Engaged Sponsor Program

The Health Benefits Trust and Group Health are excited to partner in the Engaged Sponsor Program (ESP). Group Health and the Health Benefits Trust have launched a new model for improving health and controlling costs. A first-in-the-industry innovation, Engaged Sponsor Program (ESP) aims to strategically leverage purchasers’ role in improving beneficiary decision making.

With Group Health’s proven medical home model, the promise of better health and reduced cost outcomes are high, but only when beneficiaries use their coverage appropriately.  With little or no history of insurance, home care aides do not have a strong “culture of coverage.” The result includes low primary care utilization, high unnecessary hospital and emergency room utilization, and inappropriate prescription drug utilization - all of which leads to higher costs without better health even with the best plan and provider model.

ESP aims to change this culture of coverage vacuum in three key ways:
1.   Who carries the message of change:  It is the “who” that really makes ESP unique. Invoking their capacity for communicating with beneficiaries and influencing beneficiary decision making in a way that plans and providers do not have, SEIU and participating employers are the centerpiece of ESP. It is through their unique knowledge and communication networks that change in beneficiary behavior will be shaped.
2.   Why beneficiaries should care about change:  Building culture with beneficiaries on why personal responsibility in using coverage appropriately is important, not only to support one’s own health, but to help control costs for everyone.
3.   How beneficiaries are empowered to change:  Developing knowledge base with beneficiaries on how to use their coverage appropriately to improve their health and control costs.