Health care quality and cost are major concerns for businesses that seek to provide their employees with high quality and affordable health plans.   Increasingly, health care coverage has become a key factor in attracting and retaining qualified staff and remaining competitive in the market place.  As a result, business leaders have had to become more informed and active on health care cost issues at the local, state and national levels. 

The following resources provide information on trends and approaches to managing health care costs under public and private insurance programs as well as in the work place.  

Links:

• Evidence on the Costs and Benefits of Health Information Technology, Congressional Budget Office, May 2008
• Improving the quality of healthcare through health information exchange - selected findings from eHealth Initiative's third annual survey of health information exchange activities at the state, regional, and local levels.  September 25, 2006. eHealth Initiative
• State eHealth Activities in 2007. Findings from a State Survey  Commonwealth Fund
• Personal Health Records and Personal Health Record Systems. 
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
• eHealth Initiative, Value & Sustainability Model & Toolkit
• Creating Sustainable Local Health Information Exchanges: Can Barriers to Stakeholder Participation be Overcome? Center for Studying Health System Change, Research Brief: Feb.2008:2
• State E-Health Activities in 2007: Findings from a State Survey.  Commonwealth Fund, February 15, 2008
• Geographic Variation in Health Care Spending, Congressional Budget Office, February, 2008.
• Technology Change and the Growth of Health Care Spending. Congressional Budget Office, January, 2008.
• The Long-Term Outlook for Health Care Spending, Congressional Budget Office, November, 2008.
• Bending the Curve:  Options for Achieving Savings and Improving Value in U.S. Health Spending, The Commonwealth Fund, December 2007.
• Unhealthy Trends: The Future of Physician Services. Health Affairs, 26, no. 6, 2007.
• Achieving a High-Performing Health Care System with Universal Access: What the United States Can Learn from Other Countries. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2008:148.
• The Impending Collapse of Primary Car Medicine and Its Implications for the State of the Nation's Health Care: A Report from the American College of Physicians, January 30, 2006
• The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• The Commonwealth Foundation
• The Kaiser Family Foundation
• The eHealth Initiative
• The Congressional Budget Office