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Shortlister invited Kristen Vener, Director of Business Development, and Jeff Waibel, Product and Tech Solutions Expert, to share how Accolade is using human compassion, clinical expertise and intelligent technologies to deliver personalized healthcare and benefits support to employees and their families.

Accolade believes the U.S. healthcare system is broken and that the primary care physician model is not effective in guiding people through their healthcare journey. By combining live Health Assistants who are compassionate, knowledgeable and supported by a team of experts with proprietary technology, Accolade developed their comprehensive, personalized advocacy solution to deliver the best member experience.

Their approach is achieving fantastic results for employers of all sizes and across all industries. Accolade currently has:

• 5+ million members on their platform
• 50+% families engaged
• 90+% member satisfaction
• Up to 15% healthcare cost savings for customers, with savings beginning year one

From the member’s perspective, it’s simple: Accolade’s solution provides a single point of entry for anything related to health and benefits. They ingest as much data as they can from their customers’  programs as often as possible.

• From the health plan, they receive claims feeds and provider directories.
• From Ben Admin, they take updates on all benefits elections including 401(k), life and disability insurance as well as dental and vision plans.
• From any point solutions available, they receive engagement data on employee participation in wellness programs, health screenings, EAP, telemedicine and second opinion services.

This information is at the fingertips of every Accolade Health Assistant, which puts them in a unique position to have meaningful conversations with members. Registered Nurses also stand by to provide a full spectrum of clinical support from preventive to urgent triage to acute, chronic conditions and even complex conditions. 25% of inbound contacts with an Accolade Health Assistant end up becoming a three-way call with a Registered Nurse within minutes.

To be clear, Accolade’s goal is not first call resolution. Instead, Accolade’s approach is designed to achieve member satisfaction, re-engagement and ultimately better care decisions. Health Assistants look for opportunities that would benefit from clinical counsel and have the member’s complete profile available to see health alerts and other relevant information that can provide an opening for support from Accolade’s collaborative care team or referral to other employer benefit programs that may be available.

With an open technology platform, Accolade has evolved into an agnostic benefits hub that now integrates with more than 200 vendors. Accolade has a few levels of partnership that represent deeper levels of integration. With Accolade at the core, this ecosystem allow employers to easily adjust their vendor strategy over time without having to educate members on new or changing programs. From the member’s view, it is super easy to access their personalized benefits right from the Accolade app or through the web-based portal. Combined with guidance from Health Assistants, this simple access increases member awareness of these programs and maximizes the employer’s investment in them.

Positioned as the single point of entry, Accolade is capturing very high engagement rates. They are happy to field questions about dental, EAP, disability insurance – any benefit question – because it is an effective means of engaging the population. By casting such a wide net, Accolade is capturing 50-70% of the total population and 50+/-% of top spend categories such as maternity management (50%), cardiovascular disease (52%), cancer (51%) and musculoskeletal conditions (47%).

What’s more, this engagement translates into results such as:

• Better health plan utilization
• Increase in telehealth usage
• Increase in Rx compliance
• Reduction in ER visits
• Reduction in hospital admissions and hospital stays

After a decade of success with its innovative flagship product, Premier, Accolade recently expanded its solution portfolio with Accolade Connect. Both solutions provide Accolade’s foundation of compassionate human interaction plus clinical expertise and intelligent technologies, but the main difference is the configuration with the health plan.

• Accolade Connect is for employers that are happy with their health plan and network but are looking to elevate their benefits strategy. This allows members to benefit from the single point of entry Accolade provides, but when they are eligible for disease management or case management, they will be referred to the carrier and encouraged to enroll.
• Accolade Premier is for employers that want to give this great advocacy experience to their employees but reimagine their healthcare delivery as well. The Accolade team will handle all member facing services and the health management piece too. This means changing their relationship with the carrier and typically involves moving to a TPA that functions in the background for claims adjudication and network access. Premier requires more data integration and clinical resources from Accolade staff, so it is more expensive but delivers greater savings.

For both solutions, Accolade provides multi-modal pre-launch support for HR Teams and members as well as print and digital campaigns and worksite events during the launch. Once rolled out, Accolade offers on-demand reporting and ongoing recommendations to empower HR Teams to maintain member awareness and achieve company goals using their signature data-driven, member engagement approach that delivers the right message, to the right person, at the right time, via the right channel.

 

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