(STL.News) You can have the best minds in the business on the task when it comes to empowering employees to be healthier and happier — and still miss the mark. That is if decisions, strategies, and efforts are not rooted in data, analytics, and technology. After all, data is the basis of any solid strategy to improve health outcomes while managing costs that continue to rise with no end in sight. The good news is that, when you analyze and measure effectively, you gain insights that you can use to generate measurable impact.
Keep reading for more about what data analytics can do for your company.
The Issue
One-quarter of healthcare in this country is deemed wasteful, according to JAMA. What’s more, while high-cost insurance claimants cost a whopping 29 times more than the average employee, they comprise just 1.2 percent of total plan membership.
Further, just 6 percent of health plan members generate nearly half of insurance claims, with an average cost of $45,000 per member. These members have a high-to-catastrophic illness burden. What’s more, 37 percent of members, who have a moderate-to-high illness burden, make for 45 percent of claims, which average some $6,500 per member. By contrast, the healthiest 57 percent of members produced claims that average just $840 for each member.
That’s the scenario. And it’s telling and significant. But the fact is that data analytics can play a huge role in organizations in terms of cost savings and outcomes. Employers who forecast healthcare performance and evaluate program effectiveness can get employees to make moves to live healthier, more content lives.
Health Benefit Cost Growth
Last year, health benefit costs rose 6.3 percent, and organizations expect that claims for what’s known as “long COVID,” novel but pricey new medicines, and increased healthcare utilization rates — all combined with inflation – will likely mean high healthcare costs for this year as well.
You must be proactive to offset such costs as much as possible.
How Can I Create and Gauge the Best Data Analytics Approach?
You need a solution that is steeped in data management strategies that complement healthcare data analytics. Take Mercer’s approach, for example. The venerable firm can help you establish and assess the best approaches for your workforce by:
- Pinpointing the chronic conditions, pricey claims, and specialty treatments that are driving healthcare costs upward.
- Putting in place certain interventions – engagement and outreach, for example – and opportunities for improvement that are centered around individual employee needs and core personas. And by making sure that such interventions garner anticipated results.
- Getting ahead of high-risk care management patterns by foretelling healthcare cost and performance risk.
- Constantly monitoring, studying, and enhancing based on data that uncovers with effectiveness what your next moves should be.
How Does Mercer Do It?
For one thing, the consultant has more than 2,000 health and benefits consultants in its ranks who can lend a helping hand to organizations in need. It also has some 500 actuaries, financial, and data analytics consultants who work to pull together technological expertise, data, and health and benefits.
Also, Mercer offers a team of innovators who marry healthcare technology with online health organizations to provide workable and meaningful solutions.
Now that you know what healthcare data analytics can do for your company, it would behoove you to enlist the services of a consultant such as Mercer, which helps develop and implement customized approaches and strategies for midsize and large organizations. After all, Mercer boasts expertise, innovation, and an expansive community of consultants that can help employees – and you.
Don’t get left behind here. What with healthcare costs steadily rising, you want to get out front.