The forces that affect health care cost continue to shift, and Philadelphia area market is not immune to these shifts. For the third year in a row, Savitz is conducting our annual survey of health care cost trends.The survey will help participating plan sponsors clearly understand how their health insurance plans stack up against both national norms and against the survey participants as a group.

What the survey will cover?
The survey will focus on cost, enrollment, and plan design trends by plan type (POS, PPO, HMO and Indemnity plans) and feature specific questions on both the prevalence of carve-out prescription drug plans and High Deductible Health Plans. The survey also contains questions regarding changes that were made to your plans for this year as well as changes that you plan to make next year to help us inform you about emerging trends we see in the market.

Sponsors being asked to participate in the survey generally have between 100 and 10,000 employees and are all in the Southern New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware area.

How do I participate?
Since the questions in the survey can be detailed, we encourage participants to print a copy of the questionnaire as a worksheet. Answers can then be filled in online. All participants will receive a unique Personal Identification Number (PIN) which allows them to return to the survey at any time. If you prefer, you may fax your responses back to 215.563.9943 attention Survey Coordinator.

What do I get for participating?
We are asking to have all responses back by February 29, 2008. That way we can complete our analysis and publish our findings by mid April. All participants will get a complete report of the survey results including summary charts and graphs. All participating company data will be kept strictly confidential and not shared or sold for any reason.

Shortly after the survey data has been analyzed, Savitz will be conducting an educational employer roundtable in our Philadelphia office to discuss benchmarking, in general, with specific emphasis on how to use the results of this survey and other national surveys to help plan sponsors measure the overall performance of their health and welfare plans.

Questions or Problems? Please call...       Jill Wilcox Still (215) 825-4035 at Savitz if you have any questions or problems while filling out this survey. She'll be happy to help you!