Put your benefits offerings to work to improve employee – and patient – satisfaction

Research consistently shows clinical staff job satisfaction and patient satisfaction are linked.

In one study of 114 hospitals, positive clinician opinion of an organization is associated with greater patient satisfaction, as measured by HCAHPS scores. Further, in nursing studies, the higher the expressed job satisfaction by nurses, the more likely patients are to recommend a hospital to a friend or family member. This affirms employee attitude can impact a patient’s experience, across a variety of roles – from clinical to administration.

In the book Patients Come Second, authors Paul Spiegelman and Britt Berrett, the former president of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, double down on the notion that patient satisfaction begins with healthcare employee satisfaction. They note, “The most successful organizations with the most loyal customers (or patients) have focused first on an internal culture of engagement, where leadership shows a genuine interest in the growth and development of its people.” That said, by understanding the factors that motivate and engage employees, hospital and health system executives will likely see a direct correlation in patient satisfaction.

Since 95% of HR professionals say healthcare benefits are the most important benefit they can offer employees, positive employee engagement can start with ensuring each employee, from nurses and techs to administrators, has a positive experience when enrolling for their healthcare benefits. This includes everything from customized health plans to using the right technology to ease the burden of open enrollment. But is your organization poised to make the most of this opportunity?

Tech-savvy Employees Want a Robust Benefits Journey
Human resource (HR) leaders at healthcare organizations are challenged to provide benefits offerings that meet business objectives and employee needs, while ensuring the right tools are available to educate employees about the different options accessible. Therefore, to steer employee satisfaction in the right direction, hospitals and health systems should identify strategies that help guide employees to the right benefit selections during open enrollment.

When it comes to choosing their benefits, today’s tech-savvy employees expect a robust set of offerings that essentially lets them choose their own benefits journey. Healthcare organizations seeking to improve employee satisfaction with the open-enrollment process and their benefits packages should consider tools that help employees choose a health plan that’s well-suited to their financial as well as their medical needs.

An intuitive benefits administration platform can do just that, helping employees understand how their demographics and health profiles can impact their out-of-pocket expenses. At the same time, it can give employers key insights to help them make good decisions about their coverage mix, options and costs.

Here are three ways hospitals and health systems can use their benefits administration platform to augment workplace satisfaction:

1. Help employees become smarter benefit consumers.
It is a complex undertaking for individuals to decide which healthcare insurance coverage, dental coverage and other benefits make the most financial sense based on their health and wellness needs – even for those who live in a world of healthcare delivery. Using a benefits administration program can help provide comprehensive education at each stage of the benefits enrollment process, with plan comparisons and easy-to-use online selection capabilities that avoid human error.

For example, a benefits administration platform that incorporates decision support tools that score and rank the available health plans based on multiple factors — with explanations of the rankings — can guide employees and help them choose among the options with confidence. Embedded videos, health plan comparisons and predictive analytics can be used help employees identify their costs and simplify their decision-making.

By using decision support tools embedded in their benefits administration platform, hospitals can help their employees anticipate the health-related costs they are likely to incur and to choose the coverage option best suited to their individual situations. Further, advancements in benefits-specific decision support supported by artificial intelligence (AI) offer even more ways to help employees predict risk in an understandable way. Use of AI can help distill heavy, complex decisions, while allowing employees and employers to better understand the real impact of health benefits being offered.

Balancing employees’ needs and preferences for healthcare benefits against predicted out-of-pocket spend, AI not only simplifies historically complex decisions, it helps employees feel more certain about their decisions.

2. Automate and simplify the benefits process.
The best benefits administration platforms available today are easy and convenient to use and are designed to enhance the employee experience while making it easy for employers to showcase their offerings and drive engagement. The right solution will be flexible and configurable to accommodate many benefit classes, as well as healthcare organizations’ unique plan requirements. It should be available on any device, with an attractive, easy-to-use interface that makes it simple to navigate plan designs and contribution strategies. Additionally, it should let hospitals position insurance products in way that supports buying habits and drives enrollment, while fulfilling ACA, ADA and other compliance requirements.

Choosing a customizable benefits enrollment and administration solution can also simplify benefits management for hospitals beyond open enrollment, by eliminating paper-based processes. The frequent hiring by medical centers and accompanying onboarding processes are becoming seamless, thanks to the elimination of paper-heavy procedures. Additionally, a customizable benefits enrollment and administration solution can enable organizations to build a unique set of benefits that help them stand out in a tight labor market. For example, with a flexible benefits administration platform, HR teams can feel empowered to design creative wellness programs for their employees or offer non-traditional employee time-saving benefits like dry-cleaning, dog-walking, or personal food delivery services.

In addition, online enrollment and administration can contribute to lower benefits costs for employers in a way that enhances employee satisfaction. To that end, a benefits administration platform’s analytics features can be used to identify cost-savings opportunities. By analyzing post-enrollment data such as de-identified claims data, healthcare organizations can minimize the number of employees who are over-insured or under-insured, helping to save on annual and long-term costs. Those are the kinds of savings that can benefit employers and be passed on to employees in the form of overall cost savings.

3. Support your technology with proactive communication and education.
Regular, proactive communication about benefits that spans well beyond open enrollment is another technique to drive greater engagement and employee satisfaction. HR leaders should build a plan that helps communicate available benefits year-round and shows the value of those benefits, but that also defines measurable goals to determine effectiveness.

One option to consider is building employee personas that allow HR leaders to tailor education and communication to address the differing needs of various workforce segments. For example, younger workers might seek more insights around costs, while older workers might want more information around covered treatments and rising healthcare risks. New employees might require a comprehensive overview that helps them understand the breadth of choices available to them.

To meet varying employee needs, hospitals should create a variety of communications options that not only leverage available decision support tools, but also offer live in-person sessions, videos and webinars.

Empowered Employees Are Engaged Employees
There are many ways to improve employee satisfaction, of course. When deciding where to focus valuable HR resources to make a positive impact on employees’ lives, start with the most important benefit offerings — healthcare benefits. Empowering employees with a supportive, well-designed process will allow them to feel more engaged and ultimately more compassionate, which in turn results in what matters most: better care for patients.

Reference:
Berrett, Britt and Spiegelman, Paul. Patients Come Second: Leading Change by Changing the Way You Lead. Greenleaf Book Group, LLC, 2013.

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