This manual is designed primarily to assist employer coalitions in designing and implementing HPCs that serve small employers in their communities. It concentrates on the practical issues to be addressed in actually beginning a HPC to the point where it can begin offering health plan options to employees of small employers. And it assumes that there is already an organization of employers, either formal or informal, that seeks to do group purchasing.

But the manual is useful for others as well: employers that are interested in the possibility of forming coalitions with other employers for collective purchasing, but want to know more about the scope of the task before committing to it; legislators and others interested in establishing a legislative and legal climate within which HPCs can be most successful; health plans and other vendors that want to participate and compete successfully in this reformed market.