The Beauty of Making a Difference
Beauty in health benefits? What does that even mean? Think back on your experience as an HR/benefits professional. What are the peak moments? Most would agree that the high points are moments when they see their work directly impacting an employee or plan member. A time when the health plan or supporting services really made a difference for someone else. Other moments might be when they saved their organization money through a decision or discovery.
For benefit advisors, the high points are also the big wins: either earning a new client relationship through exceptional service and innovation or watching your recommendations bear fruit in savings and member health outcomes.
The beauty of what we do reveals itself in what it produces. “Wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” The fruits of health benefits wisely stewarded can change lives while helping sustain the organizations for which we work.
This is the beauty of the health benefits world. Our opportunity to make a difference makes what we do mean something.
Clear Purpose Illuminates Right Choices
Why do we offer health benefits? We want them to benefit our employees and their families. The benefits we offer should attract great employees to our organization and help us retain those great employees while helping us manage costs and foster healthiness for those employees. Healthcare may be complicated but our “why” is quite simple.
Northwind sees this purpose through the lens of good stewardship. Rightly ordered, achieving the “why” of our health benefits is simply a matter of providing access to the right products and services, at the right price, at the right time, in the right way, to create the best possible results. In this way, stewardship is the path to fulfilling the purpose of our health benefits.
When we are clear on our “why” and know that good stewardship shows the way, then the right path forward begins to unfold. Fulfilling the purpose of our health benefits is both good economic stewardship and good health stewardship. The choices aren’t mutually exclusive but complementary; good stewardship is the right combination of cost and effectiveness. The challenge comes in identifying and assessing choices.
The Beauty of Health Stewardship
If the beauty of what we do reveals itself in what it produces, what exactly are we producing? Many years ago, Aristotle wrote that all knowledge comes through our senses. How we know the world comes through our experience of it. In this way, the beauty we create comes through the way others experience it. Choosing beauty in health benefits centers on its output – its results – the total user experience.
The major problems with healthcare and the benefits we provide center on access, cost, and complexity. Removing these barriers has the power to create a beautiful experience…for everyone involved. Good health stewardship occurs when we find the right balance in cost and results as we remove the barriers. That special equilibrium is beauty in health benefits.
From a member perspective, good health stewardship is reflected in feedback like this:
“You guys are heroes, no really, what you’re doing…you guys are heroes!”
“This is the best benefit I’ve ever had…it’s honestly the reason I’m still with xxxxxxx!”
The quotes above are literal comments made this week from real members enrolled in a Northwind Clinical BlueprintÒ. For those of us providing and managing health benefits, getting encouraging feedback from plan participants is a beautiful thing. Knowing we all relish such results; how do we foster them? How do we choose beauty in health benefits by embracing good health stewardship?
Beauty in Simplicity
It turns out that the formula for creating beauty in health benefits is really quite simple. Remove the barriers and beautiful things start to happen.
How, when, and where, we access healthcare can create major obstacles to getting the best outcomes and best price for the care we receive. It can also create major beauty in our experience of care. In a world of shrinking access to primary care, pharmacy closures, and employee populations living in “healthcare deserts,” we may feel the pressure of limited options.
Northwind’s simple answer to access barriers? 1) Highly flexible, custom network design. 2) Home delivery pharmacy for prescriptions and supplies. 3) Clinical programs to engage and support members through the healthcare journey.
Geographic access can be a problem, but cost and complexity are even bigger barriers. Fortunately, there are simple solutions. Addressing rising costs really centers on a willingness to engage creative thinking and beauty is once again found in simplicity. Our answer? 1) Transparent, cost-plus pricing. 2) No rebate games or hidden incentives. 3) No chasing rebates through restrictive formularies. 4) Smart prior authorization, co-pay, and deductible, strategies to encourage and reward good choices.
So far, so good. But what about complexity? Our healthcare system is far too complex to make simple, right? We may not be able to design a better hospital (yet!), but we can certainly make the health benefits we offer easy to understand and navigate. The simple answer begins with plan design, moves through the process of navigation, on to tools to provide answers when needed, but ultimately rests with our human beings supporting your human beings.
Northwind believes in putting the plan sponsor at the center of healthcare universe and building a flexible, directly contracted plan around the payer in support of members. Networks shouldn’t restrict or steer for the benefit of the provider but should center on ease of access, clear pricing, and seamless management. Navigational support should be a call away or accessible at the touch of a button – but more importantly, easy to understand at the outset.
Beauty begins with a great experience that is easy to navigate. On the frontside, healthcare complexity is beaten by overwhelming service – trained navigators available and ready to help with immediate needs and to anticipate those yet to come. Over time, the experience is curated by knowledge, understanding, and simple design…always supported by caring, engaged human beings. It really doesn’t have to be complex.
Stewardship and the Beauty of Health Benefits
The beauty of what we do reveals itself in what it produces. “Wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” The fruits of health benefits wisely stewarded can change lives while helping sustain the organizations for which we work.
“Before I started, my A1C was up in the 9’s with sugar in the high 200’s. Now, my sugar is in the low 100’s, sometimes even 95 and my A1C is 7.5. I’m not eating nearly as much as I used to and have added tons of blueberries and cantaloupe to my diet and my weight is down from 230 to 213!”
“Northwind is a key contributor to the care of our members. In addition to supplying medications for convenient onsite prescription fulfilment, Northwind provides services to our patients such as evaluation of medications for health conditions, curation and delivery of kits and phone support for questions about medications and home delivery. Northwind simplifies our vendor administration by accommodating our medication needs nationwide and with transparency of medication cost which is important to us as we manage our self-funded healthcare plan.”
“I used to have sugars in the 500s, A1C over 11, I was so sluggish and felt horrible! My sugars are now down to 85-110 I feel so much better. I’m no longer excessively thirsty and completely cut out sugar, cut back on pastas, no potatoes in months…now, at the end of the day instead of falling asleep on the couch, I can stay awake and actually see my children.”
This is the beauty and possibility of the health benefits world. The story of our experience in supporting our members on their health journey. The story of our stewardship of our organization’s critical resources. These are the stories that matter and our opportunity to make a difference makes what we do mean something. That is a beautiful thing.
