Alegeus, Picwell Partner to Provide Health Benefit Decision Support

Alegeus, a provider of consumer-directed health care solutions, has partnered with Picwell, a next-generation decision support company, to enable Alegus clients to help consumers make smart benefit choices during open enrollment.

Alegeus’ clients can fully integrate Picwell’s artificial intelligence-driven and white-labeled technology into their existing enrollment experience via their benefit administration platform, or they can embed Picwell’s capabilities directly within their open enrollment communications and campaigns.

Alegeus notes that a recent poll about open enrollment experiences in 2019 found that 30% of employers did not help their employees with their benefit choices, and nearly half of consumers were dissatisfied with their benefit experience. Additionally, 25% were unsure whether they were enrolled in the right combination of health plan and accounts.

According to a survey released by Lively, 30% of adults say they completely understand their health benefits and 32% say they somewhat understand them. That means that 38% did not understand their health benefits at all.

Respondents to Lively’s survey reported confusion over high-deductible health plans (HDHP) and health reimbursement accounts (HRAs). The survey found that young people (ages 18 to 24) have far less understanding of preferred provider organizations (PPOs) (18%) and health maintenance organizations (HMOs) (19%).

“We match consumers to the right plan during enrollment by predicting future care considerations, estimating out-of-pocket expenses, and accounting for personal preferences,” says Matt Sydney, Picwell CEO. “We use an advanced data science methodology, that represents billions of medical claims for more than 40 million people, to evaluate the factors consumers care about and produce a holistic set of predictive outcomes.”

“Leveraging machine learning, creating dynamic models and applying artificial intelligence to big data sets will help employers and their employees make better choices while shaping the future of health care benefits,” says Steven Auerbach, chief executive officer of Alegeus. “As part of Smart Account Initiative, the Picwell technology will help our clients deliver an open enrollment experience that drives results and a seamless consumer experience.”