Open enrollment is over... or is it?
The most important part of the open enrollment cycle is what comes after the fall sign up.
After months of planning ahead of last fall’s open enrollment cycle, HR and benefits administrators across the U.S. thought they finally had a chance to catch their breath, but post-open enrollment is not the time for rest. Planning for and executing the traditional fall open enrollment period for employer-sponsored health care and benefits is a central aspect of a benefits administrator’s job, but perhaps the most important part of the OE cycle is what comes afterwards.
To set the company and employees up for success, benefits admins and HR pros must take an aggressive approach to data analytics and proactive planning to ensure open enrollment success next year.
Related: 3 ways to improve the open enrollment process
Post-OE data analysis begins by carefully combing through health care claims data and benefit plan elections. Benefits admins should slice and dice data in multiple ways, using data visualization tools where possible for easily digestible charts and graphs, to determine which type of health plans—PPOs or high-deductible health plans—and voluntary benefits were the most popular among their employee population.
This is crucial to benefits administrators and employers as it offers insights into benefits utilization and the employee population, helping measure against metrics or goals set by HR departments before OE to determine successful plan savings or cost mitigation. this information can also be used as a benchmark for ongoing measurement throughout the entire year, allowing benefits pros to set new metrics and make accurate, data-driven decisions around plan utilization, member health engagement and new product offerings for next year’s enrollment period.
Long after open enrollment is over, benefits administrators monitor population health to identify cost drivers, which requires deep insight into employee claims data. With continuous access to data and analytics tools, benefits managers can identify cost trends and react in near real-time to develop cost containment strategies or work with healthcare providers and healthcare systems to target potential high cost claimants and measure against results to determine success or ROI.
Keeping things fresh
As more companies treat open enrollment as an ongoing, cyclical process, rather than the traditional two-week period that happens once per year, they’re provided a unique opportunity to better engage and communicate with their employees about the value of their benefits and health care options. Similar to how Fortnite rolls out regular releases of new dance moves or outfits (aka Skins) and Netflix updates their movie selection in a way that builds consumers’ expectations on a consistent basis, employers are starting to break down benefits election periods into bite-sized chunks throughout the year.
Not only does this give employees more time to absorb the information and select their benefits, it also makes the enrollment period more consumer friendly and easier to understand, which lead to boosting utilization, engagement and enrollment—key metrics for all benefits administrators. For employers, an ongoing enrollment strategy could mean spreading out planning throughout the entire year, allowing for more time to review data and provide targeted communication tools and resources that can better educate and guide employees to voluntary benefits that fit their individualized lifestyles and needs.
For example, in an employee population where 70 percent of expensive emergency room visits could have been treated in urgent care instead, the benefits manager could focus on improving employees’ health literacy in Q1 and offering subsidized or incentivized telemedicine benefits through a partner in Q2, which could help reduce unnecessary healthcare costs. With this year-round strategy, employees aren’t tasked with making every critical benefits decision at one time, and benefits administrators have a chance to dig into more specific data for deeper cost-saving insights.
Whether conducting year-round or traditional open enrollment, it’s clear that the key to planning a successful OE period lies in making good use of benefits data and healthcare analytics. The data analysis that happens in those crucial weeks following OE will inform cost containment strategies, population health programs to support employees’ total well-being and future enrollment planning, setting benefits administrators up for success.
Misty Guinn is director of benefits and wellness at Benefitfocus.
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