How Claim Data Can Help You Navigate Results and Activity

This week I want to highlight the difference between activity and results that every company should look at to impact their plan during the year and at renewal time.

For some employers, it can be easy to confuse activity versus results in regard to their health plan. Each employer's interpretation of activity and results is driven by their individual values depending on their company's needs.

I work with a financial advisor and another larger investment firm that handles money management. When it comes to investments, the larger firm has probably 60 pages of statements that show hundreds of transactions buying and selling stocks. The other smaller firm's statement is about three pages long.

The biggest take-away is looking at the results of one versus the other. The smaller firm might be able to consistently achieve better results; to me, that is more important than the activity.

This should give you an idea of things to consider when it comes to managing your health plan. Other things to consider are risk management of your claims and HR-related culture goals.

There is a lot of fancy reporting and a lot of data analytics available to employers now. But the reality is, those presentations can be over-complicated. They can show you how your claims dollars are spent, which can help with projections, but the question is, how do you achieve a result of actually managing your claims costs, lowering them, or most importantly, making sure your people are happy and they understand how to use their health plan?

Your claims reports and your data analytics results should look more like having strategic programs in place, so when claims do show up on those reports, you already have a plan on:

• how to manage those costs,
• how you can support your employee if they're going through a specific surgery or cancer, and
• helping employees get the best care most efficiently while also saving the employer money.

If you just have the reporting, closing your eyes and hoping for the best is not in the best interest of your employees or your company.

Have any questions? Please let me know on LinkedIn or you can email us here: https://thesoringroup.com/contact/