The Outcomes Measurement Guide for Grown-Ups

Did you know that the DMAA Guidelines are mathematically, provably wrong? And that as a result you’ve been measuring outcomes wrong all these years? And that about half the companies in the DM/wellness marketplace (including carriers) have invalidating mathematical mistakes right on their websites or in their brochures? And that others simply lie? And that the only statewide patient-centered medical home study (North Carolina) is pure mathematical fraud?

You do now. You don’t even have to take our word for it. Award-winning author Al Lewis* just lays out the fifth-grade math and you can decide for yourself.

This is the first book to treat outcomes as being math-based, not faith-based. It is aimed at the grown-up segment of the marketplace — people who really want to see how much they can save, rather than how much they can be told they can save. A dozen case studies—and we are naming names — will include:

• Major carriers who simply make up numbers and dare you to catch them
• Benefits consulting firms that specialize in “validating” mathematically impossible results
• Vendors promising savings in excess of the mathematical limit of 100%
• Carriers/vendors that are either totally clueless and/or think you are…and make up their own metrics like “reduction in undetected claims cost,” leading one to ask how they are able to detect undetected claims cost, and/or how an employee would otherwise have filed an undetected claim.

Fortunately, there is mathematical hope. A few vendors have programs that will indeed save modest sums…but the savings are real. This book shows how to find those vendors and — more importantly — how to validly measure their outcomes. There is indeed a way to validly measure outcomes without using expensive consultants, but instead using ingredients you already have in your kitchen.

Who Should Order Why Nobody Believes the Numbers

If you are one of those people who see “both sides of the ledger” — meaning a CFO, HR or benefits management executive with P&L responsibility either in reality or in principle , or that rare but growing breed of benefits consultant who can not only handle the truth but embrace it — then order this book. That's why we call it "An Outcomes Measurement Guide for Grown-Ups."

Before you do, make sure you can tolerate my writing, which is somewhere between nontraditional and Dave-Barry-Does-Eighth-Grade-Arithmetic. Example:

Vendor W's website says that the most expensive 56 employees of this customer avoided $4-million in what they call “undetected claims cost” through its program, or about $72,000 apiece. That’s an impossibly high sum of money but what’s more impressive is Vendor W's ability to detect "undetected claims cost" in the first place, which is quite a feat.

Maybe they use those gadgets for finding coins on the beach? Or maybe the employees have to pass through a scanner every day, like Karen Silkwood and Meryl Streep? And thank goodness Vendor W avoids all these undetected claims, because otherwise how would employees get reimbursed for them? Would they fill out their claims forms using invisible ink?

* Al’s award for his previous book is listed at www.readersfavorite.com. It’s not a “real” award (more like winning a book contest) but that’s fine because Al’s not a real writer.