From the Experts: Making Healthcare More Accessible to Employees

In this week’s episode of America Back to Work, S2Verify co-founder and chief strategy officer, Arnette Heintze, sat down with Allison De Paoli, founder of Altiqe, a healthcare benefits consulting group. 

De Paoli works with employers who know they have a healthcare problem. As the daughter and granddaughter of entrepreneurs, she had a front-row seat to what it takes to run a business and manage risk. 

She routinely advises employers on how to control their healthcare budgets and turn their benefit plans into recruiting and retention magnets. 

She is also a sought-after speaker and podcast guest. De Paoli is the host of Raising the Bar, a podcast designed to help CEOs and executive teams learn and leverage what their peers are doing successfully into their own businesses. She is a contributing author to the Amazon bestseller Breaking Through the Status Quo and is a regular contributor to Employee Benefits News. 

In her conversation with Heintze, De Paoli shared a critical fact for HR professionals about healthcare benefits: if the benefits are substantive, employees will accept a slightly lower salary. 

While quality health coverage doesn’t get employers out of paying a competitive wage, it does provide a little breathing room on salary costs and an overall competitive edge when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent. 

To improve your healthcare benefits offering, she first recommends digging into the data around your plan (claims data, pharmacy info, etc.)–and surveying employees to find out what the problems are in the current plan. If you are having a terrible claims year, for example, it’s important to understand why so you know what you’re looking for when enlisting a better plan through a better vendor. 

Generally speaking, a competitive employer-provided healthcare program, according to De Paoli, offers a low deductible plan with access to direct primary care with a very low copay. Virtual access to care 24 hours a day (to cut down on urgent care and ER visits) can also go a long way. 

It’s all about making access to care easier for employees–and that includes education. Ensure your employees have an easy experience signing up for your plans (and help them understand the value of the options you’re providing) through education during onboarding and open enrollment. DePaoli recommends using stories to illustrate the use cases and details of a health plan. 

She’s also excited about the ways that AI will make employer health planning more efficient and less of an experiment. 

For more expert tips for making your healthcare benefits a competitive advantage, click here to listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts. 

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