Tech

With year three open enrollment on the horizon, state-run health care exchanges are busy building out systems and processes while renegotiating contracts, all to improve the customer experience, data flow and costs.

Chances are you have seen article after article claiming brokers need to buy more technology to help sell and service clients this year. Although partially true, blindly accepting these blanket statements can be costly for brokers. What I want to share with you is my experience working with these technology systems and a simple yet powerful approach you can take to make sure you don’t waste time and money on inefficient technology solutions. …

Great technology tools may help a public exchange grow in the short term, but knowing the customer base and business well enough to make the right investments is critical to an exchange becoming sustainable and successful in the long run.

Commentary: It is a lot of fun to be able to help employers make sound decisions through benchmarking. Oftentimes, that’s the start of a prosperous relationship, says Zywave’s Dave O’Brien.

Commentary: Many benefit brokers live by the idea that face-to-face onsite service is the only way to provide quality service. Certainly that is one of the advantages a local broker has, being local. But times change, says HR Technology Advisors’ Joe Markland.

As technology and health care become more intertwined, a visit to the doctor can be as easy as a touch of an app. UnitedHealthcare Thursday announced an expansion of telehealth coverage options for virtual physician visits.

It seems that everyone has a smart phone or a tablet and I can’t think of anyone I know who does not have internet access at home. Consequently, plan sponsors ask all the time if they can just e-mail plan documents to employees to satisfy the notice requirements, or maybe just post new plan documents on the company intranet. Recent legal actions serve as a reminder that the short answer to the question is no.

Commentary: Why hasn’t client adoption of enrollment technology met expectations with mid-sized employers during the last two decades? Recently, overall adoption has grown at a much faster pace than we have seen in a long time.

Calling all health care entrepreneurs. The National Business Group on Heath wants to take a look at start-ups with “innovative solutions to improve health, or enhance the efficiency, delivery or consumer experience within the health care system.

Leverage the changing ways employees access and consume technology to improve benefits communications and “look like a rock star” to your clients.