By Christopher Mullins
Technology continues to reshape how employers in West Virginia offer health benefits to employees, putting access to information at our fingertips and creating a more seamless and interactive experience. At the same time, these advances may help employees become savvier users of health care and curb costs for employers.
The revolution can be important to remember during open enrollment, which occurs during the fall when thousands of West Virginians select or switch their benefits for 2019 during open or annual enrollment. With that in mind, here are five tips employers in West Virginia should be aware of during open enrollment and year-round.
Help employees understand their options.
More than three quarters—or 77 percent—of Americans say they are prepared for open enrollment, yet most people struggle to understand basic health care terms, according to a recent UnitedHealthcare survey.
Fortunately, innovation in the marketplace has led to the creation of benefit options designed to be easy for individuals to understand, enabling employees to take advantage of their full range of benefits. Many plan options are designed for affordability and include access to our largest network and innovative health and wellness programs. For employers, there’s an immediate benefit to saving up to 15 percent over the monthly cost of traditional copay-based plans and immediate savings potential for your employees over high-deductible options. Employers direct employees to resources such as JustPlainClear.com, which provides definitions for thousands of health care terms.
Make sense of big data.
Big data is a buzzword, but the applications are only meaningful if employers can make sense of that information. To help with that, employers are gaining access to online resources to help enable them to more easily analyze and make sense of health data, taking into account aggregate medical and prescription claims, demographics and clinical and well-being information. This can provide an analytics-driven roadmap to help employers implement tailored clinical management and employee engagement programs, which may help improve health outcomes and mitigate expenses.
Employers can also adopt digital tools designed to personalize and simplify the experience to help people select a health plan based on their personal health and financial needs.
Encourage your people to move more.
An estimated 35 percent of employers now integrate wearable devices into their well-being programs, helping employees more accurately understand their daily activity levels. These tools are more important than ever. In the past five years, the number of adults in West Virginia with diabetes has increased 25 percent, and obesity currently impacts more than one-third of adults, according to the latest America’s Health Rankings report from the UnitedHealth Foundation.
As these programs become more common, there may be opportunities for cost savings. For instance, some wearable device wellness programs enable people to earn more than $1,000 per year by meeting certain daily walking goals, while employers can achieve premium renewal discounts based on the aggregate walking results of their employees.
Incentivize and help employees comparison shop for care.
More than 36 percent of Americans say they have used the internet or mobile apps during the last year to comparison shop for health care, up from 14 percent in 2012, according to the UnitedHealthcare survey. To encourage employees to participate in this trend, some employers are offering financial incentives such as $25 or $50 gift cards to employees for using health care transparency resources. Health care quality and cost varies widely within a city or neighborhood, so encouraging the use of online and mobile transparency resources may yield savings for employers and employees.
Integrate medical and ancillary benefits.
Open enrollment is also the time for people to select important ancillary benefits such as vision, dental and disability coverage. While some people may overlook these plans, offering this coverage as part of an employee’s menu of benefits options may maximize the effectiveness of a company’s health care dollars, provide families with added peace of mind and help build a culture of health. Combining medical and ancillary benefits under a single health plan may allow for the integrated analysis of a wide range of data that can facilitate proactive outreach and clinical support for employees.
Open enrollment does not have to be as stressful as it often can be for employees. By exploring the latest innovations in plan design and the digital space, employers can create a competitive edge that will pay off for employee health and wellness.
About the Author
Chris Mullins is the CEO of UnitedHealthcare Mid-Atlantic, which includes West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
