With an eye on both their employees' health and their bottom line, employer plans are rapidly embracing value-based health care. This outcome-driven, consumer-centered approach focuses not on the dollars being spent, but on how the dollars being spent can improve employees' health (and keeping them healthy).

In the last year, the number of multiemployer and public employer plans that consider their health and wellness offerings to be a part of a broader VBHC strategy more than doubled from 16 percent to 37 percent, says a new survey released by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.

"As employers strive to reduce their health care costs there has been an increasing interest in value-based health care," says Sally Natchek, senior research director at the International Foundation. Most organizations are just beginning to "take steps to provide the highest quality of health care for their dollars."