Milliman's health and welfare administrative services streamline complex administration requirements to effectively and efficiently provide benefits, which in turn increases their value and visibility to employees. We partner with our clients to execute their goals for offering and managing their benefit plans. This often means stepping outside of the one-size-fits-all solution to implement the most efficient, accurate administrative processes for their organization.

We reduce plan and administration costs by:

• Applying business rules for administration, ensuring only those employees entitled to benefits receive them.
• Moving the health and welfare enrollment and management process to a paperless environment for all benefits through one enrollment portal.
• Providing on-line tools to streamline open enrollment and increase employee self-service.
• Enforcing dependent eligibility rules to make sure only eligible spouses, domestic partners, and children are enrolled in the plan.
• Synchronizing benefits administration with payroll, eliminating or reducing the need for manual entry and thus minimizing the occurrence of deduction errors.
• Eliminating redundant administration processes and ensuring the remaining processes are managed consistently.

We add value by:

• Decreasing the time HR professionals spend on paperwork, increasing accessibility to employees and availability for strategic initiatives.
• Providing employees 24/7 online access to their benefit information, increasing the visibility of employers' valuable contributions.
• Empowering employees to manage their elections and verify their accuracy online, from any computer.
• Assisting employees with eligibility and enrollment questions.

Our services apply to both active employee and retiree populations.

Dependent eligibility verification audits

As the fiduciary of the plan, sponsors are obligated to offer benefits only to those employees and dependents that meet the eligibility definition. With recent healthcare reform changes to the definition of an eligible child, this can be more challenging to enforce. In addition, various state requirements have expanded coverage requirements for both children and domestic partners, increasing the difficulty of managing dependent eligibility.

A full dependent audit can establish a baseline for ongoing management of dependent eligibility.

Case study

One multiemployer plan decided to audit their dependent population before they were required to expand the definition of a dependent child to age 26. Prior to the effective date of the change, they utilized Milliman's dependent verification services.

At the beginning of the audit, there were 6,000 members covering 13,600 dependents. The audit identified over 2,000 dependents—both children and spouses—who were not eligible to continue coverage in the plan.

This 18% drop in dependent enrollment will result in an immediate cost savings for the plan. In addition, the audit process sent a message to members: Before a spouse or child(ren) can be added to coverage, the member must provide proof to validate relationship of the dependent to the member.