Personalized advocacy can result in savings on outpatient facility spend, outpatient professional spend and pharmacy spend for brand and specialty drugs, among other areas. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Employers can achieve “substantial and sustainable health care cost savings” when utilizing personalized advocacy services to help their workers find the most appropriate care for them, according to the Aon study “Accolade: The Effect of Personalized Advocacy on Claims Costs.”
Aon compared the medical utilization and financial results of two self-insured employers using the personalized advocacy solution of Seattle-based Accolade, to a matched control group selected from the IBM MarketScan® Research Database. Collectively, the study found the two employers saved between $527 and $782 per employee per year over the matched multi-employer control group—spread across multiple conditions, health profiles, ages and risk categories.
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“The report validates that to bend the employer health care cost trend, you need to engage the whole population, not just the highest cost or highest risk patients, and provide a deeply personalized experience through people and technology,” says Accolade chief actuary Carolyn Young.
The first employer, “Employer A,” is a medium-size population of more than 10,000 members with presence in most states, according to the study. Aon evaluated Employer A's claims experience in 2016 only with Accolade services having been implemented the beginning of that year. Employer A implemented Accolade services after exceeding 15 percent medical trend prior to 2016, despite previous plan design richness reductions and vendor changes. Accolade engaged with more than 60 percent of the families of Employer A during the initial year.
Aon found Accolade had lower health care costs by 6.5 percent, or $782 per employee per year, as compared to the matched control group. Reductions in cost for Employer A were driven by lowered inpatient, outpatient and professional medical spend compared to control.
The second employer, Employer B, is a large Fortune 500 population of more than 100,000 members with national presence in most U.S. states and metropolitan areas. Aon evaluated Employer B's claims experience between 2014 and 2016 with Accolade services having been implemented prior to 2014. Accolade engaged with more than 65 percent of the families of Employer B during the study period.
For Employer B, Aon found Accolade sustained multi-year savings resulting in 2016 cost being 4.7 percent, or $527 per employee per year, lower than those for the control group. This result corresponds to an annualized trend rate of 1.3 percent versus 3.8 percent for the control group between 2014 and 2016.
Reductions in cost for Employer B were lowered by outpatient facility spend, lower outpatient professional spend and lower pharmacy spend for brand and specialty drugs. In fact, spending on brand-name drugs for Employer B was 22 percent less than the control group.
Other key findings of the study include:
– Savings occurred across the entire population, as evidenced by cost reductions across a wide distribution of diseases and conditions — those with zero, one or multiple chronic conditions and higher cost members.
– Employers using Accolade are achieving material healthcare cost savings even without increasing deductibles or other cost control measures that are challenging for employees.
– Savings for each Accolade customer are unique, reflecting Accolade's ability to adapt to each employer's distinctive population, care needs, benefit plan designs, socioeconomic footprints and demographics.
“This analysis represents one of the most rigorous comparison studies conducted on employer healthcare cost drivers and savings,” says Aon senior vice president Todor Penev. “The results demonstrate that Accolade's customers have experienced cost reductions through personalized advocacy beyond what typical employers have accomplished for the same period.”
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Katie Kuehner-Hebert
Katie Kuehner-Hebert is a freelance writer based in Running Springs, Calif. She has more than three decades of journalism experience, with particular expertise in employee benefits and other human resource topics.
