefits program is becoming more or less expensive over time. For a CFO, it’s a cost trajectory strategy that reshapes the conversation about preventive care.
With primary care practices receiving an average NPS of -1.2, employers have good reason to believe their people are having poor experiences with their PCPs—and that could be costing employers millions.
Most employers can’t answer the most important question about their preventive benefits: “Is this actually lowering our costs?” The Triple Aim framework is a defensible method for measuring the impact of preventive care—and making the case to the CFO.
For benefits leaders evaluating prevention engagement ROI, the question isn’t whether healthy employees will sign up. It’s whether the program can engage the 40-year-old male with borderline hypertension who hasn’t seen a doctor in three years. The evidence says yes.
Primary care physicians are structurally unable deliver adequate preventive care—not because they lack skill or intent, but because the economic model and patient volume demands leave no room for it. Understanding this reality is essential for deciding how to invest in workforce healthcare.