Broken Arrow City Council
Meeting of: June 20, 2022
Title:
title
Approval of and authorization to execute a renewal for Teladoc HealthiestYou services effective July 1, 2022
End
Background:
The City’s broker for health insurance services has gone out for bid to assess telehealth options for the City’s health plan. The primary purpose for assessing the current telehealth option, Teladoc HealthiestYou, was the current cost for a robust telehealth platform relative to the low utilization of several of the value-added service offerings.
Plan savings resulting from telemedicine is often realized through steerage to telehealth verses the more costly place of service offerings, such as urgent care or emergency room for non-emergent services. At the time of the initial rollout of the telehealth option in 2020, the COVID pandemic created significant restrictions in access to care. In addition, a high number of orthopedic and musculoskeletal diagnosis were prevalent among the population. To promote greater access to care and help members avoid unnecessary risk exposures of in-office visits during the pandemic as well as to mitigate unnecessary utilization at more costly emergency room and urgent care settings for non-emergent procedures, the most robust telehealth option was selected in 2020. This offering (Teladoc HealthiestYou) includes traditional general medicine, back pain, behavioral health, dermatology, and nutrition services. While this robust selection was initially viewed as a reinvestment and value-add to employees during a national pandemic, low utilization over time has resulted in a lower return on investment than initially anticipated. For this reason, the telehealth product was marketed to assess whether an alternative telehealth package from the current provider, or from another vendor, would better suit the evolving needs of our health plan.
|
|
Utilization |
|
Service Type |
2022 (through April) |
2021 |
2020 |
|
General Medicine |
12.1% |
14.3% |
11.2% |
|
Mental Health |
10.1% |
42.7% |
23.9% |
|
Dermatology |
2.0% |
6.1% |
12.7% |
|
Nutrition |
.5% |
0.0% |
n/a |
Teladoc currently offers three package options: Teladoc Basic, HealthiestYou Core and HealthiestYou Complete (current option). Given the current state of the pandemic and greater access to traditional care, coupled with low utilization of the more robust offerings such as nutrition services, back pain care and dermatology, a fee for service model with a lower per employee per month may be more cost-effective for the City moving forward; however, benefits for the employees would be reduced as a co-pay would be required by the employee.
Since Teladoc HealthiestYou has been providing services, the employees have not had to pay a co-pay, as an incentive to utilize these services in lieu of costly urgent care or emergency room services. The cost to continue services will remain the same for Fiscal Year 2023 at $10 per employee per month.
Additionally, alternative vendors were compared, including AllyHealth, Recuro Health, and SwiftMD. It was found these alternate vendors services were not comparable to the current Teladoc HealthiestYou offers.
Staff recommends continuing services with Teladoc HealthiestYou Complete at this time, under the same provisions as prior years. Moving forward, staff and the insurance advisory committee will take a closer look at utilization and alternate options of telehealth. A comparison of health plan offerings and telehealth services will be compared and adjustments made, if needed. Additionally, education materials will be distributed to employees on a more frequent basis to remind employees of the benefit, try to increase utilization and potentially decrease urgent care and emergency room visits on the health plan.
Cost: $10 per employee per month (approximate cost $72,240.00)
Funding Source: Group Health and Life Operational Budget Fund 661
Requested By: Kelly Cox, Human Resources Director
Approved By: City Manager’s Office
Attachments: CBA Telehealth RFP-Final
Teladoc Options
Vendor Comparison
Recommendation:
recommend
Approve to execute a renewal for Teladoc HealthiestYou services effective July 1, 2022.
end