Can Intelligent Mobile Solutions Reduce Benefit Waste with “Right Time” Access and Simplified Experiences?

By Winnie Tantraporn, Director, Employer Solutions, Wildflower Health Employee engagement with benefits is what keeps most employers up at night. In fact, according to Employee Benefit News, it’s the No. 1 challenge employers face today. You may offer great resources, but it’s a matter of getting employees to use them when they really need them. When your workers access the right care at the right time, it can make a dramatic difference in their health, the health of their families, and your bottom line. However, most working people don’t have time to do the research needed to understand their benefits. Employers offer too many benefits solutions in too many silos, overwhelming employees with choice. Even after they’ve chosen their benefits, they often don’t know what is covered or how to access them. In a study by Harvard Business Review, 83 percent of employers say they could reduce waste in their benefit strategies if they had better decision support tools to offer. What today’s consumers want, reports a recent study conducted by Aetna, is increased flexibility in their access to healthcare as well as new tools and resources to help them reach their health goals. The right decision support tools can help workers feel they’re making the best benefits selections during open enrollment – and can support them year-round. They can improve employee health, increase satisfaction, and enhance productivity, recruitment and retention.

Mobile technology is changing the dynamic.

Mobile applications and artificial intelligence have already changed the way consumers engage with retail and entertainment, and there are countless mHealth apps that track health stats and exercise goals.  But there’s a bigger value proposition for mobile in healthcare that is only now being realized with the emergence of intelligent app technologies. What if your employees had digital health views – in their pocket – to the benefits, programs and services you already provide to help their families stay healthy? Tools that span the entire ecosystem of care, integrating plan information and connecting them to preferred providers? These digital views into their benefits can empower employees to make better health decisions and improve productivity by saving time and creating less stress at home. And while increasing engagement and satisfaction, they can help you improve clinical quality and outcomes and enhance operational efficiencies. A connective mobile application, integrated with your entire benefits offering, can provide:

• Early identification of eligible participants for selected clinical services like maternity
• Risk stratification of users to ensure that every individual receives the right level of care
• Decision support to enable healthy choices for a variety of scenarios
• Adherence and compliance with care plans, appointments, vaccinations and age/gender-based prevention
• Sustained engagement to develop deeper relationships with your population over time

Become an Employer of Healthy Choices.

It’s time to reduce waste in your benefit offerings while establishing stronger, healthier connections with your workforce. That starts with creating a digital front door to your benefits and a simplified path to the right care at the right time. Employees have made their needs clear. They want benefits that are easy to navigate, flexible, and smart enough to meet them where they are – 24/7. How are you currently leveraging intelligent mobile technologies to respond to these expectations?

Stay tuned to this blog as we continue to discuss better ways to drive engagement with intelligent mobile solutions. Have a specific challenge you need help addressing? Drop us a line here, and see if we can help you solve it!