health & safety
Most employers agree – a more convenient, digital
approach is required to support employees’ health
beyond the four walls of care delivery. But there are
seemingly countless patient engagement point solu-tions
on the market. How do you choose? How can you meet the
diverse needs of your employees without overwhelming them with
apps, platforms and programs to manage – especially those man-aging
one or more conditions?
For some time, it has fallen on employers themselves to iden-tify
and offer solutions that address the health needs of their
employees. As a result, the team is left with the time-consuming
responsibility of sourcing and managing numerous vendors across
health and wellness, disease-specific interventions and care navi-gation
support.
Here’s the good news: progressive health plans are now start-ing
to deliver more holistic and convenient support to employees
beyond the four walls. Known as digital health management, this
new approach takes more of the burden off of employer benefits
leaders while delivering enhanced employee experience and out-comes.
Getting these services from the plan allows for tighter
integration with plan design, providers and healthcare data.
Benefits leaders looking to achieve digital health management
success are smart to partner with health plans that can deliver
these capabilities:
1. Help employees better navigate the health system.
2. Meet employees where they are.
3. Support the whole person to get better results.
1. HELP EMPLOYEES BETTER NAVIGATE THE
HEALTH SYSTEM
Eighty-one per cent of employees who can easily access their bene-fits
said they feel loyal to their employer, according to a Thomsons
Online Benefits Global Employee Benefits Watch report.
However, given the complexities of the healthcare system, it
can be challenging to schedule appointments, get financial and
administrative questions answered, get support for chronic con-ditions
or guidance following a hospital discharge. As a result,
employees may postpone care, make choices that are not cost effec-tive
and feel frustrated with their benefits package.
To reduce employee frustration and help them better under-stand
and utilize their benefits, consider working with health
insurers to implement a co-ordinated, unified concierge service.
THE HEALTH PLAN DIGITAL CONCIERGE APPROACH
Help your employees spend less time on hold. The digital con-cierge
is accessible by mobile app and provides your employees
with a single resource to address their diverse needs. The concierge
develops a trusting relationship to help match employees to appro-priate
healthcare resources, whether accessing urgent care, finding
a specialist, getting to an appointment and more.
Health plans with a digital concierge are able to integrate the
workflows of care management and customer service, which
gives plans the unique ability to capture key metrics on con-sumer
actions. The result? Organizations can better forecast what
employees need; and employees can provide reviews through sur-veys,
creating a forum for data exchange that empowers them to
better control their healthcare. These new functions create a shift
in how employees feel about the management of their healthcare.
The digital concierge is a scalable way to engage more employees
while giving them options to get support through their preferred
communication channel. Instead of overwhelming your employ-ees
with health communications and outreach, the concierge helps
streamline outreach from providers, the health plan and third-party
services to deliver a better experience.
Additionally, this approach can help employees receive more
effective, personalized support. Progressive health plans are start-ing
to segment and target employees not by claim group, but
rather by social and behavioural conditions. This approach, com-bined
with a new recruitment strategy to engage members, can
lead to higher adoption rates and greater employee satisfaction.
Digital
Health
Management
A NEW APPROACH TO
SUPPORT EMPLOYEE HEALTH
BEYOND THE FOUR WALLS
By Jacob Sattelmair
neyro2008
HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA ❚ NOVEMBER 2018 ❚ 47
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