CHANGE IN OPEN ENROLLMENT DELIVERY METHOD AS WELL AS MOVING EMPLOYEES FROM A PPO MEDICAL PLAN TO A RBP MEDICAL PLAN

The Challenge

Previous open enrollment periods were face to face with each of the client’s associates….this is what they wanted and expected.  However, during this time of COVID-19 we were tasked with meeting each associate in a non-contact environment to educate, enroll and ensure understanding of the upcoming changes to their employer’s medical plan.  The client was moving from a PPO (network) medical plan to a Referenced Based Pricing (non-network) medical plan which included a Concierge Service, a new surgery and imaging program and Patient Advocacy Center (PAC).  The client was concerned that associates would not understand how to use (and use to their advantage) all three services to help lower their medical costs.

The broker and client also tasked us with building out / setting up the enrollment on Employee Navigator via our licensed software team.

We were also tasked with enrolling all employee benefits and introducing a new Hospital Indemnity Gap plan and educating associates on how best to use the plan with the new medical plan.

Our client has 311 eligible employees in 19 locations and they are located in three states with various hours of operation. 

The Solution

We implemented our virtual enrollment plan, the WBS Tele Enrollment and Communication platform, which is our non-contact open enrollment solution.  This platform provides unique advantages when utilizing our call center; various reasons such as improved quality of calls through monitoring, recording, accuracy and consistent messaging, as well as maintaining compliancy.  The call center hours were tailored to the client’s needs and the associate’s convenience and each associate was scheduled for a 30 minute appointment with a trained benefit advocate.

Benefit advocate specialized training and testing was conducted virtually in one day.  Virtual training increases participation and engagement, provides a much more conducive learning environment, takes less time, completely cost effective and training materials are no longer a cost item.

The Result

The WBS Tele Enrollment and Communication platform provided a win-win situation in overcoming the status quo with the following:

• Advance scheduling resulted in 100% of the employee population participating with these results:

Medical enrollment 86% $2,325,346

Dental enrollment 40% $74,551

Vision enrollment 62% $20,885

Basic Life 100% $16,227

Voluntary Life 37% $57,903

Short Term Disability 35% $34,286

GAP-Hospital Bridge 24% $31,348

Accident 45%    $22,660

Critical Illness 28% $27,908