Leadership Exchange

Campus resources. Assess the image, scope, capability, and accessibility of campus health, counseling, and psychological services to understand the likely use by students and the potential needs of community providers. Also consider whether or not behavioral health care provided on campus is billable to the university-sponsored insurance plan.

Plan history. Complement the campus care assessment with a request to the university-endorsed insurance carrier for distribution models illustrating the numbers of students who exhausted visit and dollar maximums.

Panel affiliations. Consider the percentage of community behavioral health care providers affiliated with your university-endorsed plan. The more robust the network of providers agreeing to contracted rates, the more likely it is students will maximize the plan benefits and reduce out-of-pocket costs.

Plan sophistication/other resources. Some institutions may partner with sponsored carriers to offer emerging, commercially available products and services to better complement campus care and help ensure student support. Those services may include automated disease-management programs that analyze student health and counseling provider encounter data together with community provider data; 24-hour student assistance programs; and specialty pharmacy benefits designed to maximize benefits programs for the chronically ill.

A Positive Impact on Access

While institutions have the ability to control benefits for those electing university-sponsored plans, they have little or no control over the adequacy of family or individual plans that the vast majority of students carry with them to campus. With the increasing popularity of consumer-directed health plans, many of which carry annual deductibles ranging between $1,500 and $5,000, it is more important than ever for students and parents to consider the true cost—premium and out-of-pocket expenses—of a family plan versus the university-sponsored plan. They must also carefully consider potential limitations of family and individual plans for care, other than emergency treatment, if the student lives far from home.

The nation will continue to focus on health care access, affordability, and quality in the months leading up to this fall’s general election. University administrators can have a positive impact on access for the nation’s students by attempting to customize student health insurance and benefits programs to complement campus resources. Understanding the true costs associated with university-sponsored programs and how plan design affects students is paramount to that undertaking. _LE

Brian St. Hilaire is senior director of market relations for Aetna Student Health based in Cambridge, Mass., where he manages business development activities and client and producer relations, as well as the company’s quarterly publication, Student Health Spectrum.