- Key insight: Discover how consolidating benefits, medical records and AI triage improves care navigation and decision-making.
- Expert quote: Combining benefits with individual health profiles delivers personal guidance, Chris Turner says.
- Supporting data: 85% of employees struggle to understand their benefits.
Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review
When employees' healthcare information is fragmented, it hurts understanding,
On average, 85% of employees
"By combining the benefits information with each employee's health profile, they receive personal guidance and can find the right care at the right time. It helps them answer questions about their benefits, symptoms and care options, resulting in less confusion, better engagement with benefits … all while reducing that administrative burden on HR teams," Turner said.
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Connecting elements of healthcare
Healthbook+ allows employer partners to upload their company's benefit information while employees can load their personal medical history as well as connect to any digital health devices such as fitness trackers or glucose monitors. This allows Paige to answer questions and offer advice about everything from symptom management and care to what benefits are available for any health scenario. For example, employees can ask things like, "Where should I go for this symptom," "What benefits support my diabetes," or "Is this urgent care covered under my plan?"
"One of our employees recently had a baby, and used Paige to answer questions in the middle of the night to determine whether she should call her doctor," said Turner. "Paige [navigates] those questions and helps people understand, hey, this is a normal thing or no, you really need to talk to your clinician now."
In this instance, if an employee has access to point solutions that assist with areas of newborn care such as lactation support, sleep assistance or parent wellness, Paige can remind them and answer questions about their details. It can also provide medical professional-reviewed information about these issues and recommend care providers based on in-network and specialty needs.
"We've got an AI and a medical oversight team that's led by our chief clinical and strategy officer," Turner explained. "They work closely with our data science team to make sure that we've got the right guardrails, and that Paige is only pulling information from the house of medicine, so everything she's trained on is [up to date], peer reviewed and socialized through the general medical community."
To guard people's information, the platform is set up to meet or exceed global healthcare data protection standards including HIPAA, according to the Healthbook+. Employees can select information-sharing preferences and employers can gather aggregated, deidentified analytics. The platform is currently used by a variety of employers, including healthcare companies CancerCare, RxProtect and real estate firm Towne Properties.
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Improved accuracy and routes to care
Easily accessible and consolidated medical and benefits information means employees can be more informed, review their records for accuracy and find quicker paths to the right care, Turner added. Thanks to incomplete or wrong records, employees are subject to poorer health outcomes.
An estimated 795,000 Americans are permanently disabled or die as a result of a diagnostic error each year, according to research from the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence and partners from the Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions. Employees should have all of their records available in one place, and be encouraged to check them regularly, Turner explained.
"We found at least 85% of our members have had inaccuracies in their data, and that's a big problem," said Turner. "Nobody really cares about their health when they're healthy; they only care about it once they're sick. They need to understand it's really important to … keep track of it and make sure that when something does happen, the people treating you have the best information available."
In a study of rural and urban adult ER utilization, the Maine Rural Health Research Center found that 24% sought care for non-urgent issues — something that Paige can help with by assessing symptoms and suggesting the use of urgent care, a primary care provider, or telehealth when one of these is more appropriate. According to Healthbook+, its members see a 40% reduction in ER visits.
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Tapping into large areas of need
Turner pointed out that some of today's biggest health conversations — GLP-1s and lifestyle wellness, women's health, chronic conditions — can be better met when more information is in one place. By simplifying navigation through the many angles of care these areas require, benefit leaders can put employees in the driver's seat to better results, which helps them, too, he said.
"HR leaders are … answering a ton of questions about benefits, especially during open enrollment. Once we train Paige and bring all of that information in about a particular individual's benefits, it takes typical questions away from the HR person so they can focus on more meaningful and critical things," Turner said.
