Strategic Cost Cutting - a key focus of today's Chief Financial Officer

This week, I will be participating in CFO Magazine's CFO Core Concerns Conference as a panelist discussing what health care reform means for health care costs. For obvious reasons, the costs of health care and the impact of the recently-passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on the benefits that employers must deliver to their employees is a key focus of the Human Resources, Insurance Brokerage and Benefit Consulting industries.

While all of the minutiae of the implementation of health reform keeps scores of people busy, CFOs are responsible for watching their bottom lines and health care is a massive expense for most companies. So it's no wonder that cost containment in the health benefits space is something that CFOs always want to hear more about.

In every venture I am involved in, particularly in the case of HealthGlobe but also through Meaningful Use Technologies and even in individual engagements with key clients through Carter Consulting Partners, the ultimate buyer of our services is a frugal CFO motivated to cut costs.

As the details of health care reform continue to be made public (it is a little-known fact that many of the specifics of the reform package have yet to be written and published by the government) you can be sure that health care cost control will increasingly become a top priority in corner offices across the country.