Reevaluating wellness in 2021: Don't overlook your 'hidden population'

Employers understand that one of the best ways to reduce their health care spend is to help employees get and stay healthy. However, the actual process is easier said than done, and businesses have experimented with a range of health care strategies and wellness programming with the intent to bring down rates of illness, chronic conditions and other causes of higher health care spending, all will little overall impact.

Related: Make 2021 the year that employees engage in their health

Part of the problem with such programs is that they often fail to resonate with those who need them most. Employers need to find new ways to engage and support this population, but how?

To get some answers, we turned to Eric Hamborg, co-founder and chief commercial officer at MOBE, a company that teams up specialized personal health and wellness guides and pharmacists with people who have persistent and/or chronic care needs. Here are some of his insights:

How can employers strike a balance between tightening their belts due to COVID while also ensuring they are providing key health offerings to their population?

Making a bigger impact on employees’ health doesn’t always require a bigger budget. Many employers don’t realize that their wellness benefits simply aren’t resonating with their entire employee population. The key is identifying the right employees and matching them to the right solution that best meets their current situation – using AI and big data to make this possible. Data show that within every workforce population, a small (just 5%) “hidden population” generates approximately 20% of costs.

This population is difficult to categorize because they don’t share the same underlying conditions or health needs, though many manage one or more chronic conditions. Instead, they share in common a pattern of care: they’re accessing the health care system frequently, but they aren’t getting better despite investing more hours and dollars into their own health. In order to improve this “hidden population’s” health outcomes and in turn, save on health care costs, employers need to implement wellness and care programs that can reach those specific people and then utilize a personalized, one-to-one approach that helps them achieve their health goals and creates predictable savings for the organization.

There’s a firehose of health information out there. When reaching out to employees, what is the best way to engage with them about their health?

When implementing any wellness- or care-based solution, the information and engagement must address underlying issues that are preventing users from seeing improved outcomes — including the availability of easy-to-understand information. A recent survey found that 53% of consumers didn’t feel additional steps they can take to improve their health (such as changing diet, exercise, and sleep habits) were easy to understand after talking with their doctor — yet these were the changes consumers said they most wanted to make. And, among people with chronic conditions, 38% say they have a hard time feeling motivated to make those changes.

Addressing these challenges requires targeted, personalized support outside the doctor’s office to help employers and employees get the most out of their health coverage while improving health outcomes. By making personalized guidance available to those who need it most, and leveraging today’s technology to “meet them where they are,” the best way to engage employees in their wellness and care offerings is having solutions that make connecting easy and natural.

For employers that are reassessing their wellness offerings right now as their employees’ needs are changing – what should they look for?

In the face of the pandemic, employees’ physical and mental health should be top of mind. Depression and stress, in particular, have proven to be major sources of lost productivity and can lead to chronic often very unnecessary use of the already overburdened health care system — these two are of particular concern in the midst of a global pandemic. With this in mind, wellness and care offerings should go beyond cookie-cutter benefits and address the whole person and their needs, across multiple aspects of their lives. To start, look for offerings that support health and wellness through personalized guidance that addresses medication, nutrition, fitness, diet, and other factors impacting wellness like sleep and mental health.

To take it a step further, keep an eye out for “support benefits” such as childcare, increased and/or more regular time off, and access to virtual conferencing technologies that keep them connected to communities in the workplace and beyond.

Do you feel the pandemic has impacted the types of benefit offerings that employees need? Has it exacerbated any issues that were already there?

The pandemic has highlighted the importance of providing employees with benefits that take a “whole-person” approach within their offering. With so much information being thrown around in the media and online relating to COVID-19, the flu, mental health, vaccines, and more, people are more overwhelmed than ever. A solution that looks at an individual’s entire health picture, silences all of the chatter around them and allows them to understand their own personal health needs — and then, empowers them to make necessary changes — is important during the pandemic and beyond. It has also become clear that individuals need support that is available when they need it most. Offerings that allow users to have support that is just a call, click, or text away are critical to improving outcomes.

You mention a “hidden population.” How can organizations identify and reach these individuals who are using the health care system frequently and seeing few positive changes?

Today, we have incredible data science and targeted technology available to support health care decision-making. For example, MOBE utilizes a proprietary algorithm to identify individuals within a population who are using the health care system frequently yet seeing few positive changes. It is critical that once this population is identified, they are engaged in a personalized manner to understand their situation and needs. This engagement needs to offer support and guidance on what matters most to them, and in turn, will link health goals to real factors in their lives.

Let’s say Tina, who was struggling with her eating habits and blood pressure issues but didn’t know where to start to get her lifestyle choices back on track. Offering support and guidance throughout her journey of improving her diet, exercise and emotional health will help her reach her health goals. This engagement and continued support are critical to improving outcomes and in this case, Tina’s well-being.

You’ve said before that for people with chronic conditions, more “face time” isn’t always the answer. Can you describe what you mean by that?

For too many people managing complex chronic conditions, access to health services — or “face time” with a health care professional — isn’t the only (or best) path to improving their outcomes. There is something missing in the model. The MOBE 2020 Chronic Care Action Index reveals that 76% of people with multiple chronic conditions report their health hasn’t improved in the past year, despite reporting a higher frequency of doctor’s visits. Just 12% of people with no chronic conditions said the same. To address this gap, we must leverage technology, data science, and a personalized approach.

Some of the nation’s largest payers across the country have embraced this model to provide targeted, personalized support outside the doctor’s office to help employers and employees get the most out of their health coverage while improving health outcomes — not to mention generating significant cost savings.

Read more: 

• Design key to wellness program success, Cigna study suggests
• What’s driving growth in employer health care spending?
• Chronic conditions: How to help pick the right health plan for employees