90% of CEOs say offering employee health benefits won’t be sustainable by 2030 — here’s one solution companies should consider

Healthcare appears to be heading toward a breaking point as the cost to employers threatens to become unsustainable. According to a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 9 out of 10 Executives say it will be impossible to continue offering health benefits to employees by 2030.

Rising health care costs are a challenge, but not impossible. Employers today have options. Increasingly, companies of all sizes are self-funding their employees’ health care to control costs, while fully-funded and self-funded employers alike are adopting high-deductible health plans (HDHP) that require lower premiums.

However, there are risks in these methods. Self-funding employers who are not concerned with containing health care costs could see their out-of-pocket expenses rise. At the same time, high deductibles can saddle employees with greater medical debt.

However, these cost-saving measures should not result in significant risk to the employer or medical debt to the employee. Low-cost improvements to health benefits can provide significant support to employees in any workplace, regardless of whether their health plans are fully insured or self-funded.

For self-funded employers in particular, these improvements are particularly beneficial, as their expenses are directly related to the health care costs incurred by their employees.

The most effective enhancement available to employers is the healthcare navigator. With one phone call, employees who work for companies that provide a navigator for their health care plans can save in several ways, lowering a self-funding employer’s overall medical costs and helping covered workers avoid medical debt.

RELATED: A new trend in healthcare is saving small businesses money

price comparison

People usually don’t realize what their health plan covers until they need to use their insurance. This can be a stressful time to figure out how much a necessary procedure will cost. Someone who needs medical care is unlikely to shop around and compare prices.

This is where health care navigators come in: They can make comparisons for the plan participant and often find a path of care that costs significantly less than the path recommended by the insurance plan or primary care provider. In this way, navigators help employees avoid some costs that can have a devastating impact on their personal earnings, as well as the financial health of self-funding employers.

Review the invoice

By now, many people are aware that billing errors are shockingly common in the healthcare industry. When a patient pays a bill for which they are not actually responsible, the patient is entitled to a refund of the overpaid amount.

However, the average employee may not be aware that they have been overpaid or may not have time to check whether they have been invoiced in error. Likewise, a self-funding employer may not have the internal resources to undertake this type of investigative work. A healthcare navigator knows how to spot this type of error quickly and can help the employee (and self-funded employer) recover the amount they are owed.

financial aid

Often people I don’t know that they qualify for financial assistance from the hospital. Employees may assume they don’t qualify for such programs based on their income, so they don’t apply, when in reality financial assistance could save them (and their self-funded employer) thousands of dollars.

Healthcare Navigation can guide people through the application process through a hospital’s financial aid portal, which can result in significant direct savings.

Related: How to protect your money from being eaten up by health care costs

Time saved

For the average person who is not well-versed in the language and complex structure of the world of health insurance, trying to figure out and deal with health care costs is extremely time consuming.

Frustrating health insurance issues that would otherwise take a plan participant four hours to resolve take only one hour with a navigator. Those lost hours of problem solving don’t just cost the employee; It can also cost the employer by reducing work hours and tying up HR resources.

Not just for low-cost plans

While employees at HDHPs and companies that self-insure will benefit most from health care navigators, there are advantages to this type of policy enhancement for any company that offers health insurance to its employees.

No matter how care is funded or what type of plan an employee is signed up for, health care can be scary. Any employer that provides workers with an ally in the struggle for the best care at the lowest out-of-pocket cost is likely to build good will among employees and burnish its reputation as a people-first organization.

By combining all of these types of cost savings, from pretreatment to bill review, it is possible to create a comprehensive number that represents the total savings achieved by using a healthcare navigation service. Depending on the size of the company, this can run into the millions of dollars.

Understanding the complex and expensive world of healthcare requires specialized expertise. Navigating the healthcare industry is something that employers and employees cannot do without.

Related: 6 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Solve Medical Debt Problem