10 health partners for the perfect employee benefits package

Today’s benefits leaders know that employer-sponsored health insurance alone isn’t enough to address all of their population’s needs—and does little to provide better, less-expensive care to their highest-cost claimants. As a result, many employers have chosen to augment their offerings with innovative programs that address specialized care along with overall well-being.

What’s more, forward-thinking employers know that by building a best-in-class employee experience, they increase their chances of attracting and retaining top talent. A robust health and benefits offering is a big factor in that. According to one study, 89 percent of employees at companies that support innovative health and well-being benefits report their company is a good place to work.

However, these kinds of programs can be a big investment, which means businesses need to be strategic in choosing the right programs for their ecosystem. Every company’s population has specific needs, so the first step is to gain a clear understanding of what those specific needs are. 

In this article, we’ll share some compelling reasons to augment your benefits offerings with health and well-being programs. We’ll also share our top 10 employee health and well-being programs based on their ability to positively affect employee health outcomes while strengthening your company’s overall health benefits offering. 

Why augment your health insurance offering with health and wellbeing programs

Healthcare costs are typically the second-largest expense for most employers (after payroll). At $1.2 trillion per year, it’s estimated that these costs will rise an average of 6 percent over the next 10 years. 

And with 84 percent of large employers already offering CDHPs, (for 35 percent, it’s the only option), strategic HR leaders are looking for innovative ways to manage costs and drive health outcomes beyond cost-shifting.

To address these pressures, employers need to adopt a wide range of innovations that offer the potential for cost control and effectiveness. Part of that involves building an ecosystem of best-of-breed partners that focus on specialized care, address high-cost claims, and proactively support employee overall well-being.

In our conversations with HR leaders, we frequently see a strong focus on screening and preventive care. There’s also an appetite for highly-specialized solutions like maternal health, fertility treatments, disease management, and behavioral health.

Top 10 employee wellbeing programs to consider

When looking for digital health and wellbeing platforms to integrate into your benefits strategy, consider these top programs.

For general health

Helping employees and their families access the right care at the right time is essential to helping them stay healthy and productive on the job. Employees can take care of their health with minimal disruption and maximum ease when they have an alternative to making an appointment, heading to urgent care, or even going to the emergency room for acute but non-urgent illnesses like sinus infections or rashes. 

Cleveland Clinic: an industry leader in virtual clinic visits

Cleveland Clinic is a nonprofit multispecialty academic medical center that uses research and education to integrate clinical and hospital care. Cleveland Clinic is an industry leader in virtual clinic visits, which allow patients to see providers online from their home or office, no matter where they live and work.

Telemedicine eliminates the need for travel and parking, cuts down on wait times, saves significant time both for patients and providers and makes seeing a doctor more convenient than it’s ever been, making a partnership with Cleveland Clinic a great way to add a highly desired benefit to your plans.

For disease management and prevention

The National Health Council reports that as many as 40 percent of Americans suffer from an ongoing chronic disease. But according to the New England Journal of Medicine, people with chronic health conditions receive only 56 percent of recommended preventative healthcare services for their conditions. Understanding how to reduce the risk of developing chronic disease as well as how to manage it once it is diagnosed are key for people to  live their healthiest lives.

Vida Health: AI-powered personal care for chronic and co-occuring conditions

Vida Health provides access to coaches, nutritionists, diabetes educators, nurses, trainers, therapists and more, all with the goal of helping people overcome chronic physical and behavioral health conditions. With over 30 health trackers and more than 100 integrations with apps and devices, Vida is able to provide tailored solutions to its users, helping them overcome and prevent chronic conditions.

Plus, Vida is an easy-to-use digital platform, and its machine learning engine is able to provide personalized content and recommendations to all users no matter the size of your organization From individuals to enterprise companies, Vida can help improve long term health outcomes.

Omada Health: the intersection of technology, data and human connections

Omada Health is another digital platform that aims to help users manage and overcome chronic disease and conditions. Omada creates personalized, dynamic programs that evolve as users’ health improves or changes. Users are paired with professional health coaches who provide one-on-one guidance based on real-time data from connected devices (including smart scales, which every participant receives). Omada also offers an online community where users can motivate and encourage one another to work toward their health goals.

Omada sits at the intersection of technology, data and real human connections, creating a pioneering approach to helping hundreds of thousands of people manage their health and achieve their goals.

For mental health

Mental health services are not just for people in crisis—all people can benefit from being proactive about taking care of their mental health just as they do from prevention for physical health. There’s also a proven correlation between behavioral health support and productivity in the workplace, which is why many employers are taking advantage of specialized solutions like these.

Inkblot: confidential counseling and coaching from anywhere

Inkblot is a leading provider of online video sessions with licensed therapists and coaches. With the belief that counseling isn’t just for people in crisis, Inkblot uses a matching survey to find the professional best suited to help each individual user reach their goals. Some factors that help with matching include symptoms, stressors and even language and religion.

Once the user chooses one of their matched practitioners, they can book sessions that fit their schedule. And all a user needs for their session is an internet connection and a quiet place. Confidential video sessions can be held in whatever setting the user feels most comfortable.

eMindful: building resilience through mindfulness

For employees who are looking for online classes in mindfulness, handling stress and general mental well-being, there’s eMindful. eMindful promotes resilience by allowing users to join live online classes that teach practical skills to help them become healthier, more productive and more purposeful. The goal is to use the classes to create maintainable, healthy habits that promote overall well-being, with new content added to the app every day, 365 days a year. 

It seems to work—eMindful reports nearly 30 percent of its users reduce their overall stress, and one in five reports improved sleep quality. eMindful’s digital platform makes it easy for users to stay engaged—65 percent of its participants use the app at least twice per week.

Calm: the top app for meditation, better sleep and more

Calm was Apple’s App of the Year in 2017, and Google Play’s Editor’s Choice in 2018, and it’s easy to see why. This app is on a mission to make the world happier and healthier, and it has a lot to offer as part of a benefits package.

Calm focuses on sleep, meditation and relaxation, but the app actually offers a little bit more than that. New content is added each day, including a daily, 10-minute meditation called “The Daily Calm” (the app’s most popular feature), sleep stories (think bedtime stories specifically made for adults), relaxing sleep music and nature sounds, guided meditations, masterclasses created by world leaders in mindfulness and more.

For family health

In 2016, 1.2 million millennial women gave birth for the first time. At the same time, millennials made up more than a third of the total workforce in the U.S. That means there’s a real need for family planning support for workers today, as well as ongoing care as families grow. These solutions to address some of the common healthcare needs growing families face.

Maven: women’s and family healthcare at every step of the journey

Starting a family is one of the biggest decisions a person will make in their lives, and it’s critical that employees have the right support at every step of the process. That’s why there’s Maven, a digital platform for women’s and family healthcare that provides on-demand access to the kind of care and services people need when they’re planning a family, expecting a baby, or beginning their journey as new parents.

Maven provides support and services at every step of the journey: Preconception, fertility, pregnancy, adoption, returning to work and pediatrics. Virtual care is available through the platform, but it can also provide referrals to local practitioners. There’s also cost-tracking through the Maven wallet, new educational resources uploaded regularly and a community of users to provide social support.

ReThink: scalable, digital support for millions of families In need

ReThink is a technology platform providing cloud-based treatment tools, training and support for people with developmental disabilities and their caregivers. The CDC estimates 17 percent of kids will be diagnosed with autism, developmental delays, learning disabilities, speech problems or another developmental disability. There are only 27,000 board-certified behavior analysts and more than 450 million people who need support. Those numbers make one-on-one treatment impossible.

That’s where ReThink comes in, providing scalable online resources and delivering treatment tools to providers, organizations, schools and families. ReThink is using technology to rethink the treatment of developmental disabilities, making sure all families and all kids have the support they need.

Wildflower: Making family healthcare simple and engaging

Wildflower strives to be a simple, engaging platform for families to handle all their healthcare needs. But more than that, the app integrates data, content and clinical resources to create a healthcare experience that’s personalized to each user. 

Wildflower provides resources and support at every step of the family health journey: family planning and fertility to pregnancy to parenting and pediatrics to family health. From creating a pregnancy meal plan to designing a detailed birth plan, to tracking developmental milestones as a new baby grows, Wildflower works like a personal assistant to help keep track of every aspect of family healthcare.

Carrot: inclusive fertility care for every employee

Half of millennials consider fertility to be a core part of their health coverage, and 63 percent of LGBTQ+ people plan to become parents through assisted reproductive technology, foster care or adoption. That’s why there’s Carrot, a fertility benefit platform that provides resources for fertility planning, donor assisted family planning, adoption and more. It’s designed to be a customizable platform to empower employees on the road to having children, no matter what path they choose to get there.

Manage and deploy all these benefit programs with ease

While all these specialized solutions add value to your benefits program, you can’t unlock meaningful ROI until your employees start engaging with them. With multiple portals, booklets and logins, point solution ecosystems can be tricky for employees to navigate—making it difficult for them to find, understand, and use the programs available to them. 

Having the right technology can help. For many companies, that technology is a CX platform. This data-driven digital platform brings all of their health and benefits offerings together into one place, giving employees a single access point to easily engage with their insurance, health, and well-being benefit programs.

A CX platform is designed with the employee experience in mind, driving year-round engagement through personalized recommendations, health programs and concierge services.

By bringing together a suite of point solutions into one unified digital platform, it can also lighten the burden on benefits administrators (who are otherwise stuck managing several vendors, data sets, and invoices). It also makes things a whole lot easier for HR teams when it comes time to launch, introduce and scale new offerings.