The board of trustees at the college has voted to alter the design in order to become a self-insured model.
The board of trustees at the University of Central Arkansas has now put the school’s health insurance program in the spotlight as it will be changing the current design for employees to one that is based on a self-insured model.
The changes that have been made to the coverage program will go into effect in January.
When the insurance program changes were put to a vote, they were passed unanimously by the board and not a single staff or faculty member spoke out in opposition to it. According to the associate vice president of human resources, Graham Gillis, United Healthcare will be responsible for the administration of the self-insured plan. That plan was chosen based on the results of a study that indicated that it would have generated a savings for the college of $1.3 million had it been implemented over the previous 24 months.
The new health insurance plan will not cause any benefits or rates to change for the employees in 2016.
The new self-insurance model will allow the University of Central Arkansas to have access to aggregate data that will provide them with more information about the driving forces behind the greatest expenses. At the same time, Gillis was careful to point out that this data will be collected anonymously for the purpose of identifying trends and will not reveal the specific healthcare information of any individual person.
The university also plans to come up with a comprehensive wellness program and will hire a full-time wellness coordinator, according to the board meeting’s agenda.
Many companies and colleges are starting to look into those types of plans and programs to complement their health insurance coverage, as they can help to minimize their costs through these preventative methods. By encouraging healthier lifestyles through a number of different means – for example, more healthful eating and regular fitness-appropriate exercise – it can mean that employees will be at a lower risk of certain preventable illnesses and conditions and will, therefore, be less reliant on their health insurance programs to be able to keep themselves well.
