Join us to hear from two influential leaders as they discuss how the Commonwealth can lead the AI Revolution.
01/21/2025
9:30am - 11:00am
Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce
Hear from James E. Rooney about the state of the economy, and how it all matters to businesses, residents, and policymakers.
01/22/2025
2:00pm - 2:30pm
Virtual
Join on us on Friday, January 31, as we host our highly anticipated 2025 Pinnacle Awards Luncheon.
01/31/2025
11:00am - 1:30pm
Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport
Go deeper than basic DEI training to achieve higher productivity, satisfaction, and revenue growth with our new corporate workshop.
Join our Transformational DEI Certificate! Our comprehensive learning & development offerings are designed to connect and grow strong leaders who lead both inside and out of the office.
Our Women’s Leadership Program enables you to take your leadership to the next level by arming you with the most in-demand leadership toolkit.
Our Boston’s Future Leaders (BFL) program provides emerging leaders with a socially conscious and civically engaged leadership toolkit, as well as the opportunity to apply their knowledge through experiential assignments.
City Awake empowers young professionals in a variety of ways that encourages these rising leaders to stay invested in the region’s future success.
We are developing an ecosystem of corporations and partners with the influence and buying power to transform economic inclusion for minority business enterprises (MBEs).
The Fierce Urgency of Now Festival brings Boston’s diverse young professionals together with business leaders, organizations, and their peers to build connection, advance careers and ignite positive change.
09/14/2024 -
09/17/2024
Suffolk University - Sargent Hall
Small businesses are the backbone of the Boston economy. Learn more about the resources available through the Chamber.
BIMA (the Boston Interactive Media Association) serves a vibrant community of like-minded professionals from agencies, brands, publishers, and ad-tech companies with business interests in the New England market.
For 30 years, the Chamber’s Women’s Network has connected female professionals of all background and career levels. Today, our Women’s Network is the largest in New England, strengthening the professional networks of women each year.
The Massachusetts Apprentice Network convenes employers, training providers, and talent sources interested in developing and implementing apprenticeship programs in occupations across industries and statewide in fields such as tech, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and more.
Explore our mission and values to better understand how we are leading the business community forward.
Our member directory is your resource to discover, connect, and engage with Boston’s businesses from every industry and sector.
The greater Boston community is the envy of many cities. Major corporations have selected Boston and are shaping our promising future. However, to remain profitable, these companies must manage health care benefits, a significant portion of total expenses.
Massachusetts has among the highest health care costs nationally. Reducing health care costs while delivering world-class care for which Massachusetts is known will help our business community continue to thrive. Employers as purchasers of health care can actively collaborate with the health care community to control costs.
Employers can work with providers to improve employees’ health. The lifestyle decisions employees make impact the total cost of care and are borne by employers through higher insurance rates. Ideally, employers can motivate employees to make healthy lifestyle choices, with strategies to avoid obesity related disorders, give up smoking, lower stress and avoid risky behaviors.
Ideally, this better behavior would be supported by insurance products that closely link employees to primary care providers to incentivize prevention and manage chronic disease. Instead, insurers and business have been forced to shift costs to employees through high deductible health plans (HDHP).HDHP may lead employees to avoid care until deductibles are met; then there seems to be a perverse incentive to use more services. It would be better to change the way care is provided to realize more value.
Like Medicare, employers can align their needs with healthcare systems that are paid to focus on value. Value refers to paying providers for better outcomes and lower total medical expenses through alternative payment methods (or APMs) rather than paying for each unit of service (FFS), which encourages higher utilization of potentially unnecessary services.
A health care system committed to lower TME can direct care to high-quality, lower cost facilities – for example, community hospital instead of academic medical center, physician office or urgent care center instead of emergency department. Under the right payment system, providers can routinely use strategies to increase employees’ time at work, e.g. telehealth and other services linked to employers’ needs.
Many of these services are not billable under FFS, but make sense under an APM. Atrius Health has a successful track record of assuming full risk for the total cost and experience of care while providing high-quality care to hundreds of thousands of patients by embracing these tactics. Our focus is on proactively addressing patients’ preventive needs, to avoid the need to treat avoidable acute. Employers can realize savings by incentivizing providers to offer effective prevention programs and to lower TME.
Employers should insist on insurance products with coordination of care through networks paid to increase value . Plans that encourage the use of value-based insurance products will lower TME. Most commercial plans are trying, but can make more progress. Working together, employers and health care providers can address rising health care costs while making greater Boston a healthier and more attractive place to work.
Steven Strongwater, MD is President & CEO of Atrius Health.
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