How Scott Uses HealthBook+ to Reduce Healthcare Spend While Empowering Employees
"When I go to the doctor, I feel empowered because I've got this application"
At Towne Properties, health insurance spending is the second-largest expense on the company's profit and loss statement. The property management business has roughly 900 employees at peak periods. It is self-insured, giving CFO Scott Arentsen a direct interest in helping people find good care at a reasonable cost.
"The most challenging part of managing that many people in a plan is trying to navigate all of the different hospital systems and steer our employees to those that provide the best care for the best price," he says.
For Scott, the difficulty is helping employees make those choices when they need care. Questions may arise about where to go, what the plan covers, and how much the employee will pay, so Towne Properties is using HealthBook+ alongside its direct primary care program to make that information easier to access.
Giving primary care providers access to health records
A primary care provider needs access to a patient's full medical history, including records of lab results, diagnoses, and treatments. Bringing those records together gives the provider more context for the person's current concerns. It also helps patients track care across different practices.
Towne Properties uses HealthBook+ to help bring that information into its direct primary care program.
"It was a way to bridge the gap between these direct primary care providers and folks' historical medical records that have been kind of locked away at the big hospital systems," Scott says.
Empowering employees to ask questions about their health
Employees also have access to PaiGE™, HealthBook+'s clinician-led AI partner. Scott sees it as a solution for people to ask health questions and gather information they can discuss with their physician.
"PaiGE enables our team to ask questions about their health if they're having symptoms," he says. "This is a way that you can work within a HIPAA-safe environment…and ask your questions. You can share that information with your doctor."
That ability to share information with a doctor is central to what Scott values. It gives physicians richer context before an appointment so they can deliver more focused care. For Scott, this capability makes him feel prepared and confident during visits, knowing his doctor has full context. Tracking questions and symptoms between checkups transforms brief conversations into productive discussions that benefit both patients and providers.
Making benefits information useful when care is needed
Towne Properties is also working to make its own plan information available through HealthBook+. Scott describes adding details about benefits, coverage, and costs.
"They're onboarding all of our health plans, what the benefits are, how much we pay, how much our employees pay for given procedures," Scott says. "So you can ask PaiGE, 'What's this going to cost me, and what are my options in terms of providers?'"
He uses imaging as an example of how this could help. An employee who needs an MRI may have options outside a hospital system. Understanding those options and the costs under their plan would give them more confidence in their decision on where to have the scan.
"The hospital is going to just send you to their MRI, and they're going to charge much more than a third-party MRI provider," he says. "So PaiGE will direct you to a private MRI facility that provides the same service, but will greatly reduce your copay and will greatly reduce our company's costs."
Scott sees an opportunity for both employees and the company to benefit from those choices.
"So that's a win-win for both the patient and for me as the self-insured employer."
Using the app himself
Scott also uses HealthBook+ to keep track of his own health. Along with information about past care, the app gives him a place to make notes between visits.
"My HealthBook+ app has all of my previous doctor visits, all of my kind of conditions or previous ailments or surgeries. It's all online. And I can document in between physicals any issues I'm having that may not rise to the occasion of going to the doctor."
Those notes give him something to refer back to when it's time for an appointment. Before a physical, he also asks PaiGE what he should discuss with his doctor.
"When I go to the doctor, I feel empowered because I've got this application, more so than if I was just going in and trying to remember what it was that I thought I needed to talk to the doctor about over the last twelve months."
Watch more stories like Scott's in our "Seeing the Whole Person" video series.
