Morgan Health

According to the Chase 2024 Midyear Business Leaders Outlook survey, companies are focused on growth and showing "cautious optimism" in their ability to navigate economic uncertainty. Health care benefits remain a priority for business leaders, serving both as a tool to attract and retain talent and as a significant cost center. 71% of business leaders surveyed noted they offer health insurance to employees, and cited affordability, drug coverage, and provider quality as their top priorities in health coverage. While health care benefits are essential for attracting and retaining top talent, rising costs are forcing tough decisions, such as changing hiring plans or cutting other expenses. Read more about the survey’s findings: http://spr.ly/6042mb1Eo

Employers are increasingly examining the high costs of GLP-1 weight loss medications and adopting strategies to manage healthcare expenses effectively. A recent Gallagher report found that 68% of employers struggle with high medical service costs, while 44% find specialty drugs like GLP-1s a major challenge. To manage these costs, employers are requiring prior authorization, tying coverage to participation in weight management programs, and offering more Consumer-Directed Health Plans (CDHPs). Learn more at https://bit.ly/3X7m4fT

We are looking forward to the Culture Shifting Deal Making Summit in Silicon Valley next month to discuss #healthequity. If you are a founder or investor in the health & wellness space please join us. The speaker line up featuring BWHI President Linda Goler Blount, MPH is amazing, the entrepreneurs pitching are mind blowing and the deals that can come out of this can be game changing. Come hear about Health Equity and those inventing novel solutions for underserved communities. Thank you to Morgan Health for sponsoring this important initiative and to Culture Shift Labs for creating space for the thousands of founders, fund managers, executives and investors who care about health and wellness innovation, transformation and social impact. https://lnkd.in/gM3NeHd8

Every year Chase for Business surveys hundreds of business leaders to understand their outlook on the economy and how they're responding to operational challenges for their business. Good news! Small businesses are optimistic about the future and ready to grow. This is especially true for Black-owned businesses: in fact, 78% of respondents from Black-owned businesses believe small businesses will be the primary drivers of economic growth in the U.S. Expected sales growth is the top reason businesses plan to hire full-time employees, further fueling the economy. The bad news— 31% report that uncertainty about health care costs may restrain their hiring plans. With health care costs expected to go up again in 2025, we asked small businesses how they're responding. Absent more affordable options, here are the measures small businesses are reluctantly taking: ⬆ 43% increased employee contributions to health care costs ⬆ 39% passed costs to consumers, increasing prices for goods or services ✂ 36% cut other expenses from their business ✂ 30% changed their hiring plans — meaning some employers may be choosing to not create new jobs at all Morgan Health is teaming up with our colleagues at JPMorganChase to understand how we can help. By investing in companies like Centivo we're bringing new affordable and high-quality plan options to the market. We teamed up with Covered California for Small Business to educate business owners in LA on their options. We'd love to hear your ideas for where we can be most impactful in this space. Reach out to Michelle Basta Fatema Salam Brandon Batiste, MPH Reed Goldberg and let us know. Special shout out to Pauline Wu Adam Dallas Bea Capistrant for the great work on this survey. You can read more about the Business Leaders Outlook survey here: https://lnkd.in/eMgP4Xdy #healthcare #innovation #NationalBlackBusinessMonth #smallbusiness

Data unicorns aren’t born, they’re made through years of diverse and often painful industry experiences that involve constantly-breaking pipelines and scattered stakeholders. The mythical data unicorn is the individual who can both implement a transformation pipeline to build a set of marts and run a meaningful statistical model to test a hypothesis. Their marts aren’t built for one-time use, they’re designed with future experimentation and collaboration in mind. They can explain what their regression coefficients mean to a person who hasn’t taken a math class beyond high school. Over the course of my career building and managing data teams, I’ve stopped looking for unicorns, and instead, I’ve tried to figure out how to forge them. Anytime I'm interviewing a candidate for a data team I ask this question: I hold up my hands to indicate a spectrum and ask “Where do you like to live on the data supply chain? Over here (left hand) ingesting raw data is coming in the front door, somewhere closer to the middle where data are being transformed and made usable, further to the right building statistical models, or way over here (right hand) where you're working with stakeholders to translate findings and craft a narrative?” There's no right answer to this question, but candidates’ answers immediately inform me of the type of data contributor they'll be on day one. This has proven to be more effective at understanding a candidate’s strengths and growth areas more than asking about skills or past projects. (Spoiler alert: 90% of candidates for data roles are on the middle-to-right part of the spectrum). In turn, I do something with this information. When they start on the team, I make sure they have at least 20% of their work somewhere along the pipeline where they've spent the least time. I've turned business analysts into dbt programmers and data engineers into healthcare data subject matter experts in this way. The data engineers who I work with take Healthcare Claims 101, and the early career Tableau experts learn what a data mart and a semantic layer are. In healthcare, but really any industry, this type of data skill development and growth is critical to making sure that we don't do bad things with data. Blindness to where your data are coming from, what's been done to them, and/or how they're being communicated outwards can lead to massive misuses of data. This is becoming all the more critical in the AI age. Techniques like these not only provide growth and mentorship for data contributors, but they also give your team independence and the ability to self-govern. I have found that this is one of the most effective tools for creating a team that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Looking to the year ahead, employers uncovered some of the top causes of rising health care premiums, including increased demand for GLP-1s and other costly therapies. Business Group on Health predicts an 8% increase in 2025, following a 7% jump in 2024.

How is your company’s health coverage? Our research found big differences in access to care - even among people with employer-sponsored insurance.

"Improved access to quality, affordable health care is part of creating an inclusive economy," says Dan Mendelson. "Here are tangible opportunities ahead to reorient the health care system so individuals and families receive the best care possible." Learn more about how our work to bring more accountability to the health care system is having a positive impact in Ohio.

The latest Gallup-West Health Affordability indices reports are out, shedding light on Americans' perceptions of healthcare affordability and value since 2021. Here are some key takeaways - but check out the whole report here: https://hubs.ly/Q02LKczQ0 🏥 Cost Secure: The percentage of Americans classified as Cost Secure (no recent occurrences of being unable to afford care or prescription medicine) has decreased to 55% since 2022, with a significant drop among those aged 65 and older. A record low point for cost security across all age groups. 💡 High Perceived Value: Only 6% of Americans fall into the High Perceived Value category - meaning they report that their last healthcare visit was worth the cost and they believe they are paying the right amount for the quality of care they receive. #HealthcareAffordability #HealthcareValue #HealthcareCosts

Thanks, Angela Reighard-Rand!