by: Bruce Shutan
July 1, 2013
In the heels of a bullish Accenture forecast on the future of private health insurance exchanges, Corporate Synergies has thrown its hat into this emerging online marketplace with a comprehensive defined-contribution solution to health care that emphasizes advocacy and compliance with the Affordable Care Act.
Another distinguishing trait of the SynergiesSelect platform is that it features an innovative decision-support suite featuring an intuitive user interface to help employers manage their benefit costs, as well as provide their employees with health care choice and flexibility.
“We reviewed our options and decided the best course of action would be to design an exchange that was an extension of our core services offering,” explains Andrew Bloom, executive vice president of operations for Corporate Synergies Group LLC, which describes itself as the nation’s fourth largest benefits specialist.
He says that while it actually would have been easier to use a third-party exchange technology as an off-the-shelf option, it didn’t fit the company’s mission to innovate or personalize the new service for health plan sponsors and participants.
Advocacy and compliance are seen as integral components of the private HIX. “What’s different about SynergiesSelect is that we have incorporated these services within the framework of the solution,” Bloom notes. “Each of our private exchange clients can benefit from our in-house Advocacy Center known as BenefitsVIP. This is an important distinction because employees who are accustomed to receiving group insurance benefits are not accustomed to purchasing insurance on their own.”
With SynergiesSelect, plan enrollees have access to a benefits specialist who handles a range of tactical and strategic issues involving anything from typical call-center questions to helping employees get the most out of their insurance investment. These experts have an average of more than 20 years of insurance industry and customer service experience. Their purpose is to help remove fear and confusion about the benefits-selection process.
There’s also an in-house Compliance Center to help plan enrollees navigate the complexities of the ACA and insurance market in general. Bloom says health care reform is forcing employers and employees alike to be better consumers of workplace benefits. In fact, decision support is a key element of the exchange.
With that in mind, the HIX walks participants through a series of utilization, risk tolerance and life-style questions before recommending a benefits package that is unique to the individual.
“This is made possible by the use of artificial intelligence to maximize the relevance of the insurance plan options recommended to that employee,” says Bloom, noting the use of real-world examples with consequences to further clarify the available options. “An avatar serves as an online guide throughout this process, explaining to the employee why certain benefits within the recommended package are made.”
In assessing the exchange’s standing in the HIX marketplace, he cautions employers against thinking this model is somehow a silver bullet to rising health care costs. “Benefits utilization and employee health and wellness remain the key drivers that determine costs,” he adds. “If the employer and its workforce are doing nothing to reduce those risks, the associated expense will need to be addressed.”
The company’s offering fits into an increasingly competitive, fast growing market segment. Enrollment in private health insurance exchanges will likely match the public exchanges by 2017, when about 18% of Americans are expected to purchase their plans through the HIX model, according to Accenture research.
Bruce Shutan is a Los Angeles freelance writer.
http://eba.benefitnews.com/health-insurance-exchange/news/New-private-Exchange-accents-Advocacy-Compliance-2734442-1.html?goback=%2Egde_1950680_member_254540343
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