Health advocates keep employees on task

That’s where Employee Benefit Design is trying to offer assistance, with help from Pennsylvania-based Health Advocates Inc.

Health Advocates offers a full range of health care advice for employees of companies ranging from small firms to companies with thousands of employees.

The services help not only individual employees but also their employers, especially in dealing with “presenteeism” – the frustrating situation of having employees at work but preoccupied by personal needs.

“A lot of Fortune 500 companies have figured out that they have a lot of employees showing up daily who may be there physically from 8 to 5,” said Dan Ruggeri, a partner with EBD, “but because they have health care concerns for themselves or their family, they spend part of that day with their mind not into it because they’re dealing with those health care issues.”

Ruggeri estimates that Health Advocates can deal with the average health issue in less than a third of the time it would take employees on their own time.

Employee Benefit Design and the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce brought Dr. Abbie Leibowitz, co-founder of Health Advocates, to Springfield Sept. 28, to help local companies better understand the benefits available through his company. About 60 people/companies registered to attend, as of Sept. 26.

“Half of our service involves health issues directly,” Leibowitz said. “The other side is claims, benefits, appeals – that administrative side of medicine that so often gets in the way of people actually getting care and getting to the outcome that they seek.”

Health Advocates employs a team of registered nurses who field calls from employees of its 1,400-plus client companies.

Those nurses are backed by a team of professionals, trained in business and administration, and a group of medical administrators.

Health Advocates’ client list includes Viacom, Lowe’s Home Improvement Center, Home Depot, Jones of New York, The Washington Post and 19 universities across the United States, according to previous Springfield Business Journal coverage.

Reaping benefits

Employee Benefit Design began offering Health Advocates’ services in May, and some local employers already have begun to see the results. Local companies using Health Advocates through Employee Benefit Design include Ozarks Technical Community College and The Killian Group of Cos.

Andrea Fitzwater, director of human resources for The Killian Group of Cos., said the company has been using the new services for five months.

She said the benefits of the program have helped the company deal with additional federal privacy regulations passed in recent years.

“The new privacy laws have made it really difficult for a company’s benefits administrator, and have put that person in the position of having to be provided more information than what they really need to know,” Fitzwater said.

“With a health advocate, these questions can be answered by someone who is unbiased and there for the purpose of offering assistance or direction or better help than I can,” she added.

Leibowitz said the strength of the idea behind Health Advocates is its flexibility.

“We find out what the individual needs us to do, we let us help them, get them off the phone and tell them to get back to their life and their family, and then we go in and address the issue,” Leibowitz said.

As a member of the United Benefit Advisors Group, Employee Benefit Design is able to offer Health Advocates’ services to clients for about $2 per employee per month, though the cost varies depending on the size of the employer. Similar programs are in place locally through St. John’s and CoxHealth.[[In-content Ad]]