HFMA VIEWS

Scott MacStravic, PhD

There has always been at least a logical connection between banks and healthcare organizations (HCOs). As financial services institutions, banks relate to people’s “wealth assets” in much the same was as do HCOs relate to people’s “health assets”. They can restore, protect and improve their customers’ wealth in largely the same ways that HCOs restore, protect and improve their patients’ health. Of course, banks do much more to protect and improve, while HCOs do much more to restore the assets they work with.

But with the emergence of consumer-directed-health plans (CDHPs) and various kinds of health spending accounts (HSAs) that are permanent personal health//wealth accounts, banks are becoming potential partners for HCOs that are willing to do more on the protecting and improving side of their “asset management. The explicit aim of HSAs is to turn consumers into prudent purchasers of health care, and effective managers of their own health. Both of these aims, if achieved to any significant degree, will help and be helped by effective asset management of health and wealth.

As it is now, banks and other financial institutions will serve primarily as repositories, interest-payers, and payment-makers for HSAs, enabling consumer clients to store, earn interest, and manage the deductibles and required payments out of their accounts. But since it will be in both the banks’ and their clients’ best interests to preserve as much of the HSA account as possible, for as long as possible, they may also be willing to partner with HCOs who can deliver similar benefits to the same clients.

Not that I think it a realistic possibility that banks will contribute financially to proactive health management (PHM) efforts by HCOs, aimed at either their own employees, as a cost savings strategy, or at local employers’ employees, as a revenue/profit-generating strategy. I have never experienced anything from banks that would suggest such generosity. But they may well become co-marketers and supporters of HCOs’ efforts.

It would be a simple and virtually costless matter, for example, for banks to stuff their monthly account reports mailings with a flyer about the HCO’s PHM services. Including notices and sending e-mails promoting the general value of PHM to HAS protection would be almost equally easy, with so many bank customers already banking online. The only way to find out what banks would be willing to do is to approach them and see if they also see and appreciate the partnership potential. After all, if their clients seen protecting HSA assets as a valuable benefit, they are more likely to remain bank customers, as well as to become or remain the HCO’s customers.