Success Story

Pittsburgh Business Group on Health
Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment cardiac surgery reimbursement report

Situation Assessment
Rising health care costs continue to be a top concern for employers, and improving the delivery and quality of health care is often discussed as a way to reduce those costs. When a Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) report showed that insurers made widely differing payments to hospitals in Western Pennsylvania for the same cardiac procedures, regardless of the outcomes, many health care organizations commented in the news media. Highmark, the region’s dominant insurer, PHC4, and the two largest health care providers – UPMC and West Penn Allegheny Health System – immediately joined the dialogue.

Need
The Pittsburgh Business Group on Health is an employer-led coalition advocating for value and quality in health care and benefits. PBGH needed to join the public discussion about the cardiac surgery reimbursement report. PBGH should be viewed as a major player in the debate, since its employer members, including H.J. Heinz Company, Westinghouse Electric Company and Bayer Corporation, pay approximately 80 percent of their employees’ health care costs. Yet none of the coverage of the PHC4 report included PBGH or employers’ opinions. This presented a clear opportunity to raise PBGH's visibility and join the discussion, PBGH worked with WordWrite Communications to write commentary articles pitched to local media that reflected the employer viewpoint.

Audiences
PBGH’s primary audience is executive-level decision makers at large, mid-size and small organizations in various business segments, including private and public employers, government and academia. PBGH can enhance its credibility and attract more members by positioning itself as an innovative coalition of employers that drives value and quality in health care. The PBGH also works closely with health care providers and payers on behalf of its membership.

Goals and Objectives
The PBGH responded to the PHC4 report to raise its visibility and position the coalition as a driver of value and quality in health care for employers. Because the report showed that some health care providers were being reimbursed significantly more money for the exactly the same procedures, without any measurable difference in outcome, PBGH took the opportunity to speak out as a voice representing employers, demonstrating the value of membership to the employer community.

Project Description
WordWrite Communications employed its experienced staff of former journalists to work with PBGH and draft a concise letter and opinion piece that addresses the alarming findings in the PHC4 report from the employer perspective. Both pieces highlighted PBGH and its work while tying the report’s findings to the crisis in health care costs.

Both articles made the point that inequality in reimbursement for health care services, regardless of quality, contributes to escalating health care costs. The pieces questioned the justification for the differences in payments and called on employers to act by using their collective power to ensure that their employees received quality health care at fair prices.

Results
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette printed a 650-word opinion piece  under PBGH Executive Director Chris Whipple’s byline. The article ran in the Forum section of the Sunday edition, reaching an estimated 842,755 readers. The piece also was posted to the Post-Gazette’s web site, which attracts an estimated 3.2 million unique users per month.

The Pittsburgh Business Times printed a 500-word letter to the editor o reaching 12,500 subscribers and 45,000 overall readers, the majority of whom are considered top management.