Writing in California Broker magazine, OptumHealth’s Kristin Komen offers advice about how to use the months right after benefits enrollment to educate and inform new health savings account (HSA) owners. The results, she writes, are satisfied clients today and solid groundwork for the next year’s open enrollment period.

A mid-sized manufacturer decided to replace its medical coverage with a consumer-directed health plan with health savings accounts (HSAs). The company educated its workforce extensively during open enrollment, contributed generously to employees’ HSAs, and followed up with employees early in the plan year.

Every division reported high satisfaction with the new plan and the HSA – but for one.

What was different about that outlier? It had rolled out the plan without following the communication strategy from headquarters, giving workers just one opportunity – at the open enrollment meeting – to learn how to get the most for their health care dollars.

Absent any follow-up, employee buy-in at that division fell well behind the rest of the workforce and continued to lag for several years.

The clear lesson is that ongoing engagement of employees is key to the success of health plans accompanied by HSAs. Brokers can play a key role in this, from helping employers address early-year questions to reinforcing basic education with some simple yet effective techniques that help ease the transition for employees new to HSAs.

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