Archived Content

Driving Innovation In the Health Care Marketplace:

A CEO Report

AT&T Inc.

As part of a comprehensive total rewards package, AT&T offers health care to over a million active employees, retirees and their dependents. In an era when many companies are curtailing benefits, we continue to invest approximately $5 billion annually to provide them. AT&T’s health care objectives include:

  • Maintaining a healthy and engaged workforce supported by high-quality, cost-effective coverage;
  • Establishing employee contributions to health cost in a manner that is competitive with the market; and
  • Encouraging greater employee involvement in making everyday health care decisions that impact their cost and quality of outcomes.

AT&T believes that employers and employees have a shared responsibility for maintaining a healthy workforce, adopting behaviors that promote better health and keeping costs in check. To engage participants in their health care decisions, we introduced a consumer-directed health plan to managers and many retirees in 2006 and have since expanded this approach across other populations.

AT&T recognizes, however, that plan design is only one element of a multidimensional consumer- driven strategy. We offer a comprehensive menu of health benefits, assessments, programs and tools. We also prioritize wellness, position health as a critical part of our culture and strive to reduce the risk of chronic illness by increasing engagement with and adherence to clinical protocols.

Through an innovative program called “Your Health Matters,” AT&T provides the resources and education to help participants grow from health awareness to health improvement:

  • Consistent with AT&T’s focus on technology, we built an interactive Your Health Matters portal that provides employees with one centralized, intuitive and integrated place to find all things related to health and wellness. We also developed a You Matter mobile app for employees to access these resources on the go.
  • In 2012, we kicked off the Chairman’s Challenge. This six-month challenge effectively engaged our employees and gave us a meaningful way to recognize and celebrate their accomplishments.
  • We recently launched the Your Health Matters Champions Program, a network of employees and leaders who demonstrate their passion for wellness and lead activities across the company.

At AT&T, we recognize our responsibility within the health care ecosystem. We believe we must leverage our position to promote quality, control costs, enhance services and drive innovative solutions in the broader health care industry. AT&T remains focused on:

  • Unlocking price and quality information to empower participants to make informed health decisions;
  • Cultivating an environment that consistently engages and incents participants to prioritize preventive care, manage conditions, and improve decision-making and lifestyle choices; and
  • Building the mobilization of health care to allow people to have valuable information at their fingertips at the point of purchase, improving the speed and accuracy of health care delivery.

Companies

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BRT companies provide health coverage to more than 40 million Americans. We help American workers and their families remain healthy, receive quality treatment when necessary and achieve better health outcomes. The private-sector innovations in the insurance marketplace that enable us to provide these services to our employees and their families serve as models for public programs — but additional reforms are necessary.

This report highlights the innovations we have made and the public policy changes we believe would drive value by promoting health and improving outcomes.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/brt.org/archive/0_healthcare/BRT-Health-Care.pdf

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