Authoria Adds Support for Consumer-driven Healthcare to Authoria Employee Advisor

Authoria Inc., the leader in integrated strategic Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, today announced that it has introduced extensive new content to support consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) as part of its release of Authoria Employee Advisor. More large companies like Boeing, Pfizer and Unocal rely on Authoria Employee Advisor for benefits and corporate policy communications and employee self-service than any other solution in its class.

Authoria Employee Advisor delivers a strategic approach to effective employee communication and employee self-service for benefits, total compensation statements, and human resource policy information with out-of-the-box, in-depth content. In addition, Authoria Employee Advisor is tightly integrated with the other elements of the Authoria Advisor suite of strategic human capital management solutions, which allows HR executives to take advantage of the synergies in communications, performance, hiring, succession planning and compensation. For example, Employee Advisor could provide personalized information to a new recruit about medical plans, benefits and policies to ease onboarding through Authoria Hire Advisor™.

The latest release of Authoria Employee Advisor includes extensive CDHP content to help the growing number of enterprises, including many Authoria customers, that have adopted CDHPs as a way to control rapidly escalating healthcare costs. Under these plans, employers give employees a fixed amount of funds that they may use on healthcare expenses. Any money left over at the end of the year is applied to the next year’s fund. If the entire fund is used up, the employee must pay any additional expenses out-of-pocket up to a fixed amount, at which time a catastrophic insurance plan usually takes over. 

“Authoria is committed to supporting the latest trends in human resources and benefits so our customers can benefit from innovative new programs like CDHP,” said Paul Baier, senior vice president of products at Authoria. “With support of CDHP, along with improvements in Web Services integration, usage reporting, single-sign-on capability and customization tracking, Authoria Employee Advisor further distances itself from the rest of the industry as the premier benefits and policy communications solution.”

Clear Communication is Critical to Success of Consumer Driven Health Care
Proponents expect CDHPs to lower costs by making employer healthcare expenditures much more predictable, while also giving employees a financial incentive to use healthcare funds judiciously.

While still in the early stage of adoption, CDHPs are rapidly gaining momentum according to many industry sources:

• According to a recent report issued by Forrester, CDHP enrollment will reach 22 million — or 12 percent of the commercially insured market — by 2008, more than eight times today’s estimated 2.7 million enrollees.
• Seventy percent of employers likely will offer some form of CDHP by 2006, according to a survey conducted by the Federation of American Hospitals and the American Hospital Association.
• According to an Aon Consulting survey of benefits managers in early 2005, 22 percent of companies responding now offer CDHPs and more than half of them have implemented the programs since January 2005

The new version of Authoria Employee Advisor jumpstarts an employer’s CDHP rollout with content on CDHP, Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRA) and Health Savings Accounts (HSA), ensuring that employees can easily learn about their healthcare options.

Other highlights from Authoria’s release of Authoria Employee Advisor 4.3 include:

• Usage Reporting: Authoria Employee Advisor 4.3 includes more than 10 out-of-the-box reports that provide success metrics such as unique visitors, top viewed subjects and plans, top searches and session length. This enables companies to gain valuable insight into employee preferences and identify opportunities for program enhancements.
• Tighter Integration with Web Services: Authoria Employee Advisor 4.3 is now virtually plug-and-play with any standard, Web-services-enabled company portal. This enables customers to enhance their return on investment on their existing portal infrastructure.
• Customization Tracking: Authoria Employee Advisor 4.3 tracks changes and additions to Employee Advisor’s out-of-the box content, giving HR professionals a powerful editing tool for customizing information to suit the specific needs of their companies.
• User Authentication for Single-Sign-on: Single Sign-on authentication ensures employees can seamlessly access password-protected Authoria Employee Advisor from other secure applications.