How a Manufacturing Company boosted Employee NPS by 20% and reduced Insurance Premiums by 45% with Circle Health in just 2 years?

In a fiercely competitive market, attracting and retaining top talent has become essential for businesses. A mid-sized Manufacturing company recognised the need to innovate its employee benefits program to improve overall health and well-being.

However, the company faced several significant challenges along the way. Escalating healthcare costs posed a daunting reality, with skyrocketing health insurance premiums year after year. Despite their focus on wellness, they recognised the need for a more comprehensive strategy that encompassed their employees' holistic health beyond just physical fitness.

The Manufacturing company partnered with Circle Health, an accountable healthcare and employee benefits platform, to enhance their employees' health while managing costs. They saw remarkable improvements in employee satisfaction and a 45% reduction in insurance premiums over just two years with Circle Health.

The employer covered 1500+ lives in its health insurance policy that included Employees, Spouses and Children. A detailed analysis revealed that the company faced rising premiums year after year due to employees frequently falling ill and requiring hospitalisation.

In 2022-23, after an in-depth assessment and significant negotiations with insurers, Circle Health successfully secured a renewed insurance premium for the company with the help of various insurance intermediaries and stakeholders.

The company’s management and Circle Health agreed that it was important to focus on managing the health insurance claims going forward to ensure costs do not continue to escalate like the previous years. The management was also very clear that they did not want to dilute the policy or make it less favourable for the employees by introducing co-pays, sub-limits or deductibles to the policy. The company opted for Circle Health's Managed Care Program for its 600+ employees.

Circle Health followed a 3 tiered approach that was anchored to preventive health while building trust with employees and acting as their family general physician to handhold and guide them.

1. Proactive Preventive Health: With a team of Care Managers (paramedical professionals such as nutritionists, psychologists and physiotherapists), Circle Health initiated a process to understand each employee’s health risks deeply and draw out plans for the mitigation of these health risks. Each Care Manager was assigned a fixed set of lives and was made personally responsible for driving engagement on the preventive health journey. The journey consisted of various steps and due to the proactive engagement by the Care Managers, a large part of the insured lives went through most of the journey very early in the policy year.

This high engagement and involvement from the Care Managers and Circle Health’s experts was partly due to the way their financial incentives aligned. The Care Managers had almost 30% of their monthly compensation linked to the level of engagement and adherence to the journey they were able to drive with their assigned employees and families. Similarly, the incentives of the General Physicians and Specialists were linked to the health outcomes they were able to drive for the population. Moreover, for employees who were not reachable, General Physician's intervened to ensure they understand the importance of keeping their health in check and catching diseases early.

As a result, Circle Health’s professionals pushed hard for the better health of the employees, not just out of goodwill, but also their incentives were aligned to it.

2. Intensive Acute Care: One of the main challenges that lead to higher hospitalisation rates is the lack of appropriate care and guidance during the early stages of any illness. Most employees ignore early signs of any acute disease, which later translates into an urgent requirement to be hospitalised. Even when they visit a doctor, the interaction ends with a prescription, whether or not it solves the acute health issue.

In most cases, employees do not have a trustworthy medical professional they can go to, who can guide them during illnesses. Since most doctors have their compensation linked to the volume/ value of procedures and hospitalisations they drive, there is a natural tendency for them to advise more hospitalisations than necessary.

Circle Health’s Care Managers addressed this critical gap. Given the engagement due to the Proactive Preventive Care, the employees developed trust and comfort with the Care Managers. As a result, they reached out to the Care Managers for any health issue, no matter how small. The Care Managers in turn, not only helped with providing the right medical guidance but followed up with the employee, until the health issue was completely resolved.

During the course of two years, in times of illness, our dedicated care managers provided comprehensive support by overseeing the well-being of individuals, offering continuous monitoring and personalised attention until they fully recovered from the comfort of their home. The Care Managers supported the employees in managing many health issues and illnesses at home, including 22 cases of dengue.

90 cases were likely to be hospitalised but upon Circle Doctor's and Care team's intervention, 60% cases were resolved at home.

3. Guiding for Hospitalisations: Given the deep trust established with Circle Health’s team, employees always reached out for any guidance regarding hospitalisation. As a result, not only was the team able to prevent hospitalisation where it could have been avoided, but also guided employees to high-quality yet low-cost hospitals when it was necessary. Of the 40% hospitalisations that happened, 60% were guided by the Circle Health team, resulting in lower costs for the corporate.

Of the identified potential hospitalisation cases, only 40% required admission, resulting in total savings of approximately 5 lakhs. The company experienced a significant reduction in hospitalisation rates among employees. By the second year of collaboration with Circle Health, the claims ratio dropped by nearly 60%, demonstrating substantial improvement and cost savings.

With the help of HR dashboard, the HR team accessed actionable health insights on a real-time basis, took corrective actions and drove the culture of wellness in their organisation.

Special attention was given to people who had existing diseases or were at risk of developing any disease. To mitigate the identified health risks, the circle team consisting of Doctors and other medical experts crafted personalised health plans for the employees.

The HR team with the help of Circle Health team also organised health camps across four locations to ensure every employee gets one-on-one attention and personalised sessions were planned on various health and wellness topics.

The most important aspect of the engagement with Circle Health, however, was the impact on employee health and experience. Most employees had never experienced such deep/caring healthcare, where the medical professionals cared about their health and the outcomes beyond just providing a prescription.

Overall, this led to significant improvement in employee satisfaction and high NPS. Based on the feedback from the employees, it was clear that the real value of the program was the impact on employee morale and their health, rather than on the savings on cost.

Circle Health is building an ecosystem where they proactively work with employees and their families to improve their health outcomes over the year. By fostering a culture of good health, Circle Health incentivises doctors and care teams to focus on their primary goal—keeping people in their care healthy and thriving.

Thought? Questions? We are all ears.

If you or someone you know is seeking an excellent employee benefits program for your team, don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected].