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Altiqe founder says employers must design benefits for human behavior
One Altiqe client with about 800 employees has kept its healthcare budget flat for four years while expanding what the plan covers, now at about 83 percent of budget.
Allison De Paoli, founder of San Antonio-based Altiqe, argues that benefit design often fails because it ignores what she calls the human behavior required to use health coverage. She says advisors frequently focus on what a plan offers, but not on how members will adjust to access it, and she frames the solution as either designing coverage that requires less member behavior change or pairing plan design with a member adjustment plan.
De Paoli says Altiqe, which pivoted fully into health insurance in 2018 and works with employers nationwide, has produced what she calls concrete results. She points to a client with about 800 employees that has not increased its healthcare budget in four years even as it expanded plan coverage, with the client running at 83 percent of budget this year.
A key part of her approach, she says, is protecting patient agency and encouraging members to take their time with medical decisions. She encourages plan members to slow down before choosing care and to seek a second opinion if something does not feel right, adding that high-quality doctors should welcome that.
In a workplace health example, the story describes an employee who spent months worrying after a routine assessment referral to a medical specialist. By the time the appointment occurred, the specialist reassured the employee there was no immediate concern and recommended follow-up tests as a precaution and to establish a baseline for future care.