How TPAs Can Select and Maximize Their Benefits Administration Platform
As a third party administrator, selecting the right benefits administration platform can be the difference between streamlined, operationally-efficient work and a manual process-ridden headache. An inefficient benefits administration platform can hinder your ability to deliver excellent service to your brokers, employers, and their customers.
When benefit TPAs approach any part of administration manually, tasks like member enrollment, data collection, EOB processing, and other critical services can become time-consuming and raise the risk of accidental errors. TPAs can boost the accuracy and efficiency of their benefits administration with a benefits administration platform that fits their needs and lets them focus on the tasks that matter most.
Whether you’re choosing a benefits administration platform or transitioning from your current software to a new one, read on to learn what important factors TPAs should consider when selecting a benefits administration platform and how to get the most out of the one you choose with valuable integrations.
Our Integrations Make Your Work Easier: At TPA Stream, we offer comprehensive integrations that speak to the unique pain points and operational processes of TPAs like you. Learn more about how integrations like Claims Harvesting and Employer Invoicing save you time and support your needs.
Popular Third Party Benefits Administration Platforms
TPAs have an array of choices when selecting a benefits administration platform, each with unique offerings. The four most popular choices for benefits administration include:
Alegeus
As a leader in customer satisfaction with a reach of over 100 million consumers, Alegeus offers exceptional benefits administration through its innovative offerings. Alegeus combines efficiency-driven AI with personalized support to help employees save money on healthcare and businesses make strategic savings decisions on their benefit plans based on real data.
- Consumer Directed Healthcare (CDH)
✓ Pros: Alegeus offers unlimited plan configurations to accommodate different needs by employer or plan type. They boast frictionless administration, meant to reduce errors and simplify the consumer experience. Built-in analytics give insights to grow your TPA business. White labeling is available.
- Alegeus WealthCare COBRA
✓ Pros: Alegeus offers this flexible cloud-based software to meet the unique needs of every employer with a modern user experience and integrated banking and billing technologies. Adaptive reporting offers critical insight that allows you to make valuable decisions with the information you need easily at hand.
WEX Health
WEX Health is a rapidly growing global go-getter in simplifying healthcare benefit solutions, and their millions of customers in over 200 countries and territories around the world agree. WEX Health delivers personalized, integrated benefits administration plans to large and small businesses alike, reducing complexity and costs to make healthcare simple.
- CDH
✓ Pros: WEX Health allows this plan to be tailored to your unique needs and provides automated, customized communication to keep you updated. On-demand, robust reporting capabilities and mobile app compatibility help highlight important data as you make decisions on the fly.
- COBRA
✓ Pros: WEX Health strives for a streamlined experience in this offering, with automated monitoring options and a mobile app that allows you to stay connected with ease. Real-time payment updates and integrated billing processing features provide key insight into what’s happening right when it happens.
DataPath
As the longest-running platform with a proven record of delivering innovative saving solutions, high-quality customer service, and a thoughtful user experience that simplifies benefits administration for all, it’s clear why DataPath is still a popular choice, even after over four decades of operation. Their cloud-based platform comes with unique integrations and automation aimed to make the lives of employers, employees, and TPAs easier and happier.
- CDH
✓ Pros: Whether you need a full suite of offerings from HSA to FSA to Billing services, or you need only one or two specific services, DataPath’s plan can be customized to your precise requirements. Easily manage your account with mobile app access and a refined user-friendly cloud-based interface. - COBRA
✓ Pros: Global record keeping and automated, on-demand reporting features keep your information secure and easily available as you need it. With direct billing and seamless management capabilities, this cloud-based platform seeks to streamline your operations.
Homegrown Solutions
Unique to every business that employs them, homegrown solutions to health benefits administration are developed in-house and tailored to the specific desires of the company. The benefit of a homegrown solution is that it is entirely customizable and can be easily edited as needs shift, but some companies shift away from homegrown benefit administration platforms because they can be difficult to scale and maintain as the business grows.
- ✓ Pros: Homegrown solutions are uniquely constructed to suit your exact needs, and when those needs fluctuate, your system can be tweaked accordingly. With the right technology and team, your homegrown system can be fine tuned to include the integrations you would find the most beneficial to your unique process.
- ✗ Cons: Difficult to scale and maintain.
Each option above offers unique advantages to TPAs, which should be carefully considered as you select your benefits administration platform.
Is it Time to Transition to a New Benefits Administration Platform?
Choosing the right benefits administration platform takes time, and the choice is never set in stone. One common reason TPAs shift to a new platform is the drive to consolidate software costs. If your current platform has performance or capability gaps that you must fill using other software or people resources, that can become costly quickly. Eliminate unnecessary costs by consolidating your benefits administration software into a solution that can help you eliminate manual administration work.
If your needs have shifted or you wish for better features from your current platform, now might be the time to make the switch to a new system. Efficiency is a key component of what makes a benefits administration platform better than its competitors, so consider transitioning to a platform that will save you time on certain tasks so you can maximize your efforts where it matters most.
How to Pick your Perfect Benefits Administration Platform
As a TPA, it’s critical to equip yourself with the technology and tools that can simplify certain tedious tasks so you can devote your time to the responsibilities that really make a difference for your clients and their customers. Consider these critical factors as you narrow down your options:
- Ease of Use – A benefits administration platform should make your TPA processes easier, not more complicated. Explore your platform options and determine how easy and intuitive they are to use. The right platform for your needs and responsibilities feels natural to use, not confusing or cumbersome.
- Flexibility – Flexibility is a key feature for your benefits administration platform because as your desires and duties shift from client to client and when individual clients expand, you want a platform that supports these shifts. Flexible administration platforms can be personalized to your unique needs, no matter how they change and grow.
- Customer Service – When you have questions and concerns, promptly connecting with a professional, polite customer service agent is a top priority. It’s important to feel confident that you’ll get the support you need when you need it.
- Integration Abilities – The best benefits administration platforms won’t restrict integration and limit what you can do. Integrations like Claims Harvesting and Employer Invoicing, which TPA Stream offers, serve as unlimited opportunities for innovation, efficiency, and exceptional usability.
Once you’ve chosen a platform, it’s time to maximize its potential.
Go Beyond with Innovative Integrations
Benefits administration platforms are valuable tools, but they’re made even more powerful when you use one of their fully integrated partners like TPA Stream. We go beyond benefits processing with our innovative integrations like claims harvesting, employer invoicing, enrollment integrations, and much more.
Our Claims Harvesting integration can reduce the clerical work associated with substantiation and reimbursement by securely collecting participant EOBs. Using these EOBs and handling this part of the process digitally, you’ll greatly reduce the amount of manual work associated with claims reimbursement. This saves valuable time and lets you devote your efforts to improving your customer experience.
Our Employer Invoicing offering integrates seamlessly into these benefits administration programs and connects the dots between your benefits administration platform and your accounting software. This seamless, comprehensive integration allows you to focus on what matters most: keeping your clients informed of critical decision-making data, providing exceptional customer service, and winning more customers.
Make the Most out of Your Benefits Administration Platform with TPA Stream
TPA Stream has been making the lives of TPAs easier for nearly a decade and is a trusted partner of Alegeus, WEX Health, and DataPath. We integrate with each of these popular benefits administration platforms to help you take automation further across your business. We saw TPAs across the country using these benefits administration platforms to their fullest advantage, but still handling a TON of work manually including the work of enrollment, claims substantiation, and invoicing.
Our automated solutions allow the accuracy of your work to soar and help ensure you never miss errors or payments. Our robust offerings save you time with key automation and personalized solutions so you can boost your customer satisfaction and earnings with ease. If you’re ready to maximize your benefits administration platform with TPA Stream, a trusted platform built to deliver essential support to TPAs like you, contact us today or request a demo.