Telemedicine became an essential technological tool in the healthcare industry amid the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone’s interactions were restricted, including health patients with pressing needs and their dedicated healthcare providers.

Fortunately, telemedicine was already in place before the pandemic, available to meet the needs of people in rural areas and in other complicated situations where an office visit didn’t work.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), however, telemedicine in the U.S. hadn’t taken off before COVID-19. The interest was minimal. But the pandemic changed everything, opening the healthcare community’s and patients’ eyes to the immense value of remote patient services.

Many patients and healthcare providers are now taking the time to learn more about what telemedicine means in terms of private insurance and Medicare coverage.

As your organization’s benefits manager, it might help to take a deeper look at the now fast-rising telemedicine trend and its vast potential benefits for the healthcare industry, patients, and employers.

Engaging a professional employer organization (PEO) — sometimes known as an employee leasing service — has become an important strategy for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) across the United States over the past three decades. With 907 PEOs in the U.S. employing 3.7 million people, PEOs have become a reliable staple in the business world, helping more than 175,000 SMBs enjoy impressive rates of growth in brief time frames.  

Companies constantly strategize and implement the arduous task of submitting budgets, finding ways to cut costs for the upcoming quarter or new year. One of the most effective ways to combat increasing health care costs for companies is to move to a Self-Funded insurance plan. By paying for claims out-of-pocket instead of paying a premium to an insurance carrier, companies can save around 20% in administration costs and state taxes. That's quite a cost savings!

Life is slowly returning to post-pandemic normalcy, but as an employer, you’re likely still facing some business challenges. One of which is on every boss’ mind: whether you can and should require employees to get vaccinated. A balance must be struck between keeping your workforce safe and dealing with employees who refuse to get the shot.

You’re also considering how to keep workers safe as they transition from working remotely to on-site. To help you navigate these challenging and sensitive issues, read on for our guide to handling the COVID-19 vaccine and returning to on-site employment.

As an HR representative for your company, you know how important it is for your staff to feel their best—physically, emotionally, and mentally. In a perfect—or even better—world, everyone would run optimally, inside and out.

Unfortunately, mental health woes are as much a sign of our modern times as many physical ailments have become. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly one-in-five U.S. working adults aged 18 or older reported some type of mental illness in 2016. That equates to roughly 18.3% or 44.7 million people, making it one of the most burdensome health concerns in the country.

Traditionally, benefits engagement has existed in a bubble for most companies. The typical timeframe for open enrollment is November 1 through January 15, and then the window closes until the following year.

But even though you might need to comply with the timeframe in the technical sense, you might want to expand year-round benefits engagement with your valued employees.

Maybe you and your HR team have considered trying to find ways to keep the conversation going long into the new year until the next official window opens. With this approach, you can foster a healthy relationship and more robust communication. Best of all, you can help your employees increase their benefits knowledge and confidence so that they can make the best decisions for the next open enrollment period.

Workplace ethics generally defines how your leaders, managers, and employees define right from wrong within the scope of the company environment. However, we all know there is never a simple answer to most business challenges – and defining right from wrong is usually easier said than done.

Telemedicine became an essential technological tool in the healthcare industry amid the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone’s interactions were restricted, including health patients with pressing needs and their dedicated healthcare providers.

Fortunately, telemedicine was already in place before the pandemic, available to meet the needs of people in rural areas and in other complicated situations where an office visit didn’t work.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), however, telemedicine in the U.S. hadn’t taken off before COVID-19. The interest was minimal. But the pandemic changed everything, opening the healthcare community’s and patients’ eyes to the immense value of remote patient services.

Many patients and healthcare providers are now taking the time to learn more about what telemedicine means in terms of private insurance and Medicare coverage.

As your organization’s benefits manager, it might help to take a deeper look at the now fast-rising telemedicine trend and its vast potential benefits for the healthcare industry, patients, and employers.

Digital health innovations are transforming the way people access healthcare services – so it’s only fitting that employers are increasingly turning to digital health to increase employee awareness and engagement with their health benefits. In fact, according to a recent survey, 68% of employers plan to invest more in digital solutions over the next five years. It’s a change that’s likely to excite many employees – 49% of employees surveyed said they’d be more likely to use a digital health solution if their employer offered it.

Approximately 93% of fathers and 72% of mothers make up the U.S. workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because many of the men and women who are not currently parents will be at some point, family-friendly benefits are essential to offer as part of an organization’s employee value proposition.

However, in 2018, only 17% of workers had access to paid family leave, leaving approximately 80% of American workers without. Furthermore, 93% of low-wage workers who are in the bottom quarter of wage earners have no access to paid family leave, and 94% of part-time workers have no access to paid family leave.

Nearly all 193 countries in the United Nations offer paid parental leave to its citizens; the United States is one of the rare exceptions. The United States is also the only country out of the 41 in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union that does not mandate some level of parental leave benefits for employees.

While these statistics paint an unfortunate picture for the U.S. workforce, competitive companies often offer paid parental leave – and for good reason. In the following content, we explore the history of paid leave in the U.S. and discuss the top 5 benefits of offering this competitive benefit.

Let’s dive in!