DES MOINES (August 16, 2016) — Businessolver, a leader in SaaS-based benefits administration technology, and Benefits Science Technologies (BST), a leading provider of healthcare and insurance data analytics solutions for enterprise customers, today announced a strategic partnership. The partnership will leverage BST’s academically-supported technology for health plan optimization to drive Businessolver’s continued innovation and its proven record in client delight.
BST, founded in 2012 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists specializing in data analytics, is revolutionizing employee benefits strategy with its proprietary Robust Optimization algorithm. The system takes employers’ existing healthcare data and combines it with predictive modeling to provide specific medical plan recommendations optimized to employers’ budget and population health.
“Year over year, employee benefits consistently account for 30 percent of total yearly payroll costs. When you combine that with the fact that healthcare costs increase each year as well, employers realize they need to seek ways to get smarter about cost-containment – in ways that go beyond the low-hanging fruit of simply shifting higher costs to employees,” said Rae Shanahan, Businessolver Chief Strategy Officer. “Strategic use of data is the next frontier for savvy employers to zero in with greater accuracy on how to best spend healthcare benefit dollars and the return they’ll achieve for that spend in reduced cost and a healthier workforce. We’re happy to be partnering with BST to lead our clients in taking data analytics already available with our system to the next level.”
BST’s analytics engine stratifies risk and identifies cost drivers to produce insights on global risk factors within a population. The customized recommendations in its optimized health plans drive average first-year savings between 5 percent and 15 percent. The BST platform is:
Connected. BST gathers all healthcare-related data in a single, secure warehouse, breaking down traditional silos – medical claims, prescription claims, biometrics, plan data and expenses, wellness programs, and eligibility – allowing analysis of all benefit plan components. This yields a clear, customized view of how health plans are performing according to cost and clinical trends.
Automated. The Robust Optimizer replaces cumbersome spreadsheets and man hours with a combination of supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms. The system is fully accessible with monthly reports generated from data no more than two weeks old to highlight areas of concern, provide an accurate assessment of plan performance, and enhance the ability to manage plans more responsively.
Predictive. Through BST analytics, employers can identify future risk, cash flows, clinical risk, disease progression, and more. This allows plan sponsors and administrators to improve their understanding of what has happened, and how to predict important future trends. Its optimized system is 10 percent to 15 percent more accurate than actuarial science techniques.
Prescriptive. BST takes predictive modeling a step further. Based on a predetermined medical spend goal, Robust Optimization creates millions of plan scenarios based on billions of calculations to recommend the benefits program that best reaches plan objectives. The system recommends medical plan designs tailored to the specific healthcare needs of the employee population, taking into account future predictions about population health and financial shifts to contain costs and maintain quality of care and benefit levels.
“As we like to say, it’s good to know what’s going to happen; it’s better to know what to do about it,” said Stephen Sofoul, BST Co-founder and President. “We empower organizations to better manage their risk, improve the quality of their healthcare benefits, and truly reduce – not just shift – health plan costs.”
In the future, Businessolver may use the BST system to refine the performance of Businessolver’s MyChoice recommendation engine, which helps employees make informed benefits selections based on a series of questions to ascertain life stage, general health knowledge, typical medical spending, financial risk tolerance, and financial readiness to handle a large medical expense.
“Employers aren’t the only ones that can benefit from advanced data science,” Shanahan said. “We look forward to building an even smarter recommendation tool to give employees more personalized information and help them make better benefits decisions for themselves and their families.”
Whether data is leveraged to aid employers or employees, “having data doesn’t mean having information. Having information doesn’t mean having direction. Having direction doesn’t mean having results – and building results requires timely, targeted action,” said Dimitris Bertsimas, BST Co-founder and Chief Scientist. “It’s exciting to have a like-minded partner in Businessolver and help its clients and the employees they serve be on the leading edge of what data can do to make benefits programs more efficient and effective.”
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About Businessolver
Since 1998, Businessolver has delivered market-changing benefits administration technology supported by an intrinsic responsiveness to client needs. It creates client programs that maximize benefit program investment, minimize risk exposure, and engage employees with easy-to-use solutions and communication tools to assist them in making wise and cost-efficient benefit selections. Founded by HR professionals, Businessolver’s unwavering service-oriented culture and secure SaaS platform provide measurable success in its mission to provide complete client delight.
About Benefits Science Technologies (BST)
Launched from the campus of MIT in 2012, BST is recognized as one of the world’s leading research and applied science teams. The company leverages advanced data sciences and machine learning to provide insights and business intelligence to improve the quality of healthcare, while maximizing healthcare spends. BST empowers organizations to make better benefit decisions for their employee health plans – considering an employer’s budget, financial and quality goals, and applying sophisticated analytics, statistical methods, and proprietary Robust Optimization to create specific recommendations. The result is the ability to confidently navigate complex health insurance decisions. BST helps organizations achieve first-year savings of 5 percent to 15 percent with customized recommendations that reduce costs while improving healthcare outcomes.
Media Contacts
Sam Randall, Businessolver
[email protected]
312-240-2771
Mark Hufham, Benefits Science Technologies
[email protected]
770-825-0660