5 consumer health care trends that impact your employee benefits | Oscar Rx | hioscar Blog | Oscar
5 consumer health care trends that impact your employee benefits
Before selecting insurance plans for your employees, dig into the latest consumer health care trends.
Employee Health BenefitsTips for Small Businesses
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Today’s health care landscape looks very different than it did even a decade ago, especially given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some change has been positive – you can now video chat with a doctor, track glucose levels on your wrist, and have prescriptions delivered to your doorstep. But other changes have been less positive – concerns over safety precautions, increasing complexity, and reduced cost transparency.
For all these reasons and more, consumer expectations are changing for health care providers and insurers. Explore the latest consumer health care trends and learn how you can tailor your health insurance options to support your employees’ needs.
An overview of consumer health care trends
In the past, having access to doctors and insurance to help pay for care was enough to satisfy consumer health care needs. Today, people expect more.
According to recent studies, here are 5 of the big trends among today’s health care consumers.
Doximity, an online network for doctors, estimated that more than were delivered via telemedicine, representing nearly $30 billion in medical services.
When they need to get care, consumers want help finding the right doctor, hospital, or treatment facility for their specific condition. This research and coordination process has historically left the consumer to figure this out on their own. Consumers regularly receive personalized shopping and media recommendations, and they now expect the same kind of personalization in their health care experience. They want to be heard, understood, and given clear, personalized directions on what to do.
Consumers are also seeking tech-enabled health care options. Overall telehealth usage has nearly tripled (opens in new tab), from 7.8% in 2018 to 26.9% today. Increases in usage have accompanied increases in consumer enthusiasm (opens in new tab) - in 2018 only 47.2% of consumers reported excitement about telehealth, while 54.9% are excited about using it today.
Doctors are also using digital technology more often in patient treatment plans. Digital therapeutics, for example, are clinically validated by the FDA and target specific health outcomes like diabetes and central nervous system disorders. In 2018, 77% of physicians (opens in new tab) recommended digital treatments to their patients, with 66% reporting (opens in new tab) that digital programs improved the patient experience.
4. Transparency
With health care costs in the United States steadily increasing year-over-year (opens in new tab), consumers want to know what things cost and why. They want a clear understanding of which doctors take their insurance, what benefits are covered (opens in new tab) by their plan, and how much a specific medical procedure will cost at a given hospital.
5. Education
Many consumers, especially those under 35, get lost in the complexity of the health care system when trying to make smart health care decisions. According to a study from NBER (opens in new tab), employees generally picked health insurance plans that weren’t cost-effective based on their actual medical spending. Another study from C Space Health (opens in new tab) revealed that 35% of younger consumers lack information about available health insurance options and the pros and cons of each.
