dental care – Workforce

Vision care benefits have become a mainstay of the employer benefits package.

“Virtually all companies now offer vision,” said Peter DeBellis, head of the total rewards practice for Bersin by Deloitte in Washington, D.C. “It is table stakes, especially for companies of a certain scale.”

Vision care is listed as one of the 10 essential benefits included in the Affordable Care Act, and employees have come to expect it as part of the core employee benefits package. “Health, dental and vision are the benefits triad,” DeBellis said. These programs have a very high rate of participation, which further reinforces the value they bring to employees.

This category of benefits has evolved in recent years in the care options offered and the way these treatments are accessed and paid for. Telemedicine, for example, is a new trend in the vision benefits space, noted Paul Piechnik, senior vice president of group benefits for MetLife. A growing number of organizations now offer basic examinations to check visual acuity and the need for eyewear via do-it-yourself applications or through a physician-led online virtual exam.

“Some are even offering virtual walk-in exams with an optometrist to mirror the same comprehensive examination steps one would encounter at a standard brick-and-mortar optometrist’s office,” he said. The interest in telemedicine is being driven by the digital generation, who prefer self-service for everything, as well as addressing the needs of remote workers. “Telemedicine is just emerging for routine vision care, though it’s too soon to say whether this will become a vision care standard in the future.”

Preventive care

Companies are also offering a broader array of treatment options, including laser surgery, blue light protection on lenses to reduce the impact of light emitted from digital devices, and proactive vision exams to identify risks for glaucoma, hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol. This last benefit is viewed as a useful preventive care intervention, particularly in an aging workforce. “Vision has a role to play in a lot of chronic health conditions,” DeBellis said. Encouraging employees to have vision exams can help them identify bigger health care risks so they can get prompt treatment.

Piechnik suggested that companies offer sunglasses coverage as part of their vision plan as a way to get more employees to take advantage of these wellness visits. MetLife, for example, has a SunCare rider as part of its vision care benefits that allows members who don’t need corrective eyewear to use their frame allowance for non-prescription eyewear. “This encourages them to get their routine ‘wellness’ vision examination and spot those early issues that can become costly medical expenses for the member and employer alike.”

Also read the 2018 Sector Report: The Bright Shine of Dental Benefits

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Vision Comes at a Price

The other steady trend in vision care is who’s footing the bill. The rising cost of offering any health care benefits has pushed employers away from supporting fully employer-paid vision care to cost-sharing programs, or providing vision as a fully employee-paid/voluntary benefit. Piechnik said this hasn’t caused outrage among cost conscious workers.

“Employees for the most part see the value in nonmedical benefits such as vision care, so are willing to pick up some or all of the cost of these benefits.”

Regardless of the payment structure, benefits administrators should look for a comprehensive plan that provides annual vision examinations and eyewear benefit levels that employees value.

“With many employers offering vision on a voluntary basis there is no reason not to offer this benefit,” Piechnik said. “It’s a key product for creating a benefits package that truly increases employee satisfaction and loyalty.”

Once the program is in place, benefits administrators should educate employees about what the program covers, and the value of getting annual exams and keeping their glasses up to date. “It’s not just about getting a new pair of readers,” DeBellis added. When employees take care of their vision they are healthier and more productive, which benefits everyone.

Amway Corp. is joining a growing list of large employers adopting genetic testing as a workplace benefit.

Starting in January, the multilevel marketing giant will offer genetic testing by Interleukin Genetics Inc., a Waltham, Massachusetts, developer of genetic tests for chronic inflammatory diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and arthritis. Using a cheek swab, Interleukin’s ILUSTRA genetic risk test, previously called PerioPredict, can detect a person’s tolerance of inflammation levels, said Interleukin CEO Mark Carbeau. Proper dental care can lower inflammation levels, which affect other areas of health, like risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke, he said.

“Inflammatory burden systemically is created by bacteria in your gums, so the notion is if we clean up your mouth, we can cool down a large source of chronic inflammation and that allows the body to control and manage those other sources more effectively,” Carbeau said.

Amway joins the likes of Visa Inc. and insurer Aetna Inc. to introduce genetic testing for employees. Visa is offering genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer, while Aetna implemented a pilot program testing employees at risk for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Companies including venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and online survey company SurveyMonkey also are using genetic testing among their employee population.

Genetic testing in the workplace presents legal hurdles that could limit wider use, said Seth Perretta, partner with Groom Law in Washington, D.C.

Companies can’t require employees to take a medical exam under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, or GINA, a federal law protecting people from genetic discrimination in health care and employment, employers can’t tie a financial incentive to the completion of a genetic testing program.

“Offering genetic testing outside a major medical plan would be rife with legal risk for the employer,” said Perretta. “It would almost certainly have to be structured as part of the major med plan or limited to folks enrolled in an employer-sponsored med plan. And it would have to be fully voluntary.”

Still, there’s value to it, Perretta added. “But for some reason Congress has clearly spoken that from a policy perspective, they’d rather have the ailment manifest itself prior to an employer getting involved.”

There are also privacy concerns. It can feel like a step down the path of the employer getting too involved in the personal lives of its employees, said Jim Winkler, Aon Hewitt’s global health innovation leader. Employees need to know that their employers won’t have access to the data, and employers have to communicate that effectively, he said.

Interleukin’s program is a voluntary benefit that is covered by GINA. Interleukin explains to the employer the test’s purpose and how it would be used, but only provides the genetic information to the employee’s individual dentist.

Amway chose to offer this in their group health plan to encourage employees to expand their awareness of their personal health risks and the various resources available to them, said Tom Boehr, manager of corporate wellness and employee engagement at Amway, in an email.

wf_1116_fyb_genetictesting_winkler-jim-2016_300px — Like “many things in our lives that are technology enabled, there is probably an element of inevitability to this. It’s just a question of, ‘Is it in the next year? The next five years? The next 20 years?’” said Winkler.

“The offering is another form of education that Amway is introducing to its employees in order to further empower them to make health care choices that are in their best interest,” Boehr said.

Genetic testing is still new in the benefits space, but Winkler believes that, like “many things in our lives that are technology enabled, there is probably an element of inevitability to this. It’s just a question of, ‘Is it in the next year? The next five years? The next 20 years?’ ” he said.
The technology involved and the equipment used are becoming more efficient and less expensive. Ten years ago, the costs to isolate specific attributes of DNA was in the tens of thousands of dollars, and today it’s in the hundreds of dollars, Winkler said. Possibly, as genetic testing solutions become less expensive, consumers may become more interested, at which point employers wouldn’t even necessarily have to offer the benefit.

He compared it to Fitbits and other wearable devices. Five years ago, the only people who used them were the ones who got them from their employer. Now, they have a huge commercial market.

“You could start to see this in the genetic testing space as well — over what period of time, I don’t know,” he said.

Tag: dental care

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