Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their very own.
Healthcare appears to be headed for a breaking point as the fee for employers threatens to turn into unsustainable. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 9 out of 10 executives say it’ll be unattainable to proceed providing worker health advantages by 2030.
Rising healthcare costs are a challenge, but not an unattainable one. Employers today have options. An increasing number of, corporations of all sizes are self-funding their worker healthcare to control costs, while fully funded and self-funded employers alike are adopting high deductible health plans (HDHP) that require lower premiums.
There are risks with these approaches, though. Self-funded employers who don’t take care to contain healthcare costs can see their very own expenses spiral. High deductibles, meanwhile, can saddle employees with greater medical debt.
Nonetheless, these cost-saving measures don’t need to lead to an outsized risk for the employer or medical debt for the worker. Low-cost enhancements to health advantages can provide substantial support to employees in any workplace, regardless of whether their health plans are fully insured or self-funded.
For self-funded employers specifically, these improvements are especially advantageous, as their expenses are directly linked to the healthcare costs incurred by their employees.
Essentially the most effective enhancement available to employers is the healthcare navigator. With a single phone call, employees who work for businesses that supply a navigator with their healthcare plans can save in quite a few ways, lowering overall medical costs for the self-funded employer and helping covered employees avoid medical debt.
Related: There’s A Recent Trend In Healthcare That is Saving Money For Small Businesses
Price comparison
People aren’t normally aware of what their health plan covers until they need to use their insurance. That could be a stressful time to learn the way much a needed procedure costs. And it’s unlikely that somebody in need of medical care goes to shop around and compare prices.
That is where healthcare navigators are available: They will do the comparisons for the plan participant and infrequently discover a care path that costs significantly lower than the one advisable by an insurance plan or primary care provider. In this manner, navigators help employees avoid certain costs that would otherwise have a devastating effect on their personal bottom lines, in addition to the financial health of self-funded employers.
Bill review
By now, many individuals are aware that billing errors are shockingly common within the healthcare industry. When a patient pays a bill they are not actually liable for, the patient is due a refund of the overpaid amount.
Nonetheless, the common worker may not bear in mind that they’ve overpaid or may not have time to investigate whether or not they were billed in error. Likewise, a self-funded employer may not have the interior resources to do this sort of investigative work. A healthcare navigator knows how to quickly spot this kind of error and may help the worker (and the self-funded employer) get the refund they’re owed.
Financial assistance
Often, people do not know that they qualify for hospital financial assistance. Employees might assume they are not eligible for such programs based on their income, so that they don’t apply, when the truth is financial assistance could save them (and the self-funded employer) hundreds of dollars.
Healthcare navigation can guide people through the method of applying through a hospital’s financial assistance portal, potentially leading to significant direct savings.
Related: How to Protect Your Money from Getting Eaten by Health-Care Costs
Time saved
For the common one that is not well-versed within the complex language and structure of the medical insurance universe, trying to work out and cope with health care costs is incredibly time-consuming.
Frustrating medical insurance issues that may have taken a plan participant 4 hours to solve take just one hour with a navigator. Those lost hours of problem-solving don’t just cost the worker; they will cost the employer as well by cutting into work hours and tying up HR resources.
Not only for low-cost plans
While employees on HDHPs and businesses that self-insure stand to profit essentially the most from healthcare navigators, there are benefits to this sort of policy enhancement for any company offering their employees medical insurance.
Regardless of how the care is funded or what type of plan an worker is signed up for, healthcare may be intimidating. Any employer who provides employees with an ally within the fight to get the most effective care with the bottom personal cost is probably going to construct goodwill amongst staff and burnish its fame as a people-first enterprise.
Combining all these types of cost savings, from pre-treatment to bill review, it’s possible to establish a comprehensive figure that accounts for the whole savings realized by utilizing a healthcare navigation service. Depending on the scale of the corporate, this could add up to tens of millions of dollars.
Making sense of the complex and expensive world of healthcare requires dedicated expertise. Healthcare navigation is something that employers and employees cannot afford to go without.
Related: 6 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Solve the Problem of Medical Debt