A benefits consultant can make recommendations to improve the overall health of your total population or certain segments within it. They will help determine if an employer-sponsored health center is right for your team and educate you on what you can expect.
A benefits consultant will examine a number of key areas: Determining if a health center model is a good fit for you (e.g. what a feasibility or cost-benefit analysis shows), what solutions and services you might consider implementing, and what outcomes (clinical, financial, operational) you might expect.
They can highlight what challenges you might be facing, such as managing too many health and wellness vendors or ‘point solutions’ and the likely lack of integration between them, unacceptably low engagement rates with existing programs or low engagement with primary or preventive care, avoidable ER or urgent care visits, increasing healthcare costs, and difficulty attracting and retaining talent.
Benefits consultants will also look at your funding model and plan design. If you’re self-funded or self-insured, for example, a health center may be an effective way to help control spending, better manage healthcare utilization and improve access.
Ideally, your benefits consultant will also strategically address the long-term goals you hope to achieve in the next 3-5 years. And, they’ll review the solutions that might interest you, whether that’s an onsite health center if you have a large, facility-based employee population; a Network of employer health centers in metro areas, which greatly benefits hybrid or remote employees and their families; or virtual primary care if your employees are geographically dispersed, e.g. across different states or work remotely.
You should also discuss the additional services best for your employee population, which might include offering behavioral health, physical therapy, nutrition or occupational health through a health center. You may also want to explore areas where you see the greatest opportunity for improvement, such as improving chronic condition management among your population, decreasing unnecessary emergency department and urgent care usage, and your spend on medications and labs.
Your benefits consultant can help you schedule health center tours and also assist with an RFP (Request for Proposal).
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