Online Tools Help Employers Control Health Costs

Employers concerned about the impact of the rising cost of health coverage on their businesses and employees are searching for more aggressive, proactive solutions that can help rein in costs while still offering employees high-value, quality health care

By Jim Grenier, Vice President Rewards and Workplace, Intuit Inc.

There’s not much relief in 2011 for employers concerned about the impact of the rising cost of health coverage on our businesses and employees. Over the next 12 months, Hewitt Associates projects that U.S. employers will face an 8% to 11% increase in employee medical costs absent of any design or cost-sharing changes. Although these projections will vary by company, medical expenses continue to far outpace the rest of the economy. As a result, we see employers searching for more aggressive, proactive solutions that can help rein in costs while still offering employees high-value, quality health care. A fundamental mindset change from a primary focus on treatment toward early intervention and prevention, or wellness, will help reduce costs while creating employees who are far more engaged in their health care and have the tools at their disposal to make better health care decisions, especially those that impact their wallet.

Assessment, Coaching, Screening and More

Health expense monitoring can play a core role in a broader wellness program. These monitoring services include health assessment and behavior modification, physical activity tracking, physician referrals, and more. The common denominator for all of these services is that they give employees and their dependents the resources they need to take an active role in their own health care. Ideally, the tools should be easy to use yet private, while allowing the employee to set the pace. The menu of tools employers should be providing to their enrolled members include:


Web Health Solutions Deliver Ongoing Results

When it comes to managing medical expenses, employee-oriented web health tools are particularly helpful and meet an overwhelming employee need. A study from Intuit Health last April found that nearly 40% of respondents did not understand their medical bills. They didn’t understand what services they were paying for, why they owe those amounts and whether those amounts were correct. Seventy percent of respondents were concerned about managing their health care bills.

When incorporated into a company’s health plan and wellness program, online medical management tools like Quicken Health Expense Tracker (healthcare.intuit. com) address these concerns by aggregating all family medical expenses from multiple insurers in one place and explaining in clear language what an employee owes.

Medical jargon and service codes are replaced by an easy-to-understand explanation of services in clear, everyday language. This clarity helps employees not only understand the services they received, but identify potential billing errors. If an employee doesn’t recognize a billed item, the tool can provide step by-step instructions for disputing a billing item, potentially saving medical costs for employer and employee alike.

With better understanding comes better decision-making, which can lead to lower costs. Employees see what they are spending, where they are spending it and whether their plan’s structure is serving them well. Employers save costs through reduced paper in paperwork, reduced support calls and less time spent educating employees on health care options.

Six Flags Inc., one of the early users of Quicken Health Expense Tracker, found the tool beneficial. “Our employees have already found this system to be incredibly useful and easy to use,” said Kathy Aslin, director of employee benefits. “It helps them recognize, appreciate, and better utilize the total value of the health benefits we provide for them. This tool delivers on its promise and, over time, will help drive down administrative costs as well.”

Because most employees don’t understand or appreciate the true cost of the health care they consume, tools that provide them with a clear understanding of the costs incurred and the benefits provided by their employer can go a long way to creating a more engaged and accountable employee.

With this medical expense tracking tool, employees know who to pay, why they owe that amount, and can easily pay their provider electronically right from the product. The product clearly shows employees what the health plan paid, what the employee still owes, as well as deductibles and covered amounts. By understanding the value of in-network discounts and the size of deductibles, employees can more easily determine the appropriate funding levels of pretax savings plans for health savings accounts and flexible savings accounts. This can reduce the anxiety around “use it or lose it” and increase usage by employees.

If an employee wants to search for a certain procedure or see all their families’ visits to a specific doctor, the medical expense tracking tool provides easy reporting capability. An employee wanting to know her husband’s physical therapy costs for the year or a total of eligible medical expenses at tax time, she can see the total with a few clicks of the mouse.

Creating a Culture of Wellness and an Online Program

To get employees started on the path to wellness, seek out the tools that are a good fit for employees, your geographic location, and your corporate culture. Ease-of-use is especially important. Most people are accustomed to accomplishing all kinds of tasks online: banking, personal finance, taxes, shopping, travel, and coordinating schedules with a calendar. Ease of use is important, and users expect a low learning curve with minimal instruction required.

When shopping for tools, make certain you’ve taken each for a lengthy test drive—seeking out those that are both simple to use and engaging. If you have the budget, send a request for proposal to several vendors. Questions can include the basics of the program, reports provided, proof of return on investment (ROI), steps taken to assure privacy and security, the time frame for responding to employee inquiries, and web site uptime guarantees.

However, don’t focus solely on tools. You can also impact company culture by increasing awareness to the changing health care landscape as well as on the personal accountability for action by both the company and employees. A little education is critical for context about our national health care challenge and the impact on the company and our employees’ families. In addition, launch your program like a new product so people pay attention. You should “brand” your company’s wellness strategy, which helps underscore the point of the program. Some companies, like Intuit, also link workplace programs, such as fitness and cafés, with its broader health and wellness messages. All of the communications from the program should have the same look and feel, so ask your vendors to integrate their services with other programs.

As with any product or program, it needs to be fresh, competitive, and relevant. A challenge on the administration side is staying up to date. Health-related tools are a hotbed of innovation, with new services coming online by the month. A good way to keep up is through wellness conferences, such as those sponsored by the National Business Group on Health and Corporate Wellness Inc. These and other organizations are also a great source for publications and online resources. Companies of any size will  benefit by working with specialty consultants. With all of these resources at your disposal, your benefits group does not necessarily need vast in-house expertise. After all, the field is evolving so dramatically  that we are all learning together.

Vendors usually sell these services based on a per employee monthly cost, which typically range from $2 to $5, depending on the services, with discounts sometimes offered for larger populations. Other services only bill for employees who are actively participating, not just merely enrolled.

Be careful not to force these services on your entire employee base at once. Consider implementing the program in stages, either by looking for volunteers or identifying a particularly receptive group within the company. Word of mouth from enthusiastic early adopter is the best form of internal advertising.

The Higher the Employee Engagement, the Better the ROI

As you construct a wellness approach, management will ask about ROI. In the past, estimates have varied widely, from 2-to-1 to an extravagant 15-1, with numbers based on data that had not been fully tested.  Now, because so many companies have created formal wellness programs, the numbers are more solid and tend to skew to the lower end of this spectrum. One thing that seems clear is that higher ROI comes with more employee engagement and that the best approaches combine a carrot with a stick. Make the programs attractive, and more employees will participate. Some companies also use copayments based on how well employees do. If an employee maintains a healthy blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol, for example—or at least is making progress toward some personal and reasonable goals—he or she should pay less.

Of course, employees like to see ROI too, and a health expense management service can help here by showing comparative expenditures from one year to the next. If an employee who lost weight and improved fitness sees a $5,000 savings, he or she will be motivated to keep up the good work and will share the good news with coworkers.

Behind all of these tools and tactics is a simple idea: Most employees—most of us—don’t think much about health plans until we have to use them. Only then do we scramble to figure things out, at just the time when we are the least able to make good, rational decisions. The best online tools help employees get ahead of the game, in terms of managing their health expenses and staying healthy in the first place. That process represents an ongoing partnership between employers and employees. The health benefits are real, but so is the impact on the company’s bottom line.

We can’t predict where the national health care challenge will ultimately lead, but we do know that health care will have a significant and ongoing impact on everyone. And a key lever to better outcomes is something we can all control and improve— wellness.

As vice president, Rewards and Workplace at Intuit, Jim Grenier is responsible for partnering with Intuit’s leaders to drive performance-based compensation as a lever for the company’s growth and leading strategy for employee benefits, including health and wellness. For more information on Intuit Health products, email IntuitHealth[at]accesspr.com.

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