Picwell Launches Health Savings Account Solution for its Predictive Decision Support to Improve Consumer Health Plan Selection
PHILADELPHIA (PRWEB) July 26, 2018 -- Picwell, Inc., provider of the most advanced predictive decision support engine for consumer and employee health plan selection, has launched a Health Savings Account (HSA) solution for its benefits decision support tool. Picwell’s tools are currently used by 150 partners including employers, insurance carriers, brokers and benefit enrollment platforms to help 1.5 million people choose the optimal health plan for the coming year.
HSA adoption and utilization has been increasing as more employers and carriers offer high deductible health plans in an effort to reduce rising health care costs. According to The National Health Interview Survey, the number of U.S. residents with HSAs climbed by 15 percent from 15.5 million to 17.9 million between 2016 and 2017.
HSAs help offset healthcare costs through pre-tax deduction and are used for healthcare payments or unexpected health expenses. However, HSAs can also serve as a retirement account, with the option to carry over indefinitely or invest in a variety of associated mutual funds. This is where the intersection of health and wealth has become complicated for the average consumer to decipher and manage without seeking additional expertise.
Picwell is seeking to reshape the health and wealth market with the launch of its HSA product offering. Now Picwell’s decision support tool can show a consumer their potential tax savings and future investment potential should they use an HSA account, thereby providing a more comprehensive benefits recommendation to address their personal health and wealth needs, both in the short and long term.
Unlike existing guides and calculators that ask a consumer to guess his or her future healthcare needs through an intrusive and lengthy questionnaire, Picwell's sophisticated analytics engine instantly forecasts an individual's likely healthcare costs, using artificial intelligence and machine learning alongside behavioral economics. This predictive cost data is then integrated with behavioral factors such as the consumer's risk exposure and preferences to personalize and prioritize the health plans that best fit their individual needs.
Picwell's data-driven approach has demonstrated that it can solve for consumer choice error and plan selection misalignment. By guiding the consumer to the appropriate plan, Picwell reduces the cost for the individual by an average of $1,000 per year and reduces the time spent selecting plans during open enrollment. In turn, for every employee who uses Picwell and chooses the top ranked plan, employers stand to benefit with an estimated savings of more than $1,400 per employee per year. Picwell also boosts employer satisfaction among employees who use the tool. Carriers and agents benefit as well by improved operational efficiencies driven through reduced staffing needs of call-center representatives and corporate benefit departments, as Picwell has been shown to reduce call handling times by approximately 25 percent.
“Decisions about health care and HSAs can’t be made in vacuum. Picwell’s latest HSA offering allows consumers to evaluate these important decisions in a broader financial planning context. Picwell analytically predicts the plan selection and HSA contribution level that is best for each individual. The entire process takes less than five minutes and consumers are provided results in the form of a ranked numerical score, thereby simplifying what would traditionally be a complex process riddled with opportunities for error,” said Matthew Sydney, CEO of Picwell. “In addition to improving our health decision support, we’re excited to partner with myFinancialAnswers to explore additional decision support features beyond medical coverage. We believe consumers need access to a comprehensive recommendation for all their benefits decisions. Making sound, scientifically-based choices is a win for consumers as well as brokers, carriers, benefit enrollment platforms, and employers.”
As part of Picwell’s mission to predict, prescribe, and personalize recommendations that enhance the benefits lifecycle, the company has partnered with myFinancialAnswers to evolve its offerings for helping consumers navigate the complex and intertwined milieu of health and wealth.
“Benefits decisions have grown more complex as large and small companies shift responsibility for choosing benefits to employees, leaving Americans in need of help determining which benefits make the most sense for their families,” said Ben Pitts, CEO of myFinancialAnswers. “We’re excited to collaborate with Picwell to simplify that process and expand the ways artificial intelligence and predictive analytics can improve health and wealth decision making. A lot of benefits that could be of value to people are confusing and intimidating. By quickly and easily assessing how these benefits work together, we can assist employees in making personally optimal decisions during the enrollment process and throughout the year.”
myFinancialAnswers offers a technology platform that delivers robust financial planning for all who need it. The technology is built on a sophisticated financial planning process, with software that gathers an individual's unique financial circumstances and provide recommendations based on their goals. The company performs almost 1 billion calculations to integrate all aspects of an individual's financial life, so they can help people understand the tradeoffs between retirement, college savings and everything in between.
About Picwell
Picwell (http://www.picwell.com) is a Philadelphia-based software company that uses proprietary analytics to distill a complex array of benefit information down to simple, independent and objective plan scores that consumers can easily understand, thereby allowing them to choose their annual insurance coverage with confidence. Picwell delivers an individual's plan score and prioritization data directly via API to enrollment experiences of some of the nation’s largest employers and brokers. Picwell has delivered more than 1.5 million recommendations since 2015 to consumers seeking individual, group, and Medicare coverage.
Cynthia Spitalny, Picwell, http://www.picwell.com, +1 (203) 668-1318, [email protected]
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