Employers are measuring women's health wrong. Here are 3 ways to fix It

Employers are spending millions on women's health, but much of that spend is hiding in the wrong categories. It shows up as behavioral health, endocrinology, imaging, surgery, absenteeism and turnover.  What it rarely shows up as: fragmented, undertreated women's health.  

A survey of 1,000+ employed women found that 1-5 days of productivity were lost per month due to health-related pain and symptoms. At the same time, a workplace survey of 7,500 women found that only 5% of women plan to stay with their employer more than 5 years, raising an important question for employers: Why invest in women's health if the long-term savings opportunity isn't there?

Aside from being the right thing to do, the answer is that employers are already paying for unmanaged women's health costs today. These are not hypothetical costs or future cost projections. Employers are paying these costs through fragmented specialty care, pharmacy utilization, avoidable procedures, disability claims, productivity loss, and more. The costs are fragmented across disconnected claims categories and workforce metrics, making it hard for employers to see.

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While many employers have advanced population health analytics data designed to identify high-risk and large, immediate cost events, many women with complex hormonal or gynecologic conditions never trigger those thresholds because so many women's care needs are delivered in siloes based on the individual symptoms instead of the underlying condition that might be causing it. 

This is a structural and systemic failure that impacts the entire healthcare system, but employers have a unique opportunity to change the status quo. Here are three ways to start:

• Measure women's health across life stages, not isolated claims events. Employers should work with health plans, consultants and analytics partners to evaluate women's health longitudinally across claims, pharmacy utilization, disability leave, absenteeism, workforce attrition and more, rather than point-in-time medical events. For example, instead of analyzing a cardiology claim, behavioral health diagnosis or primary care visit separately, employers and their partners should look to identify patterns developing over time: an increased number of behavioral health claims that started in the late 30s or early 40s, followed by cardiology visits in the mid-40s, and double the number of primary care visits. Viewed independently, these events appear unrelated. However, when looked at holistically, these claims reveal a pattern of unresolved menopause-related symptoms that are already driving avoidable costs and disruption in current workforces, which are nearly 50% women today. 

• Build attribution models that connect fragmented utilization patterns. Employers should work with health plans and analytics partners to build attribution models that identify repeated utilization patterns across behavioral health, cardiology, and primary care that are consistent with an undiagnosed or undertreated hormonal condition. Building attribution models that detect care patterns in women's health claims would allow employers to identify at-risk employees sooner, reduce avoidable utilization and intervene before unresolved symptoms become high-cost medical events.

• Create women's health quality metrics that drive accountability. Employers should begin by evaluating women's health vendors, provider networks and health plans using standardized quality metrics tied to complex and gynecologic conditions, not just reproductive and sexual health utilization. Track metrics such as time to endometriosis diagnosis, PCOS treatment adherence, menopause symptom stabilization, and surgery avoidance, where less invasive evidence-based treatment options are available and or preferable. 
  

Without standardized measures, employers cannot effectively or meaningfully compare      population health programs designed to support their employees, nor can they evaluate performance or align incentives around better long-term outcomes. 

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There is growing evidence that a more comprehensive, longitudinal approach to women's health can meaningfully improve care and reduce costs. In a recent externally validated total cost of care study, Visana Health demonstrated $3,469 in savings in just six months across two common patient cohorts: menopause and complex gynecological care by delivering coordinated, whole-person care. The savings were driven by fewer high-cost facility visits, reduced specialty utilization, and better care coordination across complex conditions. For employers, the findings reinforce an important reality: Many of the biggest cost drivers in women's health are not isolated events but fragmented patterns of unmanaged care that are already producing avoidable costs within the current workforce. 

The future of women's health will not be defined solely by better benefits or more point solutions. It will be defined by whether employers and health plans can finally connect the clinical and economic realities, as well as the everyday lived experience of women, into a system that sees the full picture. Employers are not waiting twenty years for the return on investment. The cost is already here. They just need a better way to see it.