There is going to be a much greater demand on insurers to provide better management information (MI) to employers and advisers in future.
This is according to Joanne Buckle, principal and consulting director at Milliman (pictured), who addressed delegates at Health & Protection’s third annual IPMI Summit at Sopwell House in St Albans, Hertfordshire.
Buckle described some of the management data she had seen coming out of insurers to employers as “woeful”.
“I’ve seen a couple of examples of good stuff, but most of it doesn’t tell you anything useful,” she said.
“Does that MI tell you anything particularly useful other than maybe we spent 20% on cancer and we had x number of increase in mental health visits? It’s pretty ropey.
“I’ve seen some better examples though, in the US I’ve seen some reasonable examples.
“But in terms of helping your clients understand their return on investment for certain activities or what they get for benefits, I’ve not seen any good reports really addressing that, giving that a voice and helping you all articulate that to your clients.
“So I think there will be a demand for much better MI which will put a lot of onus on the insurers to create systems and start putting pressure on the insurers for the quality of information they are getting from the [healthcare] providers.”