According to the National Business Group on Health, “Large companies say their total cost of healthcare, including premiums and out-of-pocket costs for employees and dependents, will increase to $15,500 per employee in 2021, up from $14,642 per employee in 2019.” CMS predicts that national health spending will grow at an average of 5.5% per year through the year 2027.
Many companies simply cannot sustain that kind of yearly increase in healthcare costs and need to explore new, cost-effective options to keep company healthcare costs down.
One of the best ways to keep healthcare costs down is to incorporate telemedicine into a business’ benefits plan.
Telemedicine can greatly impact company savings on healthcare services. Virtual visits can lower the total cost of care for certain conditions. Additionally, virtual visits lower operational costs of providing care in integrated healthcare systems. Under the right circumstances, virtual care leads to greater savings.
Here are five ways telemedicine can help keep company healthcare costs down.
Virtual care can be done from the comfort of an employee’s home and is usually available 24/7, allowing employees to get diagnosed incredibly quickly and receive treatment within hours of their initial symptoms.
Imagine getting a consultation with a doctor within an hour of calling in symptoms from the comfort of your couch. The employer has an employee back at work more quickly without taking days off to drive to multiple doctor visits. There is usually a quicker recovery when symptoms are treated early. This also means employees can avoid driving to an urgent care or emergency room if their illness requires attention outside of normal business hours.
With the rising cost of healthcare, having quick and easy access to health benefits for the most commonly-diagnosed conditions saves both employer and employee time and money. With telemedicine that includes mobile care like EZaccessMD, getting treated for non-emergency conditions like a sore throat, dizziness, bronchitis, or the flu can easily be completed from the convenience of one’s home.
The average ER cost of treating non-emergency conditions through the emergency room is $2,032. This is $1,800 more than a visit to a doctor’s office. Two-thirds of ER visits are avoidable, and those unnecessary emergency room visits cost the healthcare system $32 billion dollars per year. Consider how much less this cost becomes when 24/7 telemedicine replaces those time-consuming, costly runs to the emergency room for an illness that does not require the expertise of an emergency room physician.
EZaccessMD offers the unique approach of joining telemedicine with mobile diagnostics so that treating many common health issues is within reach — all from an employee’s home. Using portable medical equipment, EZaccessMD can diagnose and resolve health issues with fewer visits and less time spent, cutting out major healthcare costs.
EZaccessMD has reduced low-acuity urgent care visits for those enrolled in their program by 31%.
An easy way to keep employees healthy is to offer regular health screenings.
These screenings help employees engage in preventative care for potential health problems, which lowers the time off of missed work and cuts down future expensive medical costs. With telemedicine and mobile healthcare, screenings can be done at the workplace to cut down on time off for medical visits. Preventative health screenings save lives, reduce treatment recovery times, and lower healthcare costs.
Consider the ease of using a mobile healthcare provider to have employees simply walk down the hall to a designated room and do a screening returning promptly to their work!
Another great benefit used in cutting costs through telemedicine is giving employees the ability to schedule their own health screenings during lunch breaks or before or after work. Employees would no longer need to take time off from work and drive away from the office to get preventative care.
In-home mobile testing with follow-up care cuts out any drive time for specialist’s visits. With a telemedicine provider like EZaccessMD, there are critical, cost-cutting healthcare services that can be requested by the provider immediately after a virtual doctor visit and be accessed through mobile care:
The ability to have all of this testing done in-home, at a patient’s bedside, also eliminates any of the exorbitant costs associated with testing under a traditional healthcare benefits system.
The best way for a company to get lower rates from their healthcare provider is to have fewer physical office visits by their employee, less need for prescription medications through preventative health screenings, and fewer out-of-pocket costs.
According to an article in eHealth, “Telemedicine appointments generally bill for less than comparable in-office services, which means insurance companies do not have to pay providers as much for claims. These savings help insurers keep premiums more affordable for employers and employees, ultimately lowering both parties’ premium payments.”
Programs like EZaccessMD decrease the cost of healthcare for employers by bringing down the number of filed claims. This is because employees can access care for common, less serious illnesses through EZaccessMD instead of using a healthcare plan. And, EZaccessMD requires no co-pays.
Companies can create huge savings by utilizing a telemedicine healthcare service. Both the employer and employee receive incredible benefits when a virtual care option is available in the workplace.
For the employer, it is an incredibly easy and effective way to cut healthcare costs. For the employee, it is a convenient way to engage in health benefits from the comfort of their home — and to avoid driving to time-consuming appointments. It can also drastically cut out visits to both urgent care facilities and the emergency room. As of August 2020, eight out of ten large employers believe telemedicine and virtual care will have a significant role in future healthcare plans.
EZaccessMD is the only telemedicine + Mobile Urgent Care provider that offers diagnostic testing and imaging in the home or workplace. Not only are they revolutionizing the way employees get care, but they are also making it affordable for them and their employers. EZaccessMD has an average client utilization rate of 60% (and climbing). That’s more than ten times the average utilization rate for traditional telemedicine.
