Just as employers are increasingly restructuring their benefits to accommodate different types of families, such as same-sex parents and adoptive parents, many companies may soon begin offering infertility benefits to workers who are struggling to have children.
"Exploring assisted reproductive technologies (ART) such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) makes sense for the patient and the employer as it typically results in a higher success rate with less risk to the patient and, for the employer, less total cost for its employee population," writes Mark Perloe, director of Georgia Reproductive Specialists.
In fact, he adds, "it is short-sighted for employers to think they save money by not offering a comprehensive fertility benefit."
Infertility will likely only become a bigger issue in the coming years as millennials will likely delay child-bearing even more than previous generations, meaning that more aspiring parents will need medical assistance to conceive.
"Employers offering an infertility benefit are showing their workforce that they recognize infertility is a disease," Karin Ajmani, president of Healthcare Services at New York City-based Progyny, a clinic focused on infertility, tells HR Dive. "It also shows employees they understand that having a family is important, and because men and women are having children in their 30s, women are disproportionately suffering from infertility."
The argument for including infertility treatment as part of a major medical plan largely boils down to the same case for any benefit: It produces happier and more productive workers.
Employees who are struggling to achieve their dream of being parents are already likely to be stressed and unfocused on their work; requiring them to dip deep into their pockets to pursue expensive treatment is only going to make matters worse from the employer's perspective.
Equally bad, explains Ajmani, is that employees who must pay out-of-pocket for fertility treatment are likely to seek out cheaper, less effective options. Such strategies are more likely to produce twins or triplets (or quadruplets), a scenario that implies a higher-risk pregnancy that the employer's health plan is now on the hook for. A multiple-baby pregnancy is more likely to lead to premature birth or a c-section.
"Those potential downstream expenses far outweigh having a comprehensive fertility benefits plan in place," explains Ajmani, who estimates that the return on investment of such benefits to be about 30 percent for employers.
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