Pittsburgh Business Group On Health Embarks On Comprehensive Strategy Creating A Regional Employee Benefits Benchmark

Initiative provides employers with unprecedented level of transparency into all regional health employee benefits data that impact benefit design, effectiveness, cost, and employee health outcomes

Pittsburgh, PA /PRNewswire/ - The Pittsburgh Business Group on Health today announces it is launching a new, region-wide strategy to provide employers with an unprecedented level of transparency through the aggregation of their members' employee benefits data. The goal is to develop a robust total rewards benchmark that affords our employer-members the ability to understand the underlying dynamics of the employee benefits market.

According to Jessica Brooks, CEO/Executive Director, Pittsburgh Business Group on Health, Pittsburgh-based Innovu will provide PBGH employer–members access to the Innovu GroupLens solution, which aggregates health and other benefit program data from individual member companies into a trusted-third party digital security vault.

Once the individual member data is secured with Innovu, a de-identified copy of the data will be aggregated with other PBGH members' data to create a robust set of regional benchmarks and dashboards, according to Patrick Stewart, founder & CEO, Innovu, "The GroupLens solution establishes a level of data that C-level executives desire to have, but have not yet found in other data firms. Launching this regional benchmark project with PBGH and our Western PA executive colleagues will provide sweeping and comprehensive insight into all of the regional employee benefits trends," he said.

As part of the program launch, an incentive plan has been adopted by the PBGH Services' board of directors that allows employer-members to enroll by September 30 in the GroupLens program to receive a 40 percent discount.

Each subscribing Pittsburgh Business Group on Health employer member receives:

• Cloud-based, 24/7 availability
• On-demand access to its raw data, including HIPAA-compliant data, for analysis by advisors without having to wait for vendors
• Access to aggregate data benchmarks, dashboards and reports
• Automated data consolidation for each employer-member's total reward vendors (i.e., medical, prescription, absence, ancillary, and workers compensation)
• A member-specific data vault to store and preserve all consolidated data, minimizing financial and legal liability

The GroupLens Solution will:

• Advance plan design and benefit program management with current, regional benchmarks and trends
• Improve analytic accuracy by benefit advisors, using raw, detailed data for renewals and services
• Enhance negotiations with vendors by having comparative data
• Prevent loss of data if an employer-member elects to change a vendor

Brooks said employers have been increasingly frustrated at the lack of transparency provided by their vendors regarding employee population data, as PBGH members seek to make value-based purchasing decisions that ensure health plans and providers are delivering the highest quality at the most efficient cost.

"Health care is a business issue," said Brooks. "And now, employers will finally have a comprehensive process they can work with to source a reliable and transparent set of regional data needed to design plans more efficiently from both a cost and quality standpoint."

According to Brooks, to date there has not been an appropriate technology platform available where employers could centralize health and benefits data, provide the long-term, secure, on-demand access to their population data, or to aggregate data across employers that can provide the best-in-class cost and efficiency models the C-suite needs to make informed decisions. "Partnering with Innovu allows the Pittsburgh Business Group on Health to bring added value to employer members and helps to strengthen the organization's collective voice by building credibility through data," she said.

Data collection will begin in early September, and an initial Data Summit is being planned for Q1 2016 for the Pittsburgh Business Group on Health employers enrolled in the program.

"This is the closest we've come so far to a silver bullet to help employers more accurately work with all of their health plan and benefits vendors to ensure the highest and best use of their investment to ensure a healthy and productive workforce," said Brooks.

On Thursday, Sept. 10, Mr. Stewart will serve on a panel at the Pittsburgh Business Group on Health's 2015 Health Care & Benefits Symposium, "Maximizing Your Data Tool Box: The Value Proposition from Multiple View Points." He will explore how the Innovu GroupLens solution will harness data on behalf of employers. If you are interested in attending the Symposium to learn more, registrations are still being accepted at www.pbghpa.com.

Visit www.pbghpa.com for more information about the GroupLens Solution.

About The Pittsburgh Business Group on Health
Founded in 1981, the Pittsburgh Business Group on Health is a non-profit organization and business-only coalition representing more than 80 employer-member companies. PBGH promotes health care and benefits strategies through education, collaboration and innovation among members, and in the community, to deliver value and quality for members and their employees.

About Innovu
Innovu empowers employers and their benefit advisors to solve complex problems associated with optimizing quality, cost, and efficacy of healthcare and benefit programs. The company's cloud-based Innovu Horizon® solutions unlock powerful information contained in silos of benefits data, giving CEOs, CFOs, and human resources the scorecards and balance sheets needed to make data driven decisions. For more information, visit www.innovu.com