Everything Under The Sun: Connecting With Consumer Health Savings Accounts

Staffing an information booth at Employee Health Care Conference in New York.

Many of you in the work world are familiar with the various types of healthcare savings plans, such as Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA), Health Savings Accounts (HSA), and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA). These types of accounts help to pay the expenses that health insurance doesn't cover and are put together out of each year's earnings. Some can turn over from year to year; those that don't require a bit of a crystal ball to estimate health expenses each year, because any access to that year's funds becomes lost to the consumer at the end of the year.

CONNECTYOURCARE (CYC), based in Hunt Valley, maintains these accounts for consumers and businesses, providing an efficient interface that serves the stakeholder groups - consumer, business, healthcare provider. They provide their services in a way that maximizes return on investment, while satisfying each base.

At the beginning of this year, ConnectYourCare released new technology, in the form of ClaimsAlly, which streamlines and simplifies access to, and payments from, the three types of healthcare savings plans. It speeds up the process of submitting and deciding appropriateness of claims, so payout, or denial, becomes quicker. Claims can be verified for eligibility much more quickly, as well, through electronic means. Steve Grieco, CEO of ConnectYourCare, said, "The pilot results for ClaimsAlly point to substantial improvement in approval speed, nearly 80 percent in testing, which ultimately will increase participant satisfaction."

ClaimsAlly has been designed to fit into CYC's existing platform. According to Mr. Grieco, "We are pleased to be able to offer another technology to our smartCDH platform designed to help employees save more of their hard-earned money. while reducing the frustrating and time-consuming pay-and-chase that has been associated with FSAs, HRAs, and DCAP (Dependent Care Assistance Programs) accounts in the past."

This new technological innovation also picks up on CYC customers' expressed desire to decrease the needed documentation to determine expense eligibility. In addition, ClaimsAlly also decreases documentation requests, employers' administrative burdens, and amount of transaction correspondence.

On March 30, CYC partnered with Devenir to produce an online Webinar, Industry Outlook: Emerging Trends In Consumer Driven Health Care, which is still available on demand. The market for consumer-driven healthcare accounts has been continuing to grow. As more individuals reach retirement age, they are looking for ways to continue the benefits of these types of accounts.

A little change in work environment provides some fun for ConnectYourCare employees.

Two speakers, Barbara Boudreau, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at ConnectYourCare, and Eric Remjeske, President/Co-Founder of Devenir, come together to discuss industry trends, and information from the reports developed by both companies. They cover the growth potential of these consumer healthcare savings plans, trends in adoption, and ways of increasing employee participation.