In 2009, The SCOOTER Store management was facing increasingly high costs for its employees’ health coverage. If left unabated, these expenses could have forced the firm to cut its operations costs, such as scaling back on new hires or reducing wages and compensation.

The SCOOTER Store, a supplier of power mobility devices, including wheelchairs, scooters and ramps, has some 2,800 employees and serves more than 550,000 customers in 48 states.
“Our claims were skyrocketing like everyone else’s, and we just decided we’ve had the wrong approach,” said Deanna Scott, vice president of human resources and corporate operations at The SCOOTER Store. So, in September 2009, the company decided to tackle its high health care costs in a new way.

Leveraging Technology to Lower Costs

The SCOOTER Store needed a way to bring disparate health care information together into usable dashboards. Scott hired WellNet Healthcare Group, a national health care management company, to implement health care performance management (HPM) technology. The goal was to manage and lower health care costs by analyzing employee medical claims data and identifying workers who are at a high risk of developing costly medical conditions. Armed with this information, the organization’s leaders would be better able to develop campaigns that encourage members to improve their health and help the company reduce costs.

The organization used the HPM software to consolidate its insurance management in a single system. Instead of having a separate vendor for each component of a health plan such as medical and prescription data or member management and clinical services, HPM puts control of coverage in one location.

The data collected then serves as the basis for a performance management system with preventative health care measures — such as wellness programs, opportunities for workers to take advantage of health coaching from registered nurses, outreach campaigns to improve employee adherence to prescription drug regimens or to encourage use of low-cost generic alternatives — targeted to specific workforce health risks.