Workplace characteristics and health care cost containment practices

Working from an institutional perspective, this study tested hypotheses about the relationships between workplace characteristics and health care cost containment practices. The analyses show that urban location of the workplace, number of employees, and education level of the workforce are related to three different cost containment strategies: the management of utilization with traditional indemnity insurance plans; offering of alternative health insurance plans (HMOs); and employee development relative to health care consumption. Workplaces with greater proportions of black or female employees were less likely and those with older workers were more likely to engage in employee development practices. The race, gender, and age variables were not significantly related to the other strategies. Unionization was not significantly related to any of the three strategies in the multivariate model. These findings are proposed to have implications for human resource management, as well as for health care policy and reform efforts.