Employers that are really unhappy with their health planexperience will soon be taking the ultimate step: they will nolonger buy group coverage for their employees.

That’s one of the more dramatic findings of a recent J.D. Powerstudy of employer health plans that sought to identify just howsatisfied or dissatisfied companies are with their plans.

Another interesting finding? Most employers aren’t all thathappy with their plans, but will probably continue to offercoverage anyway.

For the survey, J.D. Power established a satisfaction scale ofzero to 1,000 points. The overall ratings showed that, on average,employers rated their plans at about 700 – a “C” grade in academia— passing, but not outstanding.

The study queried 5,857 fully-insured and self-insuredemployers, and broke out satisfaction scores for those who intendedto offer coverage in five years and those who said they wouldn’t bedoing so.

Six key satisfaction factors were considered:

• employee plan service experience;
• account servicing;
• program offerings;
• benefit design;
• problem resolution;
• cost.

Nearly one-fifth (15 percent) of employers said they "definitelywill not" or "probably will not" continue sponsoring coverage infive years.

"Health plans need to understand the importance of satisfaction inorder to limit the erosion of their business fromemployer-sponsored coverage to alternative channels where employeeshave more choices," said Richard Millard, senior director of thehealthcare practice at J.D. Power. "Those health plans that focuson closing the satisfaction gap across key performance factors aremore likely to retain employer-sponsored group contracts."

While cost turned out to be an important factor in separatingthose who will continue to offer coverage and those who won’t,program offerings also played a significant role.

“In the program offerings factor, the gap in satisfaction scoresbetween fully-insured employers that intend to offer coverage inthe future and those that intend to drop coverage is 104 points —705 among employers that intend to offer coverage, compared with601 among those that intend to drop coverage,” J.D. Powerreported.

The gap among the employers over cost was 106 points, but thatfactor showed improvement since the last survey. “Satisfaction withcost is improving as more consumer-driven, high-deductible plansare offered to employees, which 82 percent of employers indicateare controlling costs,” J.D. Power said.

The health plan that garnered the highest satisfaction ratingamong fully-insured employers was Health Care Service Corp. (741points), with Cigna leading the way among self-funded employers(696).

Other plan providers that placed near the top included Aetna,Kaiser, United Healthcare and WellPoint.