Firms Partner to Help Employers Reduce Medical Spend

Mercer and Grand Rounds have formed an alliance to help employers and their employees improve health outcomes and medical spend by identifying high-quality, in-network physicians. 

The alliance brings together Mercer’s health benefits consulting capabilities and market reach with the Grand Rounds care team, consumer-friendly technology and data-driven approach to identifying physicians of sound judgment and high skill.

The offering—Grand Rounds Office Visits—is exclusively available through Mercer’s alliance with Grand Rounds. The Grand Rounds core product, Grand Rounds Beacon, includes Office Visits along with a second opinion solution. Access to Office Visits without other bundled Grand Rounds services is only available through the Mercer alliance.

With an Office Visit, the patient is assigned a physician-led care team (recognized for customer service excellence by the American Business Association) that guides the patient to local, high-quality primary care and specialist physicians per the patient’s specific needs. The Grand Rounds technology and care team platform are easily accessible through a secure online dashboard, mobile application or via telephone.

“Every year, 58% of employees look for a new physician, and often they’re not equipped to find the highest quality physicians on their own,” says Dr. David Kaplan, senior partner and leader of Mercer’s Health Innovation LABS. “Understandably, these employees often select doctors based on non-medical aspects of care and patient satisfaction scores — factors which have limited correlation to quality. With Grand Rounds, members gain access to relevant information at the physician level, better ensuring a link between patients and top-tier physicians. What’s more, employers can begin to affect their cost curve and produce significant savings.”

“The large data sets needed to infer physician quality are now readily available,” says Owen Tripp, chief executive officer of Grand Rounds. “Grand Rounds was built with a data science backbone to harness this data and to guide patients to the physicians best equipped to meet their needs. Our solution gives patients personalized and comprehensive clinical guidance, and employers a higher return on their benefit spend.”

Mercer’s alliance with Grand Rounds represents one of the solutions available through its Health Innovation LABS team. The Mercer LABS team continuously researches the health care landscape to evaluate emerging trends and to identify promising solutions.