There has been a lot of attention towards large insurance companies in the media as it relates to rising costs, government subsidies, and high-claim denials. People across the country are literally sick and tired and can’t afford their care, oftentimes even when they have insurance. Organizations are balancing the cost of benefits and increasingly encouraging employees to leverage high-deductible plans and less costly virtual resources. Taking that one step further, organizations are increasingly halting full-time hires and opting for more cost-effective consulting agreements to augment their workforce to avoid having profits increasingly eaten up by insurance fees.
Hospitals, which are meant to be trusted, non-profit entities that deliver babies and provide lifesaving cancer treatments are caught in the middle. They are walking a tightrope of patient non-payment and denied claims by insurance providers while trying to serve the public. The impact of this is increasing costs of services to make up for non-payment. It’s a spiral that feels very out of control.
It’s not out of control. Neither is thinking your employees’ health is none of your business.
Employee Health is Your Business
You want your employees to feel safe and protected as they devote their daily lives to increasing your bottom line and meeting your goals. So, what are organizations and their human resources teams to do? You are in a never-ending shell-shifting game to meet employee needs and keep rapidly increasing costs under control. Can you stop some of the madness? Yes. You are investing, no matter what you do. You can choose to invest in effective employee wellness, or you will be forced to invest in employee sickness care. Guess which costs more in the long term.
We have some insight for you. COR has a large employee wellness population that trusts us as a mediator to their employer’s human resources teams. We provide 1:1 coaching and support in a HIPAA-protected environment as an extension of an often-overburdened HR team. If your employees aren’t talking to you about their fears or needs, you are not going to be able to serve them. They are talking to us.
Your Employee Impact
Your employees want to know what their options are. Just like you, they are concerned about costs. Depending on their situation, your employees are also not comfortable talking to their HR leader about their mental or physical health issues in order to find out what their options are. Then, there is the doctor dilemma. Even in cases where it should be as simple as seeing a doctor, there are often an unnecessary number of steps involved that quickly become overwhelming and costly.
What steps, you may ask? Find an in-network doctor. Schedule an appointment as a new or existing patient. If a follow-up test or specialist is needed, now that needs to be scheduled. But first, will insurance cover it? That specialist may take months to see. In all of that, they also must schedule time off work. It can be incredibly intimidating, confusing, and frustrating.
You Are Not a Victim, You’re in Control
You have some options, and you have likely incorporated some of them. To offset the hard costs of doctor visits, you have many virtual programs to choose from. These range from virtual mental health and nurse-on-call to physical therapy. They can be great depending on employee need. However, they don’t always make up for 1:1 interaction.
Proactive employee wellness programs are another proven way to offset costs. Organizations that incorporate a comprehensive wellness program that includes onsite coaching and healthcare practitioners often see a nice return. Our self-insured clients see a 4:1 return in costs in just a couple of years. Self-insured clients have more visibility to claims.
How Onsite Employee Wellness Helps HR
Do you feel like HR is more of a break-fix service or a welcome resource? Where did you lose your relationship with employees? An onsite COR coach becomes an extension to the HR team and a trusted resource to your employees. Because they are both an advocate for the organization and the employee, they will have the best interest of both parties in mind. For the organization, they are there to remind employees of the alternative options they have at their disposal that aren’t always obvious or top-of-mind.
For the employee, they serve as a HIPAA-compliant advisor where they can share concerns. All of this is in addition to coaching and preventative care they are onsite to provide first! Many claims can be proactively avoided by helping employees through their cognitive, metabolic, and structural issues first. When an employee is empowered and own their health, it benefits everyone. The coach is there to cheer them on, hold them accountable, and put the relations back into HR.
Making HR About Human Relationships
As healthcare and insurance costs continue to escalate, consider some of these ideas to offset some of the impact to all. Survey your employees and find out what they value most. How can you reduce their stress and costs? Do they know about your programs? Could you use a bridge from HR to your employees to help them with awareness and adoption of the variety of options you offer? If you want to discuss what we could do for you and hear about real-world case studies, we would love to have a conversation!