How employers are driving the consumer-centric changes in health care

We’ve been there before: waking up sick, calling a doctor’s office, and — at best — getting in for a visit later that afternoon, only to have to wait in the lobby, fill out extraneous forms and then return home two hours later (but only after stopping by the pharmacy to get a prescription filled first).

At worst, we spend days or weeks waiting to get into a doctor, just to find out we need additional specialist care from a limited number of in-network physicians, leading to another long wait.

In an age of one-hour grocery delivery and two-day free shipping — it begs the question: why, when it comes to our health, is receiving care in a timely matter so difficult?

The system fails both providers and patients

The current health care system isn’t working for patients or providers. Patients are challenged by a difficult bureaucracy, juggling the care they need with the high cost and burden of getting said care.

The system is equally frustrating to providers, with a significant drain on staff and financial resources due to high administrative burdens. Some of these administrative costs have accounted for 15% to 25% of all national health care expenditures. It’s no surprise, then, that 50% of providers are facing burnout, starting as early in careers as residency. As an emergency medicine doctor, I, myself, have witnessed that burnout firsthand in many of my peers.

Employees are frustrated with a poor patient experience

Getting into a provider in a timely manner and navigating complicated insurance networks can be difficult. While the health care industry has begun discussing this problem, some important headway has been made from an unlikely source: employers.

The Kaiser Family Foundation found that employers spend an average of roughly $22,000 per family per year in providing health care benefits for employees. And 83% of employees would consider leaving their positions for other organizations with better benefit programs. To provide a competitive hiring advantage, employers are combining benefit principles like ease of sign up, use, and speed with better health care benefits to improve the employee — and patient — experience

Employers are redesigning health care delivery to focus first on the employee’s experience as a patient. Consider these three principles:

1. Quickly get employees the care they need. Benefits programs must offer timely care that quickly alleviates an employee’s symptoms. If they prolong care, not only is their wellness and satisfaction impacted, but they’re also more likely to get sicker or slower to heal and return to the office as unproductive employees. Find ways to connect patients and providers quickly. Implement health plans and offer digital health tools that address this head on.
2. Help employees build lasting relationships with their providers. While some digital health tools can provide immediate cost benefits, consider the usage and trust that employees have with these solutions. For example, telehealth adoption grew significantly during the pandemic, but a recent survey shows that 42% of employees were not confident in the ability of telemedicine to effectively diagnose or treat conditions, and 23% felt uncomfortable speaking with an unfamiliar provider. Instead, smart employers are implementing remote health programs that offer trusted connections between patients and providers. Employers can offer programs that assign specific primary care and mental health providers to patients, leading to better established trust, consistency and longevity of patient-provider relationships.
3. Treat the person, not the symptom. Today’s health care system often fails by focusing on treating symptoms, not people. Employees who seek medical attention for a flu or allergies may be too quickly prescribed drugs to treat their symptoms without exploring other critical factors impacting their health such as poor mental health or nutrition. Employers are beginning to combat this today by implementing unified benefit programs that look at employee health holistically, rather than multiple siloed programs that each address just one facet of employee health.

Read more: An employer ‘How to’ for driving outcomes in today’s health benefits ecosystem

The average employee benefit program is significantly underutilized, with 80% of employees using few or none of their benefits annually. As companies complete mid-year reviews on existing benefit programs and make critical decisions about 2023 benefit offerings, it’s imperative that we prioritize the offerings that will truly put employees first. By implementing patient-first benefit programs that offer timely care from trusted providers — and look at each patient as an individua l— we’re well-positioned to create truly healthy workplace cultures and happier employees, too.

Dr. Viral Patel, is a former ER doctor out of New York who left the hustle and bustle to launch Radish Health, an employer add-on holistic health concierge platform that centers the patient through a dedicated team of primary care, mental health and nutrition providers.