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Mercer and Grand Rounds Announce Alliance

MMC | May 16, 2016

Mercer and Grand Rounds Announce Alliance

Helps Employers Provide High-Quality Care and Better Health Outcomes

Mercer and Grand Rounds today announced that they have formed an alliance to help employers and their employees improve health outcomes and medical spend by identifying high-quality, in-network physicians. The alliance brings together Mercer's world-class health benefits consulting capabilities and market reach with the Grand Rounds care team, consumer-friendly technology and market-leading, data-driven approach to identifying physicians of sound judgment and high skill.

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The offering, or Grand Rounds Office Visits, is exclusively available through Mercer’s alliance with Grand Rounds. The Grand Rounds core product, Grand Rounds Beacon, includes Office Visits along with a second opinion solution. Access to Office Visits without other bundled Grand Rounds services is only available through the Mercer alliance. This type of alliance arrangement is the first of its kind for Grand Rounds.

“Every year, 58 percent of employees look for a new physician, and often they’re not equipped to find the highest quality physicians on their own,¹" said Dr. David Kaplan, senior partner and leader of Mercer’s Health Innovation LABS. “Understandably, these employees often select doctors based on non-medical aspects of care and patient satisfaction scores — factors which have limited correlation to quality. With Grand Rounds, members gain access to relevant information at the physician level, better ensuring a link between patients and top-tier physicians. What’s more, employers can begin to affect their cost curve and produce significant savings.”

“The large data sets needed to infer physician quality are now readily available," says Owen Tripp, chief executive officer of Grand Rounds. “Grand Rounds was built with a data science backbone to harness this data and to guide patients to the physicians best equipped to meet their needs. Our solution gives patients personalized and comprehensive clinical guidance, and employers a higher return on their benefit spend.”

With an Office Visit, the patient is assigned a physician-led care team (recognized for customer service excellence by the American Business Association) that guides the patient to local, high-quality primary care and specialist physicians per the patient’s specific needs. The Grand Rounds technology and care team platform are easily accessible through a secure online dashboard, mobile application or via telephone.

Mercer's alliance with Grand Rounds represents one of the innovative solutions available through its Health Innovation LABS team. The Mercer LABS team continuously researches the health care landscape to evaluate emerging trends and to identify promising solutions. The LABS team engages with state-of-the-art companies like Grand Rounds to accelerate the adoption of their innovations among forward-leaning employers. The work helps employers navigate the rapidly changing health care environment, and to launch programs that improve the health of their employees and their employees’ families.

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¹	Medical Expenditure Panel Survey from AHRQ

About Mercer

Mercer is a global consulting leader in talent, health, retirement and investments. Mercer helps clients around the world advance the health, wealth and performance of their most vital asset – their people. Mercer’s more than 20,000 employees are based in 43 countries and the firm operates in over 140 countries. Mercer is a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies (NYSE:MMC), a global professional services firm offering clients advice and solutions in the areas of risk, strategy and people. With 60,000 employees worldwide and annual revenue exceeding $13 billion, Marsh & McLennan Companies is also the parent company of Marsh, a global leader in insurance broking and risk management; Guy Carpenter, a leader in providing risk and reinsurance intermediary services; and Oliver Wyman, a leader in management consulting. For more information, visit www.mercer.com. Follow Mercer on Twitter @Mercer.

About Grand Rounds

Grand Rounds’ vision is to create a path to great health and health care, for everyone, everywhere. Founded in 2011, the company provides an employer-based platform that delivers improved outcomes for patients and their families. It does this through an end-to-end solution that connects patients with care informed by the latest and best practices—preventing and correcting misdiagnoses and unnecessary or failed treatments. Recently named second among Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work, Grand Rounds helps restore individual health and quality of life, and offers employers lower health care spend and higher employee productivity. For more information, please visit grandrounds.com or follow us on Twitter @GrandRoundsInc.