Introducing: decision support

Choosing health insurance is the largest personal finance decision that people make each year. But most people don’t know how to choose a plan  that gets them the coverage they need without overspending. This is understandable - health insurance is complicated and requires an understanding of the differences between copays and coinsurance, deductible and out of pocket maximums.

That’s why we’re happy to launch decision support, completely free to Nava clients, inside our Nava Benefits App. We’re especially excited to unveil this new solution in time for this year’s open enrollment. This is something we know will have a positive impact on people’s lives, putting money back in people’s pockets and helping them make better financial decisions.

60% of employees make the wrong choice, costing them 24% more.

-Carnegie Mellon University, 2017

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Powering better health insurance decisions

We know that open enrollment time is busy for HR teams. We’ve heard from people who are already clocking in on the weekends and after hours just to get the job done well. We created Nava decision support to help employees make better health insurance decisions, decrease their health care spend overall, and decrease the amount of work that falls to HR teams. 

You do all of this because you care about your employees, and want them to be able to access and enjoy the benefits you’ve worked hard to choose and implement. We care about your employees too, which is why this solution is quick, easy and impactful. 

Employees will answer a few quick questions like how many prescriptions they have, which providers they prefer or if they have any planned surgeries or pregnancies. We’ll combine their answers with data on their use from the previous year to provide a personalized recommendation that fits their needs, saves them money and includes the providers they trust. If they have questions, they can message directly with a Nava Benefits Advocate for expert information and advice. This simple workflow is all directly in the Nava Benefits App, the tool that employees use to access ID cards, find covered providers and access help year-round. Your employees will be able to easily choose the right plan, decreasing support requests for you and increasing employee satisfaction. 

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Healthcare spending is projected to rise 8% next year. It’s more important than ever to give employees solutions that help them make better financial decisions. 

Decrease healthcare costs

A goal of Nava’s from the beginning has been to save people money on healthcare costs. When we started talking with people who don’t spend all day navigating the healthcare system, the biggest question that they had was “which health insurance plan should we use?” Given everything I laid out above, it makes sense that people are confused. 

That confusion leads people to choose the wrong package. Carnegie Mellon found that the average cost of choosing the wrong plan was about 2% of the employee's salary. By walking employees through a personalized  planning exercise, and clearly showing the potential costs for the year, decision support helps your employee make better health insurance decisions, saving them money.

Other health insurance decision support solutions

We surveyed the market and found a handful of products attempting to address these issues. But when we talked to HR teams about these offerings, they raised several challenges with them:

• Many of the solutions were a separate user experience that employees weren’t used to, which decreased the number of employees willing to take the extra steps to log in and use a new  tool. 
• They based their outputs entirely on the data employees provided to them, without bringing any additional insight or historical data to the table
• Small to medium sized employers were often outside the minimum contract sizes for these solutions

With all of that in mind, we built our new solution to help employees make better decisions about their health insurance, all in an easy-to-use experience that is completely free to all Nava clients.

See decision support in action

I’m excited for you to see and try the new decision support feature. Click below to talk to a Nava expert. 

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