Healthcare Reform and Technology

All eyes are on Washington DC and healthcare reform today for the mid term election. Insurance carriers, General Agents, Benefit Brokers, and employers are concerned with their potential changing role. Regardless of the outcome, technology will play a key part. 

All parties involved in the supply chain will benefit with increased technology use. Technology allows for enhanced efficiencies in all areas. From the individual selecting coverage for health insurance, to the agent that is facilitating this, whether it be a PEO, General Agent, or Benefit Broker, to the carrier that is providing the coverage. This is the time for companies to take advantage of online benefits enrollment and payroll integration services. Whether it be a large Fortune 500 company or very small employer , technology is available for all. 

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The Convenience of Web-Based Benefit Administration

Today, General Agencies, Brokers, and Employers are moving away from the old ways of enrolling and administering benefits with paper.  Most now are using a paperless enrollment and administration software that has open enrollment capabilities, plan marketing, human resource management tools, and other beneficial features.  UBenefit offers these features, but also makes it very convenient for you and your clients because it is web-based.  This means that you or any of your clients can access any information or enroll in your benefit plans from anywhere in the world at anytime, as long as you have internet access. 

UBenefit creates a portal for your general agency, brokerage or company that is specific to your firm and the clients of your firm.  UBenefit allows you to brand your portal to make it look like your own website; by choosing the layout colors you desire and by allowing you to add your logos to make it look like your own.  Also if you are servicing large employers and you want them to have their own portal, you can create one and brand it to make it specific to that client.

With UBenefit you can not only have the ultimate benefits administration and enrollment solution, but you also have access to it 24/7.  So visit our website at www.ubenefit.net to contact us and schedule a free web demo today!

Saving Money with Online Benefit Enrollment - UBenefit Testimonial

Here is a testimonial from one of our customers with their experiences with UBenefit and what it did for one of their groups:

I have a group that has been in the 51+ market for many years and now we're fluctuating between small and large group. We've had double digit increases for the past 4 years that I've worked with them. Some years we've been able to reduce that by going out to bid with their utilization. This year underwriting calculated a 48.8% increase and released a 29% increase. I met with the group and advised we try something different because their loss ratio last year was 159.2% and we wouldn't get any competitive bids with that claim history (we've had some turnover in the group as well). They agreed to do the health applications, we had ~50 employees complete them. I spent one day at the group helping the people who had questions/problems using the system. I got competitive bids from all 3 carriers based on their health applications. In one month, we were faced with a 29% increase and now we have a comparable plan; no change in deductible and a richer office visit copay and prescription benefit, at a 14.6% decrease. With this option there's a 43.6% difference in premium, for an annual savings of $31,363.08 from 2009-10 to 2010-11.

Thank you for making this possible with your technology! Your hard work is saving employers money in a very tough and scary market. 

Learn more about how you can save your groups money like this customer through UBenefit, by visiting us at www.ubenefit.net and scheduling a Web-Demo of the UBenefit product today!

Statistics Show Trends Toward Paperless Benefit Enrollment

Whether the reason is going green, convenience or saving time and money, US businesses have been trending towards a paperless workplace, especially when enrolling in benefits.  According to the article linked below on ifawebnews.com, a recent study showed that only about 40% of companies now are enrolling their employees in benefits through web-based software.  Comparing this to five years ago in 2005, only 12% were enrolling their employees in benefits online.

As you can see this is a very large increase in five years and that percentage is only going to increase more in the future.  Every company today, wants to be known as environmentally friendly and by utilizing web-based benefit enrollment software, every company or brokerage can head in that direction.  Not only would your company be going green, but you also would be saving time and in business, time is money.

The following two articles go more into detail about the percentages of companies using web-based benefit enrollment software, and how it makes their benefit enrollment process more effective and efficient.

Paperless Benefits Enrollment Marches On
Convenience Fuels Online Employee Benefits Enrollment Growth
For Employee Benefits Enrollment, U.S. Trending Toward a Paperless Workplace

Security of Personal Information and Online Enrollment

Today people go through a lot of fear and anxiety when they give out their PHI (personal health information) and other personal information online.   Traditionally, employees have had to complete benefit enrollment forms on paper.  These would need to be signed, duplicated and given to an HR Administrator.  Technology has made online enrollment paperless. We often get questions regarding security with online benefit enrollment asking, “Is my information secure?” With UBenefit each employee gets a unique username and password, the enrollment process is electronic, including e-signature and the entire application is encrypted in order to avoid a security breach.  No longer does an employee complete personal health information and put it on someone’s desk.  The electronic data is stored in a digital file.

With UBenefit your personal information is safe, secure and protected.

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Empowering the Small Employer

Broker-driven technology that spurs competition is reducing small group health cost increases, thanks in part to the use of Web-based enrollment software which is helping brokers and their clients market a health plan to four or more carriers simultaneously.  The following link is an article that goes into more detail about how Web-based enrollment software is helping small businesses around the country.

Empowering the Small Employer

 

The Security of Online Enrollment

Often times when we work with clients they ask about the security of online enrollment.  Changing the way that we normally do things can lead to uncertainty.  Our online enrollment tool has numerous safeguards built into the online application.

UBenefit Portal provides two separate role-based security mechanisms: Presentation and Data. The presentation components can have a three-state view property (view/edit/hide) configured by user or role. In addition, each user can be associated to only certain data.

UBenefit contains many security-oriented features, such as the use of Secure Socket Layers (128 bit SSL), plus encrypted URL's to prevent packet filtering or data-spoofing, separate backend database instances for each broker client, persistence layer change-logging, and a user-logging monitor.  All application data is stored in a SAS 70 Type II data center.  All 3rd party file transfers are encrypted.

As with any technology innovation there are pros and cons, at UBenefit we make sure that your enrollment data is safe and secure.