Bigger Isn’t Always Better: What Good Advocacy Looks Like

We can all agree that the healthcare industry is at times extremely frustrating to navigate. The goal of Athos’ Advocacy service is to remove that stress from both the people experiencing hardship and the management teams who are often responsible for figuring out how to help their employees when something goes wrong.

Having experts who are dedicated to helping employees navigate their benefits can positively impact the happiness, productivity, and overall well-being of those who utilize Healthcare Advocacy programs. These services also relieve stress from HR and management teams by handling the inevitable, time-consuming issues that come with fielding healthcare questions.  

More employers are seeing the benefits of this added support extending beyond their employees who utilize it to include veteran HR professionals like Lisa, who after two years of partnership with Athos said:

“Now every chance I get I am guiding people to Athos Advocates. They can help my employees quicker than I can, and that is what's important to me. I can trust they are getting the help they deserve and focus on my job because I'm not stuck trying to sort everything out."

There are many healthcare support and advocacy programs available, some more robust than others, but bigger isn’t always better. The quality of a service has an enormous impact on its worth. We want to highlight some of the reasons that Athos is a worthwhile investment for employers by showing how we stack up against Health Advocate, a pioneer and giant in the industry.  

THE ISSUE...

Allan works for a company that offers Health Advocate as a benefit for employees. He shared a story with us recently about his experience using the benefit for the first time. He was being denied a visit to his physical therapist for exceeding his allowed number of visits—but this was a miscommunication between the office and insurance company, he knew he was still within his limits. However, they were still trying to get him to pay out of pocket for the service.  

We asked Allan about his experience using Health Advocate, we wanted to know what was done to support him resolving the issue and how the experience made him feel about using the service in the future for a similar issue if it were to arise. He said:

“The advocate didn’t do anything I couldn’t do myself. They just connected me to my health insurance and left me to solve the issue with them directly. I didn’t feel much in the way or support. I probably would not call again since after my interaction the issue was still left to me to resolve with my insurance company, who I could have called initially if I knew all they would do was connect me. They didn’t really offer any additional advice about my actual problem.”

THE ATHOS WAY

If Allans' employer offered Athos Health as an added benefit to his insurance package, he would have contacted our Advocates about the same claims issue and the following steps would have been taken:

• His personal advocate would get background information from Allan about what had happened to ensure they had all the information needed to solve the issue completely, and as quickly as possible. This may include asking him for access to his online insurance portal, or for copies of relevant documents/bills which he could provide via the secure Athos Member Portal.  
• His advocate would have personally called the insurance company, and ultimately the provider on his behalf to get them to re-submit the claim to the insurance, solving the problem.
• Once the issue was resolved, Allan would receive a call or message from his Athos Advocate to notify him about the outcome and ask if he had remaining questions or concerns regarding the issue.

DOING THE LEGWORK

Our Advocates are experts in getting things done. They are the ones making the calls (sitting on hold), sifting through medical bills and reading the fine print, following up with providers, collecting and sending documentation...  

Allan’s issue was fairly simple to solve, but still frustrating and time-consuming for him, especially since he didn’t cause the issue in the first place.  

We firmly believe that doing the leg work is what makes our service invaluable to our members and their employers, who most often do not have the time or patience to sort it out on their own. This is what good Healthcare Advocacy looks like, and we are committed to providing it to each one of our members.  

LET’S TALK.

At Athos we believe it is important to partner with our clients to ensure that their employees know what services are available to them and that they are using them to their advantage—we help people get the most out of the money they spend on their healthcare benefits.

Are you a broker or employer looking for more information? Let’s talk! We’d love to tell you more about what we do, and help you make confident decisions about working with the team of health advocates that will best support the goals and needs of your clients, company and employees.