The health and well-being of employees is more of a concern now for employers than ever before. While the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic might be behind us, people continue to struggle with the stress of balancing working from home with the responsibilities of their personal life.
To help people find more balance in their lives, employers are committing to better healthcare plans, not only for the sake of their employees but also for their businesses. HR executives know only too well that employee stress can lead to absenteeism, burnout, and an overall negative impact on traits that make people successful – productivity, motivation, skills development, and innovation.
However, providing the best healthcare for employees is getting more difficult, as benefit costs are increasing. Plan premiums and claims costs are also rising, while benefits budgets are shrinking, making reducing healthcare plan spend a top priority. Consequently, companies are searching for ways to gain a greater understanding of present and future healthcare plan costs to make more informed decisions, improve employee well-being, and reduce spend.
Understand the Financial Impact of Healthcare Spend
The healthcare spend insights option for the SAP U.S. Benefits Administration application by Benefitfocus provides companies with an opportunity to analyze healthcare spend in a new and innovative way.
Typically, data on certain aspects of employee healthcare spend, such as medical claims, eligibility, demographics, and biometrics, is often siloed in databases of various insurance carriers or third-party benefit administrators. Fortunately, the healthcare spend insights option combines healthcare data into a consolidated database that allows benefit managers access to a wealth of integrated information in a single solution. Analytics and modeling capabilities give managers the tools they need to forecast future spend, evaluate the potential financial impact of plan changes, and unlock savings opportunities while optimizing employee health outcomes.
For example, benefit managers can more efficiently identify and manage key cost drivers of overall health plan utilization by analyzing claims and enrollment data. With new insights, managers can make more informed decisions that benefit employees while reducing employer health plan costs.
Use Insightful Data to Help Employees – And the Business
The healthcare spend insights option for SAP U.S. Benefits Administration provides a wealth of analytics that companies can use to better understand employee needs and the financial impact of plan options.
Here is a quick look at three types of analytics benefit managers can access through this option:
- Descriptive analytics inform companies as to what is happening right now. For instance, benefit managers can use a health plan utilization trend analysis to categorize claims and see year-over-year changes. If urgent care claims doubled within the last year, managers can explore more cost-effective plan options for employees that require this kind of care.
- Diagnostic analytics provide an understanding of why a particular trend or occurrence is driving up healthcare spend through root-cause analysis. As an example, managers can dig deeper into spend data to find the most common types of claims in a particular category, such as emergency room visits. Or they could discover why there is a rising need for certain procedures or treatments. Based on employee needs behind the trends, benefit managers can offer more plan alternatives that are less expensive yet provide better coverage.
- Predictive analytics indicate what may likely happen in the future based on prior trends and health plan utilization patterns. Decision support tools available with this option allow employees to evaluate the financial impact of health plan decisions for the upcoming year based on their expected utilization. Based on a forecast of future costs for urgent care visits, outpatient care, office visits, hospitalizations, and prescriptions, employees can more accurately evaluate factors such as premium costs and out-of-pocket expenses for new healthcare plan options.
Start Unlocking the Power of Your Healthcare Data Now
The healthcare spend insights option provides benefit managers with on-demand access to important insights, plan utilization, enrollment, and claims data. The ability to drill down and interact with the data gives employers the insights they need to make informed, cost-savings decisions that benefit employees the most.
To learn more on how you can unlock the power of your healthcare spend data, download this information sheet.
Nicole Ramirez is global director of Solution Marketing for Compensation and Benefits Solutions at SAP SuccessFactors.
