Employer wellness plans get a bad rap because employees don’t make use of them. Keas is betting that the lack of ease in accessing these programs is a big contributor. Yet self-insured employers are pouring money into these programs with the idea that they will help keep healthcare costs down or at least prevent them from rising.
Keas sees a way to fix the problem through a health hub to better organize and integrate information from these programs.
In a phone interview with MedCity News, Raul Mujica, the vice president of product management at Keas, said part of the $7.4 million it raised last year went into the hub’s development.
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“The problem Health Hub solves is that…employees must access their benefits through multiple passwords, websites, communications tools. Most companies have over six different benefits offerings from six different vendors. Health Hub integrates all of an employer’s benefits.”
Mujica said that by increasing the use of health plan services, it hopes to help employers keep their workforce healthier. Among the programs aggregated in the hub are health assessments, incentive management, wearables like activity trackers, price transparency
tools for medical procedures, tobacco cessation programs and cancer screenings.
The hub is also intended to give users relevant time-sensitive alerts such as upcoming on-site flu shots.
Keas also has a health engagement application that combines a social network with personal health challenges, which sits on top of Health Hub. The set up helps Keas integrate employee benefits and provide single sign on to those benefits.
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Among the health benefit companies it has integrated into the hub are Optum, Fidelity, HelloWallet, BioIQ, Quest, LabCorp, Aon Hewitt, Tharpe Robbins, Human API, WebMD and MedExpert.
“For employers?, Keas Health Hub provides a single source of truth on employee health and benefits utilization and outcomes via consolidated reporting.”
That single source of truth is an exciting prospect for companies that want to drill down and know what the overall wellness picture is for the workforce. But depending on the corporate culture, employees might wonder what the company will do with this extra information on their activity outside of work. Hopefully, companies will use it to be more transparent than less about how they use that information. That could well increase the level of participation in these programs.
