TPA works with agents to help employers stabilize healthcare costs for employees and improve wellness
Employers, as well as their agents and brokers, are always searching for new employee benefit management tools that can help them control steadily rising healthcare costs. Most traditional strategies for plan designs, including medical network discounts, wellness programs and cost-sharing with employees, have met with limited success.
But employers who self-fund employee benefit plans have many more opportunities to directly affect healthcare costs and the factors that influence them, says Julie D. Mueller, president and chief executive officer of Custom Design Benefits, LLC, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Custom Design Benefits is the city's largest third-party administrator that manages benefits, claims and compliance services for self-funded employers. The company was founded in 1991 and reorganized in January 2016 with ownership by a small group of local investors organized by Thomas Munninghoff, founding member of Munninghoff, Lange & Company, a Covington, Kentucky-based CPA firm.