text: MedBen Hospital Block Costs Rose Just 4.8% in 2016
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  10:58:00 pm, by MedBen5 , 271 words,
  Categories: Prescription, Wellness, Hospitals, Cost savings, MedBen University
  At the 15th Annual MedBen Hospital Roundtable, MedBen President and COO Kurt Harden and Vice President of Sales & Marketing Brian Fargus shared with attendees a wealth of information about their medical and pharmacy plans, including how their costs compared other hospitals and strategies to maintain low cost trends. Below we highlight a few of their observations:
  Per employee per year (PEPY) costs for MedBen's hospital block cost rose only 4.8% in 2016, which is half of the current trend leading stop-loss carriers are using. The five-year trend for our hospital block averages 2.8% per year.
  Of the seven hospitals performing better than our hospital block average in claims costs, five (or 71.4%) utilize our proprietary wellness program, MedBen WellLiving.
  Looking to pharmacy, while there is no silver bullet for high specialty drug costs, hospitals dispensing to their employees at "own use" pricing generally saw lower pharmacy costs. As an example, when "own use" discounts were applied to one of MedBen's hospitals not currently taking advantage of the arrangement, their costs would have dropped 42.7% had this pricing been in place.
  MedBen also reviewed examples of high cost "combination" medications and recommendations for a discretionary drug formulary to help control the effect of high cost drugs with low cost generics available.
  Again, this makes up only a small portion of the useful information offered at the Hospital Roundtable. And incidentally, non-hospital groups will soon have an opportunity to see how their company compares with other businesses in their size range, and get money-saving tips, at the MedBen Employer Benefits Roundtable on Thursday, May 11. Sign up by contacting Sales Analyst Sally Wood at (800) 423-3151, ext. 502 or emailing swood@medben.com.