Employers look to virtual services to curb rising health costs
Employers are looking for ways to stem the rising costs of healthcare and find ways to better engage employees. According to the National Business Group on Health, 64 percent of employers believe virtual care will play a significant role in healthcare delivery. Read this blog post to learn more about virtual services.
WASHINGTON — With the continued cost of healthcare benefits expected to increase by another 5%, topping $15,000 per employee, employers are looking for ways to stem the increase and better engage employees in holistic well-being.
One of those ways is through virtual care. The number of employers who believe virtual care will play a significant role in how healthcare is delivered in the future continues to grow, up to 64% going into 2020 from 52% in 2019, according to the National Business Group on Health’s annual healthcare strategy survey.
“Virtual care solutions bring healthcare to the consumer rather than the consumer to healthcare,” Brian Marcotte, president and CEO of NBGH said at a press briefing Tuesday. “They continue to gain momentum as employers seek different ways to deliver cost-effective, quality healthcare while improving access and the consumer experience. Of particular note is the growing interest among employers to offer virtual care for mental health as well as musculoskeletal conditions.”
The majority of respondents (51%) will offer more virtual care programs next year, according to the survey. Nearly all employers will offer telehealth for minor, acute services while 82% will offer virtual mental health services — a figure that’s expected to grow to 95% by 2022.
Virtual care for musculoskeletal management shows the greatest potential for growth, the study noted. While 23% of employers will offer musculoskeletal management virtual services next year, another 38% are considering it by 2022. Physical therapy is the best way to address musculoskeletal conditions and help avoid surgery, but it can be inconvenient and costly, said Ellen Kelsay, chief strategy officer at NBGH.
“Where we’ve seen a lot of development in areas of virtual solutions is to provide remote physical therapy treatments,” she said. “Employees can access treatment through their virtual app wherever it’s convenient for them.”
Regardless, employee utilization of virtual services still remains low. For example, while roughly 70% of large companies provide telemedicine coverage, only 3% of employees use it, according to prior NBGH data.
But many resources are out of sight and out of mind, Kelsay said. However, employers are focusing on offering high-touch concierge services to help workers better navigate the healthcare system.
Employers are reaching a point of saturation with the number of solutions that are available, but from the employee’s perspective, they just don’t know where to start, she added. “These concierge and navigator services really help point employees in the direction to the solution at the point in time they need it.”
In addition, the use of predictive analytics and claims data is also an opportunity to help employers get the right programs in front of employees in the moment, Marcotte added.
“Some of these engagement platforms are getting at personal messaging and predictive analytics. It’s not where we want it to be yet, but as that continues to get better, I think you’ll see utilization go up,” he said.
Top 10 health conditions costing employers the most
Conditions that impact plan costs can be problematic. Here is a look into the top 10 health conditions hitting the hardest on employers wallets.
As healthcare costs continue to rise, more employers are looking at ways to target those costs. One step they are taking is looking at what health conditions are hitting their pocketbooks the hardest.
“About half of employers use disease management programs to help manage the costs of these very expensive chronic conditions,” says Julie Stich, associate vice president of content at the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans. “In addition, about three in five employers use health screenings and health risk assessments to help employees identify and monitor these conditions so that they can be managed more effectively. Early identification helps the employer and the employee.”
What conditions are costly for employers to cover? In IFEPB’s Workplace Wellness Trends 2017 Survey, more than 500 employers were asked to select the top three conditions impacting plan costs. The following 10 topped the list.
10. High-risk pregnancy
Although high-risk pregnancies have seen a dip of 1% since 2015, they still bottom out the list in 2017; 5.6% of employers report these costs are a leading cost concern for health plans.
9. Smoking
Smoking has remained a consistent concern of employers over the last several years; 8.6% of employers report smoking has significant impact on health plans.
8. High cholesterol
While high cholesterol still has a major impact on health costs- 11.6% say it's a top cause of raising healthcare costs- that number is significantly lower from where it was in 2015 (19.3%).
7. Depression/ mental illness
For 13.9% of employers, mental health has a big influence on healthcare costs. This is down from 22.8% in 2015.
6. Hypertension/ high blood pressure
This is the first condition in IFEBP's report to have dropped a ranking in the last two years. In 2015, hypertension/ high blood pressure ranked 5th with 28.9% of employers reporting it is a high cost condition. In 2017, the condition dropped to 6th with 27.6% of employers noting high costs associated with the disease.
5. Heart disease
This year's study found that 28.4% of employers reported high costs associated with heart disease. In 2015, heart disease was the second highest cost driver with 37.1% of employers citing high costs from the disease.
4. Arthritis/back/musculoskeletal
Nearly three in 10 employers (28.9%) say these conditions are drivers of their health plan costs, compared to 34.5% in 2015.
3. Obesity
Obesity is still a top concern for employers, but slightly less so than it was two years ago. In 2017, 29% of employers found obesity to be a burden on health plans. In 2015, 32.45 cited obesity as a major cost driver.
2. Cancer (all kinds)
Cancer has become more expensive for employers. Now, 35.4% of employers report cancer increasing the costs of health plans, compared to 32% in 2015.
1. Diabetes
The king of raising health costs, diabetes has topped the list both in 2015 and 2017. In the most recent report, 44.3% of employers say diabetes is among the conditions impacting plan costs.
SOURCE:
Otto. N (18 June 2018) "Top 10 health conditions costing employers the most" [Web Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/slideshow/top-10-health-conditions-costing-employers-the-most
How Many Employers Could be Affected by the Cadillac Plan Tax?
Originally posted by Gary Claxton and Larry Levitt on August 25, 2015 on kff.org.
As fall approaches, we can expect to hear more about how employers are adapting their health plans for 2016 open enrollments. One topic likely to garner a good deal of attention is how the Affordable Care Act’s high-cost plan tax (HCPT), sometimes called the “Cadillac plan” tax, is affecting employer decisions about their health benefits. The tax takes effect in 2018.
The potential of facing an HCPT assessment as soon as 2018 is encouraging employers to assess their current health benefits and consider cost reductions to avoid triggering the tax. Some employers announced that they made changes in 2014 in anticipation of the HCPT, and more are likely to do so as the implementation date gets closer. By making modifications now, employers can phase-in changes to avoid a bigger disruption later on. Some of the things that employers can do to reduce costs under the tax include:
- Increasing deductibles and other cost sharing;
- Eliminating covered services;
- Capping or eliminating tax-preferred savings accounts like Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), or Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs);
- Eliminating higher-cost health insurance options;
- Using less expensive (often narrower) provider networks; or
- Offering benefits through a private exchange (which can use all of these tools to cap the value of plan choices to stay under the thresholds).
For the most part these changes will result in employees paying for a greater share of their health care out-of-pocket.
In addition to raising revenue to fund the cost of coverage expansion under the ACA, the HCPT was intended to discourage employers from offering overly-generous benefit plans and help to contain health care spending. Health benefits offered through work are not taxed like other compensation, with the result that employees may receive tax benefits worth thousands of dollars if they get their health insurance at work. Economists have long argued that providing such tax benefits without a limit encourages employers to offer more generous benefit plans than they otherwise would because employees prefer to receive additional benefits (which are not taxed) in lieu of wages (which are). Employees with generous plans use more health care because they face fewer out-of-pocket costs, and that contributes to the growth in health care costs.
The HCPT taxes plans that exceed certain cost thresholds beginning in 2018. The 2018 thresholds are $10,200 for self-only (single) coverage and $27,500 for other than self-only coverage, and after that they generally increase annually with inflation. The amount of the tax is 40 percent of the difference between the total cost of health benefits for an employee in a year and the threshold amount for that year.
While the HCPT is often described as a tax on generous health insurance plans, it actually is calculated with respect to each employee based on the combination of health benefits received by that employee, and can be different for different employees at the same employer and even for different employees enrolled in the same health insurance plan. While final regulations have not yet been issued, the cost for each employee generally will include:
- The average cost for the health insurance plan (whether insured or self-funded);
- Employer contributions to an (HSA), Archer medical spending account or HRA;
- Contributions (including employee-elected payroll deductions and non-elective employer contributions) to an FSA;
- The value of coverage in certain on-site medical clinics; and
- The cost for certain limited-benefit plans if they are provided on a tax-preferred basis.
The inclusion of FSAs here is important. FSAs generally are structured to allow employees the opportunity to divert some of their pay to pretax health benefits, which means that they can avoid payroll and income taxes on money they expect to use for health care. Employees often are permitted to elect any amount of contribution up to a cap (which is $2,550 in 2015), which means that the amount of benefits for an employee subject to the HCPT in a year could vary depending on their FSA election.
The amount and structure of the HCPT provide a strong incentive for employers to avoid hitting the thresholds. The tax rate of 40 percent is high relative to the tax that many employees would pay if the benefits were merely taxed like other compensation, and the ACA does not allow the taxpayers (e.g., the employer) to deduct the tax as a cost of doing business, which can significantly increase the tax incidence for for-profit companies. Further, to avoid the perception that this was a new tax on employees, the HCPT was structured as a tax on the service providers of the health benefit plans providing benefits an employee: insurers in the case of insured health benefit plans; employers in the case of HSAs and Archer MSAs; and the person that administers the benefits, such as third party administrators, in the case of other health benefits. While it is generally expected that insurers and service providers will pass the cost of the tax back to the employer, doing so may not always be straightforward. Because there can be numerous service providers with respect to an employee, the excess amount must be allocated across providers. In some cases, it may not be possible to know whether or not the benefits provided to an employee will exceed the threshold amount until after the end of a year (for example, in the case of an experience-rated health insurance plan), which means that service providers may need to bill the employer retroactively for the cost of the tax they must pay. Amounts that employers provide to reimburse service providers for the HCPT create taxable income for the service provider, which the parties will want to account for in the transaction. The IRS has requested comments on potential methods for determining tax liability among benefit administrators, including a way that could assign the responsibility to the employer in cases other that insured benefit plans. The proposed approach could simplify administration of the tax.
To read the full story go to the Kaiser Family Foundation website at kff.org.
IRS Issues Regs on Wellness Program Incentives
Originally posted January 28, 2014 by Jerry Geisel on https://www.tirebusiness.com
Financial incentives that employers provide to employees participating in wellness programs generally could not be included in determining if an employee is exempt from a healthcare reform law requirement to enroll in a plan offering minimum essential coverage under newly proposed regulations.
Healthcare plan premium contribution discounts are an example of such an incentive.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations proposed Jan. 23 and published in the Jan. 27 Federal Register involve the relationship between a premium affordability test established by the Patient Protection and Affordability Act and the financial incentives employers provide for employees to participate in wellness programs.
Under the healthcare reform law, employees are required to enroll in a plan offering minimum essential coverage. If they do not, they are liable for a financial penalty. In 2014, the penalty is $95 or 1 percent of income, whichever is greater.
Employees are exempt from the penalty, however, if the premium their employer charges for coverage is “unaffordable,” which the law defines as greater than 8 percent of household income, and they did not enroll in the plan.
Under the proposed regulations, financial incentives, such as premium discounts for wellness program participation, would be excluded in running the 8 percent affordability test.
For example, if an employer charged employees a monthly premium of $100 for single coverage if they participated in a wellness program and $120 if they did not, the $120 premium assessment would be used to determine if the employee had access to affordable coverage.
In the case of premium discounts offered in connection with tobacco-cessation programs, however, the lower premium offered to employees participating in these programs would be used in running the premium affordability test, the IRS said.
“This rule is consistent with other Affordable Care Act provisions, such as one allowing insurers to charge higher premiums based on tobacco use,” the IRS said.
“There is more of a consensus among regulators on the benefits of tobacco-cessation programs compared with other wellness programs,” said Amy Bergner, managing director of human resources solutions at PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.P. in Washington, referring to the different treatment for tobacco-cessation programs than other wellness programs.
This report appeared in Crain’s Business Insurance magazine, a Chicago-based sister publication of Tire Business.
Why you can’t afford not to offer health benefits
Originally posted January 14, 2014 by Larry Boress on https://ebn.benefitnews.com
The debate continues on the future of employer-based health benefits as employers continue to be challenged by the economy, the health care delivery system and changes resulting from the Affordable Care Act. There are some who believe this is the beginning of the end for employer-based health care benefits. I’m not one of them.
Why are employers still offering health care benefits and increasing worksite wellness activities? It’s not rocket science. Employers don’t offer benefits because they are altruistic. They do so primarily to recruit and retain talent and to ensure workers have the mental and physical capacity to perform their best on the job.
With benefits being the second highest expense after payroll, and the foreboding 2018 excise (“Cadillac“) tax on benefits above a certain dollar level, there is a great need for employers to reduce their outlay for medical expenses. Businesses are addressing this in multiple ways, including increasing programs to identify disease and health problems early in their progress and to reduce the risks for those with chronic conditions.
Employers have increased deductibles and co-pays of their health benefit programs, with close to 30% now offering only health savings accounts and health reimbursement accounts. In a new development, according the Private Exchange Evaluation Collaborative, close to half of all employers will be considering using private health insurance exchanges to offload their benefit administrative costs, while still offering benefits to their employees.
Increasingly, we also find employers are taking a deeper dive into providing direct health programs and services to their covered populations to respond to a health system that fails to offer easy access, effectively focus on prevention or management of chronic conditions and one that doesn’t incentivize individuals to take responsibility for own their health.
The nonprofit National Association of Worksite Health Centers found that close to a third of employers today make medical services available onsite so they are easily accessible to their employees. This allows them to reduce costs while minimizing lost work time due to absenteeism
The existence or even the unlikely repeal of the ACA does not change the value of offering benefits for employers. When you look at Europe, where many countries do not offer health benefits to their citizens, you still find companies offering wellness and preventive services to keep people safe, healthy and productive.
In surveys conducted by the Midwest Business Group on Health, the vast majority of employers agree that there is a link between an employee’s health and their productivity. They believe that health benefits are a necessary cost of doing business and view health benefits as an investment in human capital with measurable outcomes, not just an expense against the bottom line.
If employers are to remain attractive to new talent and retain their existing human capital, they will need to continue to offer health benefits to their workforces. But to do so, businesses must develop comprehensive, integrated strategies that reduce their costs and make employees more responsible for decisions they make about their medical care.
Many employers have already begun to move in this direction by increasing use of outcome-based incentives to motivate lifestyle choices, encouraging use of preventive care, and paying only for high quality providers and high-value, cost-effective treatments and services.
At the end of the day, dropping health care coverage is not an option, especially for employers who are focused on the health and productivity of their workforce. An employer-based system can and should continue if we recognize the value of our human capital being as important as the technology, machinery and plants that develop our products. Regardless of a company’s size, in a global marketplace, a business can’t afford to lose its most important assets – its people.
CFOs say they’ll increase health plan cost-sharing, blame PPACA
Originally posted January 09,2014 by Dan Cook on https://www.benefitspro.com
The old employee health care cost pass-along is going to heat up considerably this year. And guess who’s getting the blame for it? Yep, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
At least that’s the consensus from an in-depth survey of 96 corporate CFOs executed by Deloitte Consulting. Respondents told Deloitte they’ll be asking employees to kick in more for company coverage and, when asked why they have to, they’re going to point to Obamacare as the cause.
Health insurance trends were just part of this much broader survey. In general, the companies sampled are optimistic about 2014 and seem to feel their employers have done a good job of getting the ship in shape for this year. While they are forecasting relatively low sales increases in 2014 vs. 2013, earnings expectations actually increased slightly, and 54 percent expressed “rising optimism” about quarterly returned compared to 42 percent last quarter.
When it comes to health insurance costs, containment is the key word. These CFOs have been told to rein in health costs and they’re going to do so by shifting costs to those covered.
That this is the preferred option over reducing coverage was made clear when just 10 percent said they would offer employees less robust coverage packages. Instead, 60 percent have raised or will raise the employee portion of cost, keeping benefits where they’re at. (Only 10 percent said they’d beef up the health benefits package.) Another 28 percent are considering doing so.
When asked about health care cost controls, Deloitte said nearly two-thirds of companies have taken at least one major cost-control step, usually either implementing wellness programs or raising employees’ financial responsibility. About 45 percent plan to take a second cost-control step in the next 12 months. For cost pass-along employers, most choose higher premium contributions and deductibles.
Perhaps fearing a slump in morale or an increase in negative gossip, these CFOs weren’t about to let the company take the blame for higher employee cost sharing.
Deloitte said “42 percent of (U.S.) chief financial officers who have shifted additional healthcare costs to workers cited the Affordable Care Act as their impetus. The number blaming the healthcare law rose to 63 percent for CFOs planning to shift costs in the next year. The statistics suggest that Obamacare is aggravating the trend of employers charging staff higher healthcare costs in order to contain spending, and came as most CFOs expressed rising optimism about their companies’ prospects.”
The PPACA served as whipping boy on other fronts. The survey said:
- About 13 percent blamed reduced their earnings forecasts on the act;
- 8 percent cited the act for constrained hiring;
- 4 percent said the act forced them to shift toward part-time staffing.
Obesity drives up workers’ comp claims
Originally posted November 21, 2013 by Dan Cook on https://www.benefitspro.com
Obese employees make more workers’ comp claims, and they make costlier ones than non-obese employees.
That conclusion was drawn by Lockton Companies based on its review of several independent studies on employees with high health risks (including obesity, smoking, high blood pressure and limited physical activity) and workers’ comp claims.
The Kansas City, Mo., provider of risk management, insurance, and employee benefits consulting services cites three studies that, when taken together, paint a troubling picture, especially of the impact overweight workers can have on workers’ comp claims.
Lockton says that wellness programs, properly designed and implemented, can address this situation by helping obese workers lose weight. But Lockton doesn’t offer any stats on how effective wellness programs are overall in combating obesity.
Still, the studies cited offer food for thought.
The University of Michigan Health Management Research Center studied Xerox Corp. employees and confirmed that “employees with high health risks tended to have the highest workers’ compensation costs.”
Xerox was an early proponent of wellness plans. The UM followed employees for four years and reported that “workers’ compensation costs increased for those employees whose health risks were increasing or high already (e.g., smoking, physical inactivity, hypertension, high cholesterol, and life/job dissatisfaction).”
Lockton also refers to a 2010 study by the National Council on Compensation Insurance which more closely correlated obesity with workers’ comp claims.
The data “showed that workers’ compensation claims that included the obesity comorbidity diagnosis incurred significantly higher medical costs than comparable claims without the high health risk. NCCI also discovered that claims for employees identified
as “obese” almost tripled from 2000 to 2009 from 2.4 percent to 6.6 percent,” Lockton said.
Lockton then cites a more recent NCCI study testing whether “the lost-time duration of obese claimants is a multiple of non-obese claimants.”
It was.
“According to their findings, obese claimants incurred medical costs 6.8 times higher than non-obese (as defined by body mass index), were twice as likely to file a claim and an indemnity duration that averaged about 13 times higher,” Lockton summarized.
What Lockton suggests is that companies take the following steps to empower their wellness plans to really help employees address chronic health issues:
- Proactively engage HR and employee benefits to better understand the scope and breadth of existing corporate wellness initiatives, as well as how the organization is tracking the effectiveness of those programs.
- Determine how your insurer and/or third party administrator is capturing data on comorbid factors in workers’ compensation claim files and how that information can be incorporated into effective analytics.
- Collaborate with internal safety, health, and environment professionals (if applicable) to discover how best to integrate employee wellness with workplace safety.
“Effective corporate wellness initiatives have shown to be successful in not only reducing the duration of lost-time workers' compensation claims,” said Lockton's Michal Gnatek, author of the report, “but also in promoting healthy behaviors that potentially inhibit unsafe or inattentive workplace behavior.
“Risk managers and claims professionals should be adding employee wellness to the available arsenal of weapons to combat increasing claims.”
2013 rise in employer health costs lowest in years
Originally posted November 20, 2013 by Dan Cook on https://www.benefitspro.com
Is it the lull before the storm?
Employers, it appears, worked hard to hold down health plan cost increases this year. A Mercer study released Wednesday reported that the increase — just 2.1 percent over last year — was the lowest hike since 1997.
But don’t count on another new low in 2014.
Employers told Mercer they expect health plan costs to jump 5.2 percent next year if they keep on looking for – and finding -- ways to restrain health costs.
If they chucked all those efforts, employers say, the increase next year would be more along the lines of 8 percent.
Let’s not rain on the cost-reduction parade quite so quickly. Employer health costs have been reined in of late, and the efforts should be recognized.
The best performance came from the employer group represented by those with 10 to 499 employees. Their costs nudged up just 1 percent this year over last. Even large employers experienced just a 3.7 percent increase — still lower than the overall 4.1 percent increase in 2012 vs. 2011.
Part of the reduction in cost came from the increasing popularity of high-deductible health plans for employees, the study said. Consumer driven health plans are now entrenched in the workplace and offer savings to employers. As the study said:
“Nationally, enrollment in CDHPs rose from 16 percent of covered employees in 2012 to 18 percent in 2013. This is the same portion that enrolled in HMOs. In the Midwest, CDHP enrollment is now more than double that of HMOs (27 percent compared to 10 percent). CDHPs are an important option for employers looking for a low-cost plan to make extending coverage to additional employees more affordable. The average cost of coverage in a CDHP paired with a tax-advantaged health savings account is 17 percent less percent than coverage in a PPO and 20 percent less than in an HMO.”
Employers also point to wellness plans as contributing to lower costs, although most can’t quantify the contribution.
As Mercer’s Julio A. Portalatin, president and CEO, said, “The good news is that employers have already taken decisive action to slow cost growth so they will be in a better position to handle the challenges ahead. But the impact of the ACA on enrollment levels remains a huge question mark.”
Employers pointed to the uncertainties of the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as drivers for next year’s anticipated uptick.
They expect to be providing coverage for more workers in 2014 as the PPACA kicks in, which will add to their costs. “Next year, because of the individual mandate (contained in the PPACA), it is likely that fewer employees will waive coverage for themselves and more will elect dependent coverage – although the extent of the change is difficult to predict,” the study said.
Tracy Watts, Mercer’s national leader for health reform said “there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to enrollment.”
“A big question is how many employees will enroll for the first time, given that the tax penalty for not obtaining coverage is relatively small. But an employer might wind up covering more dependents if others in the area have made changes to discourage their employees from enrolling dependents,” she said.
Other highlights mined from the Mercer data:
- In 2015 employers, more large employers are going to be required to offer health coverage to workers. Among all large employers, 32 percent say they expect to be affected, while 48 percent of large wholesale/retail companies say they will have to offer coverage.
- Fifty-five percent of respondents said they now include same-sex domestic partners as eligible dependents.
- Twenty-three percent of large employers vary the employee contribution amount based on tobacco-use status or provide other incentives to encourage employees not to use tobacco. That’s up from 19 percent in 2012. Among employers with 20,000 or more employees, 46 percent now use an incentive.
A faster, cheaper way to wellness programs that work
Originally posted September 6, 2013 by Vlad Gyster on https://ebn.benefitnews.com
The debate over whether wellness programs "work" is becoming increasingly heated. Many question the validity of research demonstrating that wellness programs reduce health care costs. At the same time, others swear by their wellness provider. So, who's the liar?
As with most things, the truth is in the eye of the beholder. Wellness is a business, and it would serve us well - no pun intended - to consider this business formula as we attempt to determine where the truth lies and understand why this debate is so heated: Value = Benefits/Cost.
To begin with, we don't truly know the value of a wellness program. This formula helps quantify the importance of knowing value. When making a purchase, all of us have some understanding of a product's benefits, and in return we pay a cost. Together, those two factors create a value. If the benefits and costs are generally understood, then value is pretty predictable. But if there's a lack of agreement about the benefits, it's tough to come to consensus on value and cost. The result is very different calculations and a big debate about whether something is really worth it. This is what we're experiencing with wellness programs. The reality is that we don't really know all the benefits a wellness program provides, and, as a result, their value is up for debate.
This debate will eventually be resolved in one of two ways:
1. We come to a consensus that wellness programs deliver the stated benefits and continue to pay the current cost; or
2. We conclude the benefits are lower than initially thought, and adjust the cost accordingly.
I've got my money on option 2. Here's why:
Gartner - a research advisory firm that's been evaluating technology for more than 30 years - discovered a funny pattern: Every few years, a new technology emerges that gets a lot of people really excited. There's a lot of enthusiasm and promises, but, given limited use, no real data about the technology's actual benefits. This is the "peak of inflated expectations"; i.e., when we make statements like "This is going to change the world."
After a while, though, people realize that their perception of the technology's benefits are unrealistic; they feel they received bad value, get disgruntled and criticize the technology as worthless. This is the "trough of disillusionment." It occurs when the benefits are lower than originally assumed, and the cost is experienced as too high relative to the perceived lesser value.
It's reasonable to assume we are in the midst of a sober re-evaluation of the benefits of wellness programs, somewhere in the "trough of disillusionment." The good news is, as history has proven, that over time, the market comes to understand the technology's actual benefits, accepts them and broad adoption can occur. For this to happen, there needs to be a consensus about the benefits (aka ROI) and the price adjusted accordingly. This doesn't mean wellness programs are worthless, just that they may be worth less than the benefits declared during the "peak of inflated expectations."
Minimize cost
In a scenario where the value of something is unclear, it's wise to minimize - rather than wait for the market to drive down - cost, as cost is the variable you have control over. Traditional approaches to launching wellness initiatives come with huge overhead - strategy, vendor selection, implementation and vendor fees can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars - and can take years before having any real impact on even a single employee. Cut as much of this overhead as possible. Vendor selections should come in the form of free trials with groups of employees. Vendor fees should be contract-free and have monthly options for easy exit. Strategy work should turn into small experiments with employees to identify what works and what doesn't.
In other words, spend less. But how do you drive a high level of engagement in wellness with limited resources? We suggest using the Lean Startup methodology used by startups to drive engagement in new products using limited resources. This approach advocates using small, inexpensive steps that lead to quick wins and continuous improvement. Its use could help HR quickly and cheaply differentiate what works from what doesn't, so HR can focus time and dollars on what's actually effective.
Four steps
Here's our version of the Lean Startup methodology adapted for HR:
Step 1: Think in terms of a "Minimum Viable Product". MVP is the smallest thing you can do to learn how to make progress toward your objective. For most employers, the objective of their wellness programs will be somehow tied to employee participation. Instead of spending limited resources on building business cases and other costly activities, pick something to do that is small and will help you learn what works to gain employee participation.
Step 2: Build something that's "good enough". Start with something easy, like an employee video testimonial about a benefit that's already available (but likely underappreciated), such as gym reimbursement. Upload the video to a video hosting tool for businesses so you can track how many people click the link and view your video. Send an email to employees inviting them to watch the video. Explain that this is a "beta" and you're testing concepts for a potential wellness initiative. Distribute it to a small group first to ensure everything is working.
Step 3: Measure. Measuring is essential. If you don't measure results you can't test your assumption about how a particular strategy will work or learn from it. Once the email is sent, you'll know how many people clicked the link and how many people viewed the video and for how long. These key performance indicators - KPIs - provide a baseline for identifying progress and future improvements.
Step 4: Learn. This is the most important step. By this point, you should have gained some idea of what's working well and what's not, and the data necessary to improve key metrics. These are the types of tangible outcomes necessary to propel any wellness initiative forward. What can you do to increase those numbers? The faster you can repeat this process and improve your KPIs, the more momentum you'll gain - and the sooner you can determine the potential effectiveness of wellness initiatives without a huge expenditure of scarce resources.
Debate will continue
Whether the results achieved with wellness programs are worth their cost is a debate that will likely continue. That said, there's little doubt that a key ingredient to achieving ROI on wellness programs - or any HR initiative - is employee participation. The HR-adapted Lean Startup approach lets you know whether you've got this key ingredient - before you've spent a lot of time and money hoping to get it.
Satisfaction with health plan costs improving
Originally posted July 23, 2013 by Andrea Davis on https://ebn.benefitnews.com
Employer satisfaction with health plan costs is going up, according to the J.D. Power 2013 Employer Health Plan Study, yet health plans may risk losing group business unless they improve satisfaction in other areas.
The study, now in its fourth year, measures six factors that affect employer satisfaction with health plans: employee plan service experience, account servicing, program offerings, benefit design, problem resolution and cost. Satisfaction with cost is improving as more consumer-driven health plans are offered to employees, which 82% of employers indicate are controlling costs.
Employer satisfaction with costs “went up significantly in all the attributes we measure. Significantly more employers are offering CDHP products to their employees and so that has been a cost shifting measure that they are satisfied with,” says Scott Hawkins, director, health care, J.D. “But one of the things we see on the member side is that when employees are put on those products and they don’t really understand them, their satisfaction is lower. So I think it’s really important that employers work with the health plans to help their members understand how to manage those costs once they’re on those products or they’re going to have dissatisfied employees.”
Fifteen percent of employers say they “definitely will not” or “probably will not” continue sponsoring coverage in five years.
Perhaps not surprisingly, cost satisfaction among employers that indicate they intend to continue sponsoring coverage in the future is 106 points higher (on a 1,000-point scale) than among those that intend to drop coverage (696 vs. 590, respectively.)
“You can minimize the impact on satisfaction with the members and employees if you offer value-added benefits. And one of the things we’re seeing in our data and the employer data is that while health plans are offering a lot of the primary and secondary services that the employees are asking for, a lot of the employers aren’t taking advantage of those things; they’re not offering them to their employees,” says Hawkins.
Simple things like gym memberships, health risk assessments, drug compliance plans for employees with chronic conditions, for example, “will help satisfy the members and help them feel they’re getting value for what they’re paying,” says Hawkins. “But what we see now is that a lot of plans are offering them to employers, but not many of them are taking them up on it.” He suspects cost is the main reason employers may be reluctant to offer these programs to employees.
In both the fully insured and self-funded groups, employer satisfaction with program offerings, such as preventive health programs, disease management or wellness initiatives, is a key area of differentiation between employers that intend to offer coverage in the future and those that intend to drop coverage. In the program offerings factor, the gap in satisfaction scores between fully insured employers that intend to offer coverage in the future and those that intend to drop coverage is 104 points — 705 among employers that intend to offer coverage, compared with 601 among those that intend to drop coverage. Among self-funded employers, the gap in satisfaction scores between those that intend to offer coverage in the future and those that intend to drop coverage is also 105 points — 689 among employers that intend to offer coverage, compared with 584 among those that intend to drop coverage.
The 2013 Employer Health Plan Study is based on responses from 5,857 employers.