New bereavement cost calculator shows that sadness is expensive – Healthcare Blog
Emma Payne
Sadness is expensive. In addition to major human impacts, studies have shown that bereavement leads to a 20%-30% increase in health care utilization.
Sorrow is also common. While we may not want to talk about it, 37% of Americans feel sad in recent deaths. Over the past five years, the United States has died on average every year, and data shows that an average of nine people feel sad. The CDC first began measuring bereavement in 2021, but most health plans have not yet measured the incidence or cost of grief.
So we decided to take a look. This is just some of what we have found.
When members are in bereavement, health programs (especially those serving older adults) see a significant jump in utilization and costs across multiple claims categories. Examples include:
●Emergency visits increased by 51%, bereavement spouses increased by 43%, and their partners died in hospitals
●In the first year of bereavement, the risk of mental illness hospitalization for parents who have lost their children is 67% higher
●In the nine years after the spouse's death, 74% of husbands and 67% of wives were hospitalized at least once
●The odds of antidepressants increased by 463%
These increases have led to a rapid increase in claims costs, especially among people over the age of 65. But how much are these costs? What measures can insurance companies do to mitigate them?
To make these hidden costs visible, my team created a tool in the help text that a health plan can be used to simulate the financial impact of bereavement. Only the number of members, the bereavement cost calculator for help text will estimate the health plan:
●After bereaved, the estimated monthly membership (PMPM) cost increases
●The total cost of sadness when intervention is not provided
● Estimated savings plan provides clinical voice for members who have lost their loved ones when planning to provide help texts with clinical voice, scalable, sad support
Consider the 250,000 Medicare Advantage plans over 65 years old. It should expect:
●11,500 members grieved about the death of their partner or child
●81,500 members will feel sad about other losses (e.g., parents, siblings, friends)
●Average PMPM increase (no intervention): $110
●Estimated total cost impact of the first year (no intervention): $123 million
●Estimated first-year savings on help text: $1.3 million
What can health plans do to save money and improve care and outcomes for their members? These numbers are powerful, suggesting that grief is expensive, but bereavement provides a clear opportunity to provide influential upstream interventions that can save millions while at the same time being the loneliest period of their lives.
Help text is a clinically reliable, scalable bereavement intervention. Help texts provide affordable multilingual grief support via text messages in subscribers in 59 countries and all 50 states. Through extraordinary acceptability (95%) and 6-month retention (90%), light weight solutions that help text make it easier for health programs and others to improve health and community outcomes, while also achieving significant cost savings for their caregivers.
Health plans, especially the Medicare Advantage program, can use the new bereavement cost calculator to estimate the true cost of bereavement from help text and the cost savings when providing grief support. Bereavement cost calculator for helping texts finds the potential for saving while caring for sad members. In less than a minute, you can start to see the cost of bereavement and how much you save by supporting members to lose their loved ones.
Because the real cost of bereavement is not only emotional, but also financial. For health plans, solving this is the smartest investment you can make.
Emma Payne is CEO of Help Text
