The cost of providing mental healthcare to employees is on the rise.
Health insurance premiums are expected to surge 6.5% in 2024, increasing costs as demand for mental healthcare continues to accelerate.
76% of employees are experiencing at least one mental health symptom and a record number are seeking support as care becomes further destigmatized. The convergence of rising healthcare costs and increasing demand for mental health services will have painful economic implications for employers if something doesn’t change.
For example, many employers today are using mental health benefits that require them to “sponsor” therapy sessions for employees. In this approach, a company with 500 employees could spend ~$50,000 per year on sponsored sessions, which doesn’t include an additional support fee (exhibit 1).
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Sponsored sessions are an attractive perk for short-term care, but they represent a redundant expense to an employer’s multimillion dollar investment in health insurance, which in most cases, already covers long-term mental health services.
If employers want to invest in the mental well-being of their workforce without sacrificing their bottom line, they must adopt a new approach. The existing way of supporting employee mental well-being won’t work.
Rather than duplicating your health plan, Therify makes it work better. We do this by matching employees with providers who are in-network with your plan, eliminating the need for costly sponsored sessions and reducing costs by up to 55% (exhibit 2).
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For employers with self-funded plans, Therify reduces claims costs by up to 58% by keeping employees in-network and preventing them from seeking expensive out-of-network providers. In most US states, out-of-pocket rates for outpatient mental health services are often 2x higher than in-network rates (exhibit 3).
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At Therify, we’re powering the next generation of companies who value mental well-being by helping them deliver best-in-class benefits that align interests between HR and the CFO’s office. Today’s model of utilization-based sponsored sessions, adopted by traditional mental health benefits, creates diametrically opposed incentives between the HR teams and their counterparts in Finance.
HR wants employees to use the benefit and take care of their mental well-being, but the more the benefit is used, the more it eats into the bottom line. This dynamic undermines access to care. All facets of an organization should be aligned in maximizing engagement of mental health services without fear of financial harm to the business.
The decision to sponsor mental health sessions should be optional, not required, especially when health insurance costs are rising dramatically. This is why Therify makes it seamless for employees to utilize ~$10,000 of covered mental health support that’s already available through their existing health plan.
There are two critical advantages to this approach:
Today’s HR and Total Rewards leaders are faced with the complex responsibility of attracting and retaining the best talent while maintaining the bottom line. Therify helps them get it done.
Note: We believe that employees with high-deductible plans should have access to sponsored sessions. Coaching, which is not covered by insurance, may require sponsorship as well, but clinical therapy represents a golden opportunity to maximize ROI through in-network matching.
