Our company recently enhanced our employee benefits program to allow our plan participants to be able to schedule a virtual checkup through our corporate health plan. Since I just completed the process yesterday, I thought I would share perspectives as both a patient and professional employee benefits consultant who works with self-funded plan sponsors.
There are a few reasons why I took a special interest in participating. First, the founder of the company providing this service to our firm is a serial healthcare entrepreneur in Dallas who tried to help me when I launched my startup. Second, my wife just returned from a women’s league trip to Santa Barbara and when she got home she told me stories she heard from other wives. Sadly, there was one of a husband who detected cancer in a later stage - he survived - but it provided enough of a scare for her and all the wives to get after their husbands on getting routine checkups. Third, I have been lax in getting my routine check-up with my primary care physician each year and am now no longer considered an existing patient. I have to register as a new patient and my PCP is not taking any more new patients. So … A virtual check-up is what my company,, and my wife ordered.
The Sign-Up Process
Our company did a great job here along with the service provider in terms of laying out the value proposition, identifying that it was fully covered and providing the simple registration link to have the kit sent to my house.
Unboxing
Okay … the experience was not like when I received my first iPhone. In fact, the box remained in my office for a few days just nagging me to get on with it. I suspect there are some who never get around to doing it. There was a message on the box to complete it by a certain date which I am sure had little to do with spoilage and more to do with behavioral economics. The contents were laid out nicely and they made it simple to point me to an instruction video and a Getting Started card.
The Blood Draw
This was definitely the part that most would find intimidating. They included two plastic lancets in the package. I ended up needing the second one because I pricked myself and anticipated the blood to start flowing. It did not, so I thought I did not puncture deeply enough and used the second lancet to make sure I got a good finger prick. I learned that I needed to apply pressure to my finger to milk the four droplets out of my finger. The second prick was unnecessary.
The Mailing
This was a simple process to apply the pre-adhesive coded labels onto my lap specimen (blood sample) and mail off the package to get my biometric results.
Virtual Consult
I already knew that the nurse practitioner or physician would tell me that I need to lose weight and my waist circumference needs to shrink. As I learned from one of my former colleagues, Dr. Tim Church, one of the country’s foremost obesity researchers, “It is not what you weigh, but where you weigh that matters.” The key metrics that I look forward to receiving from the lab are all data points from the blood draw (blood sugar, triglycerides, etc.. ) that I like to track year over year.
Feedback for Service Provider and Plan Sponsors
I did find the process convenient and a big time saver doing it at home. I got to keep the blood pressure cuff and tape measure and will be routinely measuring my waist again. I feel the best practice for plan sponsors is to encourage employees to establish a medical home and build a relationship with a primary care provider. Companies can provide a form for physicians to complete that maintains confidentiality, yet enables the group and their consultants to measure longitudinal results on the group. The next best option if an employer has enough employees in one location is to schedule onsite biometrics. This is just a convenient way to get it done and a favorite of mine (pre-COVID) when we all were in a central office site. This is more difficult in blue-collar manufacturing sites where people cannot easily get off the line and leave their production shift.
Notes for Service Provider:
I did not see any instructions until I got to the video that indicated that I should not eat anything. I knew this was common practice so I did my own research and made sure I had nothing to eat for twelve hours prior to testing. This is something I would make more clear prior to launching the video. I was instructed to hydrate with water at the beginning of the video and did this immediately in the morning before testing.
I did try and turn on the blood pressure cuff a number of times. It was frustrating to not find a Power Button on the device. It was only after reading the fine print that I learned that it was not working because there were no batteries in the device. The package came with batteries but I expected to just be able to turn it on and start using it. I understand keeping the batteries packaged separately preserves their use.
Being ultra clear when there are additional parts/supplies. If you have ever put together a piece of furniture from IKEA and had parts left over, you wonder if you did something wrong. There were two lancets and I would have made it clear that the second one is an extra. Additionally, we used two stickers and I would have indicated on the form that the other two were for INTERNAL use. It made me wonder if I was supposed to apply the other two stickers somewhere else after I used the two of the four that we were instructed to peel off.
The blood draw required me to use both lancets. It was not immediately clear that I had to milk my finger to get four good full droplets.
Bottom Line: This is a useful market solution that remedies the lack of interactions with physicians precluded from seeing patients during COVID or where a patient might live in a rural area far from a primary care physician or nurse practitioner or in situations like mine when the wait times to go see a doctor become cumbersome. Due to the convenience - I would not hesitate to recommend this to the right type of employer group as part of the arsenal around preventive medicine.