Consumerism Educational Services for HDHP

Friday, November 26, 2010

It has already been mentioned that providing significant education to High Deductible Health Care Plans (HDHP) consumers is vital to achieving the goal of helping them to understand how to best use their plan and any spending or savings accounts associated with it. We have explored how health advocate services can assist HDHP consumers in various ways and at various times to navigate through the health care system. However, there are organizations whose focus is more on the knowledge transfer aspect of consumer education. These organizations direct their efforts at providing information to the consumer either on an ongoing basis or at the time of need. One such organization is Asset Health, Inc.

Asset Health Inc., headquartered in Troy, MI is one of several organizations, which provide e-learning tools to assist organizations in raising the level of employee understanding and self-responsibility when dealing with health care issues. While not solely the purview of HDHP, employee health care education is an integral part of consumerism, HDHP’s, and employee engagement.

Consumerism educational services for HDHP can range from the most simple of concepts, What is a generic drug?; to the details of complex medical procedures, including diagnosis, alternatives, risks, recovery times, outcomes, costs, and ongoing treatment protocols. Health care education includes mundane issues such as understanding the terms in consumer’s health care plan documents, how medical billing works, the function of various body organs, the significant limits of various medical screenings and tests. To be effective, health care education must cover topics of wellness, disease, prevention, treatment, management, recovery, and financial management of health care issues.

While many insurance carriers (Aetna, BCBS, Cigna, UHC) provide significant amounts of member education, health care e-learning organizations allow employers to focus their communications efforts on issues that are directly associated with their workforce, using language levels and terms applicable to their workers and families.

In addition to various insurance carriers, there is a multitude of on-line resources, many associated with world famous organizations, available for the HDHP consumer and their families, e.g., Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Nemours Children’s Clinic, RxList, and WebMD.

Beyond what resources are provided in the private sector, there is an alphabetic soup of federal, state, and local agencies directed at public health awareness, education, issues, and concerns, e.g., CDC, HHS, NIH, and USPHS.

Often times it is this overwhelming multitude of resources that creates the biggest barrier to the HDHP consumer. Where do they go and for what information, and when? Organizations which specialize in consumer HDHP education work with employers to develop an evolutionary approach to education. Rather than a downpour of information, educating HDHP consumers becomes more of a process, which builds upon itself over time. In today’s technology driven world, e-learning can be delivered via on-line through numerous channels and devices, from desktops to iPhones.