Empower employees with the health insights that drive smarter decisions.

Marie Holmes: All right, hey everybody, good afternoon and good morning. Thank you for joining our webinar today. I'm joined by Function Health and Blue Raven, so looking forward to a really good conversation.

Marie Holmes: If you have questions as we go along through the presentation, I ask you to just drop them in the Q&A. I'll monitor that as we go along, so if anything pops up, certainly I'll interject and jump in during the presentation. We can go ahead to the agenda slide.

Marie Holmes: Alright, so here's kind of, like, just a quick look at the flow of today. So, first we're going to talk about the shift that we're seeing in employee health expectations, and why, like, there's more of a shift to more proactive care, right? Data-informed approaches, as opposed to just reactive reactive healthcare. Then we'll walk through what this, like, looks like in, you know, in actuality, so the member experience, the diagnostic side, and then how employers are thinking about integrating these types of models into more existing traditional benefit strategies.

After that, we'll jump into the challenge of measuring impact, so oftentimes, the dollars and cents kind of lead these types of conversations, so we'll explore with Nick Allen from Blue Raven, how actual modeling can help cut through a lot of the noise and give employers just a clearer understanding of your outcomes and costs.

And then finally, we'll wrap up with some strategies for rolling these kinds of solutions out, and we'll leave some time for Q&A and a little roundtable discussion. So again, drop your questions in the Q&A as we go, and we'll kind of take it from there.

Marie Holmes: Alright, so I'm Marie Holmes, I'm a solutions consultant here at NAVA. I sit in our kind of consulting umbrella, so I work with prospective employers as well as enforced groups, kind of working through the right smart benefit strategies. So I'll turn it over to Tracy from Function.

Tracy Awe: All right, thanks, Marie. Appreciate you and the Navi team for inviting me here today to share what we're doing at Function. I lead consultant and broker relations here at Function. I'm based in Charleston, South Carolina. I joined Function in February, shortly after they launched their enterprise business, having been direct-to-consumer, since 2023. And, we'll talk more about Function today, but, just briefly, Function. as a whole body, personal health platform that helps people see what's going on with their health before symptoms or even claims show up. And I'm really excited to talk more about this. I'll kick it over to you, Nick.

Nick Allen: Thank you, appreciate that. I'm Nick Allen, founder and CEO of the Raven Actuarial. I've been an actuary for the last 25 years. I've only ever been an employee benefits actuary. I love being an actuary. And, our job at Blue Raven is to help Plan sponsors, TPAs, brokers, really anybody in the U.S. healthcare ecosystem understand why their plans cost what they cost a little bit better, and hope to bring some strategic insight to people when they try and reduce those costs. So, it's a pleasure to be here, and thanks, Marie, for inviting me.

Marie Holmes: Absolutely. Alright, so quick level set, kind of just about who Nava is. So employers today are stuck between just, like, astronomical rising healthcare costs. I think this renewal season is truly the toughest one I've had so far in my career.

Nick, I hope, you know, probably are feeling the same, unfortunately. And employees are expecting just a lot more of their benefits packages, right? So, sort of the traditional, kind of, packages that we all know and love just sometimes aren't enough for employees anymore. And that's where NAVA comes in. So, we sort of sit at the intersection of just modern consulting and strategies and technology. So, hopefully bringing the best of both worlds together. Consultants like myself, help steer clients with smarter benefit strategies. And our technology behind the scenes just makes it much easier to deploy, stronger engagement with employees, and just an easier overall administration package. It's that blend that kind of helps companies deliver real value, we feel, and just a better overall experience for employees.

So, Tracy, I'll turn it over to you to do a function intro.

Tracy Awe: Yeah, sure, thanks, Marie. So at Function, Function is a proactive health platform that helps people take control of their health. As I mentioned earlier, just before symptoms or even claims appear. We do that by giving members access to advanced lab testing, whole body imaging, which I'll talk about a little bit later, and clear insights from licensed clinicians through our clinician notes. All of this allows folks who enroll in our membership to track their results over time so that they have, line of sight into what's changing, they can take action early, when it matters most in order to change the direction in the course of their health if it's not trending in the right direction. We don't consider ourselves a point solution or a perk. Function is more built to support long-term health ownership, and that's what we're actually seeing in a lot of our member feedback, our early member feedback, is that people are feeling motivated, the insights that they get from Function, end up being that catalyzing call to action, which motivates them to take, steps to, address their health opportunities. And taking this ownership, it allows them and, you know, their employers, by extension, to support healthier teams, reduce avoidable costs, and also stay ahead of what's, lurking beneath the surface in their health claims.

Marie Holmes: Awesome. Thanks, Tracy, or Nick, if you could do a Blue Raven intro.

Nick Allen: Yeah, definitely, and I'll be quick, because I think it's all right there. But like I said, we serve the U.S. healthcare ecosystem really in any way that we can through that actuarial lens. So, mostly what that means is that we're providing reporting, insights, analytics, and strategy to plan sponsors, as well as their brokers, advisors, and so on, to make sure that everybody's working in an aligned way to improve their healthcare performance. So it just so happens that our team happens to be Have expertise in healthcare and technology. We have technology backgrounds, most of us work Computer science majors and web developers in past lives, and so we use that to build custom healthcare applications and tools that are really, you know, geared towards helping people understand what their cost is, and then, you know, by virtue of that, making it easier to understand how they can improve their performance.

Marie Holmes: Thanks, Nick. Tracy, you can go ahead and kick us off.

Tracy Awe: Yeah, sure. So, what this slide really is speaking to is, you know, why are we all here today? What is really driving, the need for solutions like function? And in our own experience, what we've been hearing from members, and employers alike, actually, is that there's really a marked cultural shift that's happening, in, just the entire sphere out there. A sentiment that there's a missing layer of personal health. People are really demanding, and asking for, not so much asking, more like demanding, something different in the healthcare system. There's, more of a… if you think about it, everything is centered on the physician. When you go to the doctor once a year for your annual physical. It all centers around the annual physical, and then the other 365 days a year, you're sitting and waiting for results, or, symptoms, rather, to occur. And then when those symptoms happen, you go to the doctor to wait for them to tell you what types of testing they want to order. That is very centered on the healthcare system, the physician, and gatekeeping access to this type of tests and insight into your health. Within the physician practice. And so there's a pulling away from that, pulling away from the healthcare system itself, and a pulling toward the individual to give the individual control and access over these, insights and their ability to feel empowered to take control of their health. This sense of ownership is also happening at the same time as there's a tech overlap. You know, we're all wearing our wearables, our Oura Rings, our Fitbit, we're tracking steps and sleep and heart rate, so it's really a natural evolution to, see this demand broaden into insights into your own biological health, to really want to extend that and marry that up with what you're, tracking on a daily basis in your everyday life. And it's your biology going online. They, you know, function and some of the other tools that are out there allows people to expand the toolkit, to help people take control of their health. Access to this type of personal health data, you know, what we bring to the table, the biomarkers, the scans, the ability to track these changes over time is well beyond what's measured in the annual physical that I talked about earlier, just one time a year with your physician. What we're doing here allows insight into advanced testing that affords a baseline for how people want to engage with their healthcare. And it really is, a long-held vision of access to thousands of clinicians in your pocket that's becoming a reality now, with where technology is, and where it is headed, beyond today. And function ends up being that missing layer of personal health data, and enablement that it allows People to take control of their health and feel confident while they do that.

Marie Holmes: Thanks, Tracy, and I think, like, the biggest… sort of challenge, right, and conversation that happens specifically in, like, the employer-sponsored space is just, like, the ROI of some of these programs. So, adding a new line item to the budget, you know, how can we prove that out to finance as being a valid thing? And so we'll lean heavily on Nick throughout this conversation to kind of give us the actual perspective of that, and how to do it right, really.

Alright, so you can flip to the next slide. So I'm gonna double-click a bit on what Tracy had just mentioned, but, like I had said in my intro, you know, we're just ex… we're seeing that employees are just expecting a lot more of their benefits packages, right? So, there is that cultural shift that Tracy had alluded to, where people kind of want to take just ownership of their health, and not just start looking for sort of the, you know, once-a-year vague advice coming from your provider that you see for a couple of minutes per year. Technology is helping drive that, right? So it's now easier for your workforce, right, your employees, to access and understand their own health data. So, like Tracy had said, we all have our Oura rings, I have mine on, so we have constant information coming at us, right? And it's like, how do we interpret some of that data? And with all of that comes workforce pressures to you and your teams, potentially, right? So personalization is definitely the new norm that we're seeing. People want benefits that fit, like, their lives, right? Not every single person out there. So all of this, in our opinion, creates just, like, a wonderful opportunity for employers to potentially just rethink and retool how we're spending our healthcare dollars, right? And, you know, for our employees and in our organizations.

Right, next slide, please. Okay, go ahead, Tracy.

Tracy Awe: Yeah, thanks, Marie. So, through the function platform, employees get access to over 100 lab tests and optional scans that give them a view of their whole health. their whole body health. Things like heart panel, thyroid panel, metabolic panel, and immune markers, all of these are included and more in our platform. We started out with lab testing, because lab testing is the bedrock of healthcare. 70% of medical decisions and care plans are generated off of lab results.

And then we quickly expanded to include Ezra scans, which is a company that we acquired in May, and then we also offer add-on testing that I'll talk more about in the next couple of slides. All of this is important because having access to this advanced testing and providing the individual with these insights about their own biological health and the state of their health means that they can track these results over time. And that's exactly what makes us different, is that, we don't just show them a snapshot, which is what you get in a typical annual physical, and then the rest of the 365 days, you're kind of solo to make any adjustments that you'd need to, or any health changes. We track these results over time. We offer this so that individuals can see what's changing, and get ahead of any issues before they turn into something bigger, before symptoms occur or, even claims occur.

Everything is really designed for ownership and to inspire and motivate towards that ownership. So, results in the platform, there's a lot of data, in the platform, but then there's also a lot of education and content in the platform to educate people about what they're looking at. Educate them about the biomarker itself, the out-of-range result, and why it might be out of range, things that they can do to impact that, which are, you know, generally, almost always centered around the things that are, very easy, but yet so hard for all of us, nutrition, physical activity, stress, sleep. But then there are other recommendations in the platform, and certainly, there are There are tools in the platform that help support the physician conversation. So you can download your results easily from the platform in order to have an informed conversation with your doctor, and feel more confident having that conversation and advocating for yourself.

So, at the end of the day, function is really not about just adding another wellness platform, or a wellness program or PERC. It's really about providing people with real data at the real… at the right time, in the most personalized way for them to help them take control of their health. Thank you. On this slide, we have, the lab tests that we include in our $499, it's $499 membership a year, so that is our baseline annual membership. And that comes with over 100 lab tests. What you see on the screen here are all of the lab tests. The ones that are, included in bold are the ones that you typically get in your annual physical. roughly 10 to 15, depending on the physical, and you can see the difference, it's quite stark, between what's included in your annual physical and what's included in our function panel. The function lab test is taken twice in a year.

First is a baseline, and then 6 months later, we repeat about 60 of these labs, the ones that make sense to test twice in a year. Think, like, your lipids, your metabolic panel, and some more. And that 6 months is when the individual will have the opportunity to take action on their health. They may meet with their physician, a specialist, or just work some of these things on their own because of the content in the platform empowers them to take those next steps. We are contracted with Quest Labs nationwide, over 2,000 Quest Labs, which is how individuals access these labs.

On the next slide, this is more about, the additional testing that's available once you become a member. So, additional tests provide more insights and deeper insights into your own health. As I talked about, we have advanced imagery, or imaging, rather. We acquired a company called Ezra a couple of months back in May. They've pioneered the ability to reduce the time it takes for a full body scan, and therefore reduce the amount it costs for that scan, making it more accessible for people, especially when you think about having access to this type of diagnostic testing outside the health insurance framework, where it requires, you know, gatekeeping and prior authorizations. People now have access to this if they have concerns about their health. and in a way which is more accessible than if they were to try and get this on their own. As you can see, you know, between our lab testing, the MRI testing, function is really trying to democratize access, to these types of advanced, tests so that people have the broadest and deepest insights into their health. We also offer cancer screening through Gallery, we're, integrated with Gallery by Grail. And then we offer a whole host of, optional lab tests as well for individuals to, dig a little bit deeper into their personal insights. These are actually quite popular. In fact, the average cost of, or the average spend by our members is, pretty north of the annual membership, because more often people are digging into these, optional add-on tests in order to go a little bit deeper into their health. Maybe they have concerns about, a cardiovascular history in their family, and they want to go a little bit deeper into that. So these additional tests are available through our platform once you become a member.

Marie Holmes: Very good. Thank you so much, Tracy. So we've talked about how a model like Function can deliver, right? So I don't think there's any question there, but what does success actually look like in terms of cost, outcomes, ROI, right? That's typically kind of one of the harder things to do. So, I'll turn this over to Nick to give us the actuarial perspective on a program like Function.

Nick Allen: Thanks. I appreciate that. These are always, like, the hardest questions, because… This has been coming up for the last 20 years, how to measure ROI on solutions like these. Not specifically functions, but, you know, I'll just say, You know, lifestyle and… Wellness in gen… as a category. So the quest… and the problem and the question is that But the problem is that everybody likes to talk about ROI, It's just not always the right question when it comes to the solutions in this space. As you know, programs… Are trying to influence things that play out over years and years and years. There's all sorts of habits, risk factors. chronic disease prevention steps that take place with these solutions. And the payoff is real, but it's slow, and it usually shows up Or it can show up outside of claims data, even. So, the real irony is that the programs that do show a quick ROI usually get it by avoiding Higher-risk people, or by reducing short-term utilization, which can actually work against long-term health goals.

So what we'd say is, Instead of asking you know, hopefully you're picking this up from the points that are on the slides, I'm trying not to read it directly, but instead of asking what's the ROI, The question really is, what outcomes are you trying to buy when you purchase the solutions that you purchase to support the health of your people?

How are you moving the needle? And how are you keeping people healthier for longer?

So, ROI has its place, as you can see from the title of the slide. It's not always… Complete measure of success. On every type of program. And, the real story… It becomes more evident when we connect an actuarial result with a human outcome, when it's possible.

So, on the next slide, we talk about You know, in instances When we can measure it, And what that looks like. So when we are doing the more traditional measurement of ROI, be it in preventive care, or really any any type of Solution that's intended to support the health Of employees and their families. There are some more technical approaches that we can take. One's called a pre-post analysis, which is where you're looking at how a population looked before the implementation of that solution, and then how they looked after the implementation of that solution. That's one of the more simpler techniques. It has flaws, but it does the job, especially where it's evident that the needle was moved. There's also a technique called cohort matching. And what that does is it compares users That have, you know, that have the… have had access to that program. To a similar group of users that do not have access to that program. So, we match cohorts by looking at, again, people that have the same age, gender, and ideally, same healthcare conditions. And we… we compare them. To see if the… if a similar… similarly aged, gender and health health risk type group. is performing better with the program compared to how they're performing without. So, those are… Long, they're technical, they're data-intensive, they're really interesting studies. They also have a very short To me, they have a short shelf life. Programs are evolving all the time, health risks are changing all the time. There's one that I like, it's not, you know, particularly commonly used across the industry, but it's called counterfactual modeling. And this is, you've probably heard this before, people trying to estimate the value of… Like, what would my population look like, or what would it cost if we didn't have this program in place, right? In other words, you're trying to estimate the cost avoidance that's taken place just by having the program available to people. It's a really hard thing to do, it requires a lot of assumptions, but to me, it's one of the bigger points that often gets missed. And usually, this is an area where you know, a lot of point solutions sell themselves short, and Tracy, I recall you saying your function was not a point solution, so I'll count you out of that discussion. Still, the… the sentiment is there. I think, most times, health-supportive. Solutions don't get enough credit for the counterfactual piece.

And then last, and more simply, is claims-linked metrics, where you're just trying to track the impact to a downstream metric. So, have you had reduced ER visits or lower prices and or utilization on specific conditions? So those are all how the actuaries do it. You know, we realize that a lot of the folks on this call might not have actuaries available to them, or just not be accessible, or it's also a very expensive thing to do one of these studies. So I have some, some thoughts and takeaways on the next page about, you know, if you are going to implement a health-supportive solution for your population, some of the ways that you can make decisions about which ones to… to buy. And then, how to measure their success. So the first is starting with targeted pilot programs for high-impact, high-prevalence conditions. So if you… want to make a difference in reducing costs, start where impact is going to be the most likely, and that includes the people who have the most costs. Probably heard a million times, 80% of your costs come from 20% of your people, 50% of your costs come from the 5% sickest people, so if you can move the needle on them. In particular, in a pilot program, we are not committing to going all in on a program. Then it's a great opportunity for you to, you know, make an impact without costing a lot of money up front.

Second is to prioritize outcomes that are measurable to you. And what that means in particular. Is things that you can measure through data you have, and ideally partnering with vendors who themselves can deliver measurable outcomes. And that may mean that you, and or your broker will need to share healthcare data for your population with your broker, or with that solution, so that they can make sure that they're effectively measuring What they've… You know, what the things that they do best, and, you know, can ensure that they're delivering on the promises that are being made. As you know, you've probably seen, engagement metrics are great, but they alone don't really provide value in terms of, you know, understanding your ROI. And then last, aligning your budget with your ROI timeline. You've probably heard from, you know, in your history from point solutions, and from wellness vendors, and from longer-term vendors, but what you need to know is that… Having a short-term increase in costs isn't always bad. Especially when you're trying to get people more engaged in their health, or more engaged with a PCP-facing solution. And so, at times, when we implement new vendors, and we expect you know, create more engagement with doctors or with their health, you can expect a rise in costs in years one and two. And expect that the return for these solutions is going to be something more like in the 3-, 4-, 5-year time frame. So, it's not just aligning your budgeting with your ROI timeline, but also just aligning your expectations. And so, if I'm going to leave you with anything about, you know, how you can do this a little bit more yourself without needing an actuary, these are the ways that you can do that. And of course, if you did want to use an actuary to do a more technical study, there's ways to do that, too. It was awesome. Thank you so much, Nick. Tracy, I'll turn it back over to you to kind of talk through some of the economics of function in particular.

Tracy Awe: Sure, thanks, and thanks, Nick. That was, interesting to hear. Before we dive into this slide and some of the material that I'll be walking through, I did want to add a quick note on the data that we're going to be talking about. Our team at Function partnered with the Integrated Benefits Institute, which is a third-party research organization, they're a think tank, to answer the question.

Does early disease detection in the workplace, in workplace health programs, deliver measurable economic value, for the employer? And as the slide is giving it away here, that was a resounding yes. They, Integrated Benefits Institute reviewed 61 studies spanning 25 years, and their reported findings provided clear evidence, that there is a positive economic impact. In fact, it wasn't just positive, it was 100% positive outcomes. Not a single study reported negative economic returns or impact from early detection programs. And the savings, the positive impact, was realized in both medical and productivity improvements. So what you're seeing on the current slide right here is a cost comparison for early versus late-stage management of disease, comparing, you know, diabetes, COPD, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic kidney disease, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. And the difference is quite striking, when you look at the numbers on the page here. So, for example, late-stage management for diabetes can cost 5 times more than catching it and addressing it early. COPD, the difference is even more dramatic. It's $40,000 per patient, in late-stage care compared to, just $1,800 if you can get to them earlier. And that's really the cost of waiting. When is, you know, when care is reactive, when we we just sit there and wait for symptoms to occur, or claims to hit, and then try and catch up with the disease burden. That's when issues then become more complex, they become unnecessarily more expensive. And they are harder to manage when people have access to the tools, though, where they can identify this early, be engaged earlier, and drive motivation to take action on their health earlier, before symptoms truly escalate and the disease burden advances.

There's a clear opportunity to reverse that avoidable spend. And these numbers reflect actual preventable disease burden that many employers are absorbing today. We have multiple examples of this in our own book of business. We actually have a member story of a young man in his early 40s, his name is Jeff. He's a real function member from direct-to-consumer Pathway. who identified or uncovered that he had, stage zero prostate cancer through function tests. This wasn't a fancy test, it was our annual, 100-plus lab tests that you take as part of our annual membership, and it's because we include PSA measurement and biomarker in our lab testing, which is not included in your typical annual physical for men. But this gentleman came to function because he was curious, wanted to know more, he was generally healthy, not incurring claims. But through our testing, uncovered that, he had stage zero prostate cancer. So this is exactly what this slide is talking about. These are things that are lurking beneath the surface. When you're looking at claims data, that's above the surface, and you're really just trying to catch up to what's happening in the population, and stem the impact of it. But it's everything that's lurking beneath the surface, that we're waiting for symptoms to occur before we address it. And tools like the Function Platform allow people with broader insights into their health, access to more advanced testing in order to gain those earlier insights. And address some of these, potential, issues ahead of them becoming chronic disease. And that slide was really just focused on the medical claims burden and opportunity. But the benefits of early intervention programs aren't just in dollars, they're also in productivity. So what this second slide and chart focuses on are the number of days that are saved annually per employee when conditions are caught early. So when people are supported upstream, they miss fewer days. It's, you know, seems pretty, simple and intuitive, but early detection leads to fewer complications, fewer flare-ups, where you have, you know, significant concerns around disease, and then better day-to-day health. And across conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, early action can save, you know, anywhere from 2.5 to upwards of five or six work days per person per year, which is pretty dramatic, especially when you consider that Chronic disease burden comes in clusters. If a person has high blood pressure, they typically have elevated blood glucose, and they're typically, you know, fit the profile of being pre-diabetic. Something which can be identified early on to stave off the medical claims impact and potential impact to presenteeism and absenteeism. So, we've found, through partnering with the IBI on their study, their, their meta study, is that there's a clear business case here. Reduced absenteeism, better retention, and a workforce that's, you know, truly not just showing up, but they're showing up and feeling better, well enough to work and bring their best selves to work. And that's exactly where function comes in. We help teams get ahead of disease by providing access to this lab testing. And whole body scans and clear, actionable insights so that, folks can take action early and show up strong to work.

Marie Holmes: Awesome. Thank you both so much. So I thought it would be interesting to kind of round out this conversation with just, like, some heavy-hitter questions that we often get from clients. So, Tracy, I'm going to pose two questions to you first. So number one is… In your opinion, what does success look like for the employee, and then, on the flip side, for the plan, when it comes to a function program?

Tracy Awe: Yeah, sure. So, you know, success typically looks like clarity and control. Success looks like, you know, confidence and motivation to take action in their health. Success, looks like having the tools in order to take ownership of your health. It's knowing what's happening in your body, before it turns into, a diagnosis. getting ahead of things. It's access to the lab testing, the scams that help them spot early signals of disease, track these changes over time, because how you manage your health in your 20s and 30s is going to be very different than how you manage it in your 30s and 40s. And the earlier you can gain insights into this, you can really change and manage the directory of the direction of your health. And in a healthcare system that often feels reactive, where you're put on the back foot of your health because you have to go to your physician with a mother may I about gaining access to certain testing, or to the insurance company for prior auths, it feels reactive, overwhelming, frustrating, and, you know, that you're truly not being able to be on the front foot of your own health and managing your health. So, for success for an employee, it feels that visibility is empowering for them. For the plan, it's, you know, very similar, but it's looking at preventable health costs that are avoided. Everything that we just talked about on those prior two slides. people showing up to work stronger. You know, it's not, you know, complex to understand that when employees have access to real health data, they can pair it with, you know, educational and contextual content that help them understand their health information, their health data. And then, you know, they can improve their understanding in their own health, strengthen their health literacy, and better engage in meaningful steps to take action and improve their health.

Marie Holmes: Perfect, thank you. And then Tracy, one final question. Where are employers getting stuck during, like, implementation, rollout process, in your opinion?

Tracy Awe: Yeah, so… I think how a health engagement program like Function or any others, you know, it's similar across the board. How you launch it makes all the difference in the world. It's not just about availability. Launch it, put it on a shelf, and, you know, see if anybody enrolls in it. It's all about activating it and activating interest in driving sustained engagement forward. in the program, and seeing the results that we just talked about, the ownership from your population, the ability to see, you know, health issues coming down the line earlier so that they can bring their best selves to work. they can't enroll in something if they don't have awareness that it exists. And, you know, human behavior is typically, we engage in things at the moment that's most meaningful to us, and at a single point in time. Just because we communicate about it at open enrollment in October, November, doesn't mean that I'm going to remember that I have this available to me in June, when I have a health event or I have a health concern.

And so, it's that constant drumbeat of communication. It's top-down collaboration with the employer to be participatory in the launch process and the ongoing awareness campaigns to the population. Where things stall is when rollout is treated like a one-time announcement. A single email, you know, is not going to cut it. as I alluded to, especially when it comes to something as personal as your health, and employers that are seeing, strong uptake do three things really well with us. And these are early insights because we just launched our program in the enterprise space in January, but these best practices are what's rising to the top. They, participate in our subsidy. So, enrollment jumps, from 8% to 13% with a partial, subsidy, and then, from 40% to 60% when there's a full subsidy. The subsidy means that the employer is contributing to the cost of the annual function membership. The annual function membership is $499. Typically, employers are subsidizing $50 to $100, to defray some of that cost, and we match that for them. So, if an employer, provides a subsidy of $100, we match that $100, and now the employee cost is just $299, which they have the ability, to potentially submit to their FSA, function as FSA eligible.  The employers also who opt into monthly messaging also, are the ones who perform the best, and, see the strongest enrollment and participation ongoing. They also collaborate in communications, which, I spoke to just a little bit earlier, tailoring outreach to their people. And then, you know, I think just going back to the stuck piece. Where rollout is passive, that's where engagement lags. But when it's visible, it's repeated, and it's strategic, we see real results and real engagement.

Marie Holmes: Perfect. Thanks, Tracy. So Nick, over to you. You hit on this a bit, but I don't think it would hurt to kind of double-click into kind of the ROI. What is the common… what is a common misconception about ROI, specifically in prevention care?

Nick Allen: The common miscon… I don't know if it's a common misconception. Is that… It's something that can be… measured… Easily at all. It's just not. And I don't think that's always why people buy, wellness programs, and it doesn't have to be why. You know, there's all sorts of reasons why people do buy wellness programs. They can be clinical reasons, they can be cultural reasons, financial… But ROI doesn't even have to crack the top 3, because it's hard to measure, and because there's not always an explicit ROI that you're going to be able to tangibly, you know, touch and feel on a wellness program. Having said that, there are some ways, you know, and I mentioned some of them before, to measure the financial impact of wellness programs in ways that people might not have done before. I mentioned counterfactual assumptions. And I do think that that's a really, really important thing, and it's more about… because it takes into account perception of what's happening by the person who's doing the measuring. Which oftentimes, if that's an employee, sorry, an HR leader or a finance leader inside the organization, they know the organization better than anybody else. Better than the broker, better than the wellness Program better than the actuary. And so what they believe is likely to happen, or likely is happening, inside their population as a result of a new solution being offered is likely what's happening, you know, and so I'd say trust your instincts on that, and that's perfectly okay. And the second. You know, the other part of that, what I mentioned before, is that there's a misconception that you just can't do anything at all. And what I'd say is that if you are somebody who's really focus on financial metrics and making sure that you find some when you do buy a program. Make sure you can put your finger on a specific You know, clinical or price-based outcome that you're looking at, whether that's the price per service, or, you know, a number of visits or utilizations per, you know, thousand members, or whatever, you know, whatever be it for your population, and then hold your vendor accountable to improvement in that metrics. And you can do so just, like, on your own, from… clinical reporting that comes from your TPA. Or you can do that with value-based contracting, which is probably a subject for another webinar altogether, but there's a… there are ways to hold your vendors accountable to what they're promising you, but more than likely you'll find Most of them wouldn't be in business if they weren't adding some kind of value to you in the first place. It's just a matter now of making sure that you can concretely and tangibly show that that impact is being made, and that making sure that impact is being made is the impact that you wanted.

Marie Holmes: Very helpful. Nick, so second question, what criteria should be used when selecting a partner in this space?

Nick Allen: So, I'll go back to some of the points I mentioned before, and I'll use… and I'll mention one a little bit more in depth that I didn't talk about before. Sorry, I'm looking down, because I'm scrolling back to my… prior slides.

Marie Holmes: It's…

Nick Allen: In particular, Finding vendors that can offer you more about how their performance is going, other than an engagement metric. Right. And that might mean… That, you know. That you have to meet them somewhere in the middle of that. So, in my experience, lots of times vendors want to be able to share with you a lot more than just engagement metrics. But are limited by the data that they're given access to by the plan sponsor. Or by the consultant or advisor. So, if you're a plan sponsor. And you're working with a vendor. And they have limited internal data points that they can capture on their own. Maybe it's, like, engagement and a couple other things. If that's not going to be satisfactory to you. You should know that you'll have to… You know, advise your broker, your consultant, your TPA, Clinical data warehouse, whoever it is that's capturing your data, that they will need to share your data with that vendor in order to help them show you that they're doing a good job. And that's something that any, group that has access to their own data can do. And I think lots of times they protect it because they feel like they're giving something up to the vendor. In doing so, but most of the time, they're just, you know, keeping themselves from being able to do their job, which is to track and measure, if not… if the money that they're spending on healthcare solutions is being spent wisely. Got it. So it definitely needs to be kind of an interactive give-and-take type of an arrangement, it sounds like, Nick, when it comes to some of that data point.

Nick Allen: 100%. I mean, you have to, you know, you can still ask good due diligence questions, right? Like, when I give you raw data, you know, is that going to be covered under security guarantees, right? Or, you know, is it going to be stored? Is it going to be HIPAA compliant? So on and so forth. So you have to do the due diligence, but assuming all those things are true, you know, it's a good idea, in the right circumstances, to share data about your employees' health and their family's health with the people that you're depending on to help improve You know, those health outcomes.

Marie Holmes: Very good. All right, so we'll kind of round out the conversation with some just, like, key takeaways of today. So, I think overarching theme is, like, first and foremost, employees want to, like, just be more proactive in their healthcare journey, right? So, hopefully gone are the days of just, like, a reactive kind of process in healthcare. Measuring ROI, I feel like I've said ROI 63 times in this conversation, but measuring ROI requires a long-term lens, right? And like Nick had mentioned, sometimes it's going to be a difficult thing to measure, and so we need to look potentially outside of just, you know, flatly ROI, to measure success for a program such as Function. High utilizer engagement is a signal, not a red flag, right? So oftentimes, the more folks we get engaged, the more expensive it's going to cost, but that's what we want to see, right? We want to see people utilizing the program, and then we can obviously, you know, tie some of that data back to, has it been a success? And then finally, a phased or sort of pilot rollout program builds trust while managing costs, right? So it's kind of a point that Nick had made, that a pilot program, again, is a perfect place to start, or like Tracy had mentioned, a phased integration process, or implementation process, I should say, is certainly an awesome place, for employers who maybe just want to get their feet wet in something like this, and again, a manageable way to deploy a solution like this. Alright, so I'm just gonna do a quick Nava plug for an upcoming webinar. So we do have another wellness-focused webinar, so we have Errol Hoffman Wellness. Coming out on November 5th, she's a health coach and fitness and nutrition expert. She's gonna talk about why… I'm sorry, what is happening kind of in today's wellness strategies, what's missing, and how to make… just make them support behavior change in a more sustainable and kind of long-term way.

So it's gonna be, like, a super honest take on what's really driving employee well-being right now, and sort of this cultural shift that we're seeing. So, if this is your speed, I certainly encourage you to check out, check that webinar out on November 5th. Then, alright, so it looks like we have one or two questions. Let me just open these up.

First, Tracy, I think this one will be good for you, how is the… how is function different from just, like, an annual physical or wellness screening?

Tracy Awe: Yes, so if you, go back to that slide where it had the 100-plus lab tests, function is different because it includes, lab testing across all of your biological systems. So, in your annual physical, you typically have, about 10 to 15 biomarkers that are included. But in the function test that's included, it's 100-plus lab tests, which includes, you know, your, female and male hormones, which are typically missed altogether and not measured. The PSA test is not included for men. There's several immunity markers that are missed, as well. So it's a lot broader and deeper to provide, broader and deeper insights into your own biology that your annual physical is typically missing.

Marie Holmes: Perfect. Alright, Nick, next one's gonna go to you. What data points matter most when someone's building a case for leadership approval when it comes to something like this?

Nick Allen: Leadership approval usually is going to require something Tangible.

Marie Holmes: So if you're…

Nick Allen: you know, building towards leadership approval. You're going to want to show that you have a specific goal in mind, and you have a way to measure that goal. So, that's what I would suggest to people, is to work with vendors who You know, can promise more than just engagement metrics. And that you have a pulse on, you know, what it is that you're trying to solve for when you're buying a solution.

Marie Holmes: Okay. And then, Nick, final question I'm gonna, pin back to you. Speaking of funding, is this something, or these types of solutions, strictly for, like, self-funded employers, or is there a potential opportunity for fully insured groups as well to kind of benefit from… from programs like this?

Nick Allen: Yeah, I mean, benefit, like I said, is… It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different groups. you know, it's not… it's not always financial. I think that people will… self-funded groups feel the financial benefits a little bit more cleanly when they, you know, implement a solution, because they can look to see, you know, before and after, or they can, you know, have a value-based arrangement. Whereas fully insured.

Nick Allen: You know, you have to still count on getting some kind of credit. In a premium or renewal. Having said that, that does sometimes happen. But also, as well, impact is not always just financial. It can be cultural, it can be even just improvements to contracts. And it can be, you know, clinical, and not just financial. So, that's what I would urge people who are in full insurance plans to consider, you know, which is… you know, it's not always just about what you're doing to the bottom line. Sometimes you're just trying to get your people lined up. Into the, you know, the best possible health outcomes, because it benefits them, and it benefits the business.

Marie Holmes: Yeah, okay. All right, well, that's perfect. So I saw Tracy, you just answered an open question, so thank you. With that, we'll give everyone a couple minutes back in their afternoon or late morning, depending on where you are. And again, Tracy and Nick, thank you guys so much for this conversation. It was very, very helpful. I hope you have a nice rest of your week.

Tracy Awe: Thanks, you too, Marie. Thanks so much for having me today.

Marie Holmes: Absolutely. Thanks, bye-bye.

Tracy Awe: Bye-bye, everyone.

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