Union HealthShare: HRAs, Health Cards and Data

Situation

• Union health trusts, like all self-funded employers, face high and rapidly increasing health care costs, and carry significant retiree liability
• Unions, unlike other self-funded employers, are very hesitant to cost-shift from employer (health trust) to employees
• Start-up company had designed a solution to return tax dollars to union members through health reimbursement arrangements but lacked a fully developed technology platform for member health account management or database management

Obstacles

• Build versus buy decision on technology depended heavily on minimizing up-front costs and execution risk
• Insufficient operational design threatened product sales and launch
• Financial model needed clarity to understand where and how start-up organization would make its margins

Actions

• Developed a technology partner strategy to eliminate execution risk and up-front costs for start-up company
• Identified, qualified, and assisted with negotiations of technology partner relationship
• Developed detailed financial model on which primary business decisions are based
• Developed sales materials to highlight benefits to union members and confidence in solution competencies

Results

• Excellent service relationship with software partner
• Eliminated start-up costs and de-risked operational model for start-up through partnership approach
• Member health account management software partnership became model for additional key strategic software partnerships for the start-up, including database functionality
• Initial client contracts signed due significantly to confidence in the solution offering