The elusive promise of integration

Healthcare navigation solutions have continued to rise in popularity as an adjunct benefit to employer-sponsored health insurance. But many of them fail to live up to their names. Consider this common scenario: A member is routed by their health insurance to an “integrated” navigation solution, only to find themselves unable to find the answers they need and ultimately end up back where they started. We call it “boomeranging.” When navigation solutions that are supposed to be integrated with your health plan do a subpar job of actually integrating, it begs the question: Is the juice worth the squeeze? As one employer told us:

Point solutions complicate the entire benefits program. Let’s say I implement a diabetic program. Then I turn around and get a hypertension program with somebody else. And then I say that we’re going to do a weight loss program with somebody else… and I start doing all these individual things. What happens is people get confused—even more confused than they are today. And it makes my job more challenging. There are more contracts, more communications during open enrollment and more costs. So, determining an ROI becomes more challenging.

As a health plan that surrounds itself with the best, we’re excited to announce our strategic collaboration with Celeste, a first-of-its-kind health navigation company that finally makes good on the promise of true integration. 

More than just a third-party vendor: true integration

Celeste is more deeply integrated than virtually any other health navigation solution on the market. It connects members to everything they need to take care of their health. With Celeste, integration isn’t just a promise—it’s built into every interaction.

What makes Celeste work is also what makes it unique: a shared operational model with Skai that enables deep, bi-directional data integration. Unlike other navigation solutions that sit on the sidelines, Celeste and Skai function as an integrated ecosystem, fully leveraging Skai’s advanced data collection, health economics and data science expertise.

Through this seamless collaboration, Celeste gains access to a comprehensive view of claims data, along with nontraditional member insights such as risk levels, social determinants of health (SDoH) and engageability.

Celeste is laying the foundation to transform data into actionable intelligence, ensuring that everyone—from Skai case managers and utilization management teams to Celeste Care Advocates and primary care doctors—operates from a unified, 360-degree view of each member’s health and care options.

This kind of deep integration has tangible benefits for members and employers alike, including:

• Maximized benefits utilization: Celeste proactively notifies members of solutions they might not have otherwise known about. For example, a member with diabetes might be informed that their employer offers a dedicated diabetes management program. 
• Whole-person, personalized outreach: With more data and sophisticated data science capabilities comes the ability to provide more tailored, comprehensive and proactive care.
• Seamless member experience: Shared workflows and deeper collaboration behind the scenes eliminate friction, ensuring members never feel like they’re being redirected between disconnected services.
• High member satisfaction: As one Celeste member put it: “What makes Celeste great for me is that I just have one place to go for everything. Whatever I need, I can just fire up my Celeste app and it gets me right where I need to be with a single point of entry. It’s convenient—and that’s how things should be in life.”

How do we know this type of deep partnership is exactly what employers are looking for? Because they’ve told us. Here’s what we’ve heard from HR decision-makers at a variety of large national employers:

• “When we perceive a gap in a certain area, we try to work with our primary medical insurer to embed that third party with the health insurer. Or, even more favorably, we would prefer the insurer provide those services directly to our employees. It just works a lot better.”
• The big carriers definitely have some solutions in place that employers can take advantage of, and some benefits folks like to keep contained within one carrier. That’s really attractive.”
• “To be able to tell an employee that they only have one number to call instead of getting bounced around multiple times—that’s really awesome to think about.”

With Celeste and Skai working in true collaboration, integration isn’t just an idea. It’s a reality.

Would you like to learn more about how your members can have access to Celeste? Contact us today for more information.