Despite remarkable medical and technological progress, navigating the healthcare system is more overwhelming than ever.
Ironic, right?
Imagine you are an employee supporting a family, and you’ve just received news of a sudden medical condition that needs immediate attention. As you are shocked by the diagnosis, your mind is flooded with questions:
The sheer volume of queries can transform a medical issue into a financial and emotional burden, a scenario unfortunately familiar to many in today’s workforce.
So what can we do about it?
Introducing healthcare navigation. Keep reading because in this article, you’ll discover:
Let’s jump right in
“Healthcare navigation” gets thrown around a lot in the industry, but what does it really mean?
Fancy wording aside, it’s about guiding patients to the best healthcare services for their needs and connecting them with the right healthcare providers quickly and easily.
Healthcare navigation encompasses a wide array of services to simplify patients’ often complex healthcare experience. These services may include:
Assisting patients in finding the right healthcare providers based on their medical needs, location, insurance coverage, and personal preferences.
Helping patients schedule appointments with healthcare providers, ensuring that they receive care in a timely manner.
Break down treatment options and medical information into easily understandable terms.
Ensuring patients understand their insurance coverage, including deductibles, copayments, and in-network providers.
In this section, you’ll learn how efficient healthcare navigation can create a better workplace for your employees. Here are five things having better healthcare navigation in the workforce can do for your company or organization.
Cut out unnecessary healthcare expenses Healthcare costs concern both employees and employers U.S. employers expect a 7% increase in health insurance plan costs for 2024, per IFEBP data. It’s a significant financial burden to the company and the employee that can easily be mitigated with the right healthcare spending strategies. For example, with an effective healthcare navigation platform, such as Healthee, employees can quickly check the medical services available to them based on:
Providing employees with an effective healthcare navigation platform empowers them to make informed decisions, leading to cost savings and contributing to your company’s financial stability.
Healthcare navigation services also assist employees in selecting the most suitable insurance plan for their health needs.
Employees often need help with health insurance jargon and comparing different health plans, which can make the enrollment process overwhelming.
Healthcare navigation services provide clarity during open enrollment, helping employees make informed choices that result in significant savings on premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, not to mention improving health outcomes.
Healthee’s platform, for example, makes it simple for employees to figure out which insurance plan can be most beneficial to them and their families based on the health services they want access to, which can encourage more positive health outcomes.
Your employees want to know that their wellbeing matters to their employer. Therefore, showing them they matter can improve employee satisfaction and retention.
That’s why healthcare navigation tools are so essential because they send a clear message: their health and wellbeing are valued.
Feeling supported and valued improves employee motivation and job satisfaction. And this positive impact on overall job performance leads to better employee retention rates, which is good news for everyone.
To attract the best talent, you need a compelling offer. Jobseekers have more choices than ever before. So, if you want them to join your team, your offer needs to be a “no-brainer“ for them.
So what makes an irresistible offer, you ask?
A Fractl survey of 2,000 workers revealed that when choosing between a high-paying job and a lower-paying job with better benefits, the majority (88%) consider better health, dental, and vision insurance benefits. What can we infer from this?
The importance that job-seekers put on health benefits gives us insight into how valuable healthcare benefits are to job seekers. But offering the best benefits isn’t enough.
So pair those benefits with an efficient navigation system, and you’ll attract more and more talented people like bees to honey. Like sunflowers to the sun. Like birds to a song…well, you get the point.
You don’t need a research report to tell you that healthy employees are more effective and committed to their jobs. But here is one anyway. According to a MetLife study, 60% of employers have reported that health benefits have helped their staff increase productivity.
However, rising healthcare costs and disjointed benefits experiences can directly impact employee performance.
If your staff constantly worries about medical bills and healthcare-related concerns, it can lead to stress, distraction, and absenteeism.
Providing a seamless healthcare experience can help them stay happy and healthy, enhancing their contributions to your company.
Better healthcare navigation benefits everyone.
How can you achieve it?
This can be done in one of two ways:
The first way to handle employee benefits concerns is directly, via one-on-one human-to-human interaction. This is how most small businesses start. HR staff will answer employee’s questions one at a time. It’s a labor-intensive process, and, as the company grows, it will begin hiring more staff to keep up with the demand for one-on-one consultations.
One-to-one calls are very effective, but it’s also very costly. To care for more employees, you need to hire more HR representatives, team leaders, and support staff.
Also, wait times for consultations, whether in-person or by phone, can be time-consuming.
Heaven forbid when your employee is calling about a sudden and severe condition. You certainly don’t want them to wait in line while your support staff is handling other employees’ concerns.
You want to provide an immediate and accurate response to guide their decisions.
So, the other way to help employees navigate their healthcare benefits is through AI-driven apps. AI does the work of explaining employee benefits.
An AI-powered healthcare navigation app can act as a 24/7 HR professional with unlimited patience, handling health-related queries for hundreds or thousands of employees so that HR can focus on more specific cases and accomplish other, higher-level goals.
AI-driven apps are revolutionizing healthcare navigation by offering instant and comprehensive support. These tools use AI to:
All while prioritizing user privacy and security.
Here’s a quick overview of the advantages and disadvantages of the two categories.
In today’s complex healthcare environment, effective benefit navigation is crucial. Simply offering health benefits is incomplete if employees can’t make the most of them with a user-friendly healthcare navigation solution.
There are two main options for providing healthcare navigation services to employees:
Curious to learn more?
Explore how Healthee’s AI-driven benefits navigation platform can enhance the healthcare experience for your company.
Managing healthcare benefits across multiple regions is a complex challenge for U.S. enterprises. While businesses aim for consistency, the reality is that healthcare laws, costs, and provider networks vary widely.
Point solution fatigue occurs when employees feel overwhelmed by an abundance of separate health programs, making it difficult to understand what they have access to, how to use it, and where to start.
The key questions to find that special health benefits broker who will tailor plans to your needs, save you money, and keep your team happy.
