Helping Employers Attack Health Insurance Costs, ALICORN Launches AI-Powered CareChat Platform With E Powered Benefits

Employees get access to high quality medical care and unified communications with support services

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
ALICORN Inc. launched today an industry-leading, AI-powered healthcare platform, CareChat™, designed for employers. E Powered Benefits, as the first charter partner, is rolling out the CareChat™ platform to its employer clients setting the standard for health insurance cost control and employee experience. ALICORN is inviting employers, benefits advisors, Third-party Administrators (TPAs), Medical Management services, Pharmacy Benefits Managers (PBMs), and direct care providers to join the partners group. To join the group, visit: https://alicorn.co/partner

Employer health insurance costs continue to rise at unsustainable levels. As a result, an increasing number of employers are pursuing self-funding strategies using new models like those validated by Health Rosetta with an open-network plan, reference-based pricing (RBP) payments, and thousands of direct contracts with providers across the U.S. With continued growth of such self-insured health plans, it’s critical for employers to offer help to employees at different points of their care journey – from experiencing symptoms to getting back to full health:

• How do I make sense of my symptoms?
• How do I find high quality providers?
• What can I do to get the best treatment?

In addition, when employees need to go to different service providers and their websites to get help, it causes confusion and frustration:

• How can I get my insurance bill issue resolved?
• Who can help me navigate the healthcare system and insurance?

The CareChat™ platform solves these problems with its suite of products and unified communications with TPAs and Medical Management services. ALICORN and E Powered Benefits collaborated with leading companies like Ault International Medical Management (AIMM) and Paragon Benefits to deliver the best-in-class employee experience on the CareChat™ platform.

Employees can access various products and services on the CareChat™ platform including:

• ALICORN SymptomsChat™: 89% of adults in the U.S. check their symptoms online and around one-third of such people self-diagnose. This doesn’t need to be the case anymore as artificial intelligence technology can assess symptoms with a high level of accuracy. SymptomsChat™ is an AI-powered conversational chatbot that calculates the probability of having a certain condition(s) based on symptoms employees are experiencing. Employees receive potential causes and what they should do next. This helps prevent unnecessary visits and minimize over-treatment or under-treatment saving time and money.
• ALICORN AI-Mental Health Screener: 26% of adults in the U.S. suffer from a diagnosable mental health disorder including depression and anxiety. AI-Mental Health Screener uses gold standard questionnaires with a conversational chatbot interface and allows employees to go through screening privately. Taking this first step is critical in seeking timely medical care and avoiding unnecessary complications and costs at a later stage.
• ALICORN DocRatings™: 90% of people in the US rely on online patient reviews to select physicians without considering any clinical quality information. DoctRatings™ is a simple online tool with a 5-star quality rating that allows employees to find the best quality doctors. Gold standard clinical quality measures are used to benchmark a doctor’s performance. Choosing doctors based on their clinical quality results in better treatment and lower costs.
• ALICORN MedRecords™: A Yale study published in JAMA found varying release times for medical records from hospitals. In 18% of the cases, it took more than a month and often with a charge for faxing medical records. MedRecords™ on-demand service makes it easy for employees to get their medical records in a single portable document. When an employee’s doctor can access medical records, it reduces medication errors, cuts unnecessary labs, increases patient safety, and improves communication between providers resulting in better health outcomes and lower costs.
• ALICORN CareConnectors™:
  • TPA Connector: Employees can communicate with the TPA on the CareChat™ platform and get timely help regarding their insurance bill or claims issues.
  • Medical Management Connector: Concierge and nurse teams can communicate with employees on the CareChat™ platform to provide efficient and scalable support.

“Our objective is to deliver the best-in-class experience and healthcare services to employees,” said Praveen Mooganur, CEO of ALICORN. “It’s no secret that the health insurance industry net promoter score has consistently stayed below 20. The overall experience, ease of use, and services offered by the employer drive employee satisfaction and the CareChat™ platform is designed specifically to achieve this goal. We are excited to launch the CareChat™ platform with David Contorno and the team at E Powered Benefits.”

“All of the people making healthcare decisions - policy and financing - sit in an ivory tower of the top 7% of income earners. The employers, the hospital administrators, the carrier executives, the brokers and advisors, myself included. All of them can easily afford to pay for their health insurance and healthcare expenses,” said David Contorno, Founder & CEO of E Powered Benefits. “But what does that same decision mean for the average American? It means pain and fear. The premiums alone are unaffordable, but when you add in that the average out-of-pocket cost in the U.S. is cresting above $5,000 while the average American has under $1,000 in savings, where do those decisions leave them? It leaves them scared to manage their disease, scared to use the “benefits” both they and their employer pay for, and this is contributing to the overall declining health and life expectancy in the U.S. By ditching the middlemen that only extract value from the system and adopting normal free market principles in a transparent framework, we have successfully demonstrated that up to 40% reduction in health insurance premiums is attainable while simultaneously eliminating out-of-pocket expenses for employees and their families. We have built a coalition of best-in-class partners that specialize in what they do and are willing to collaborate and have revenue tied to delivering real results. Now we are taking it to the next level with our partnership with ALICORN and delivering an exceptional suite of services and employee experience through the CareChat™ platform. We will continue to add innovative services to the CareChat™ platform over time.”

“Employer and employee service is at the forefront of our commitment. Our innovative customer service model (Paragon Pods) is designed to surpass customer expectations,” said Richard Brewer, Chief Sales Officer of Paragon Benefits, Inc. “We are taking advantage of the TPA Connector on the CareChat™ platform to make it easy for employees to communicate with our teams to get help when needed.”

“Employees want 3 things: affordable, convenient, quality care,” said Deb Ault, President of Ault International Medical Management. “Our programs are excellent in delivering on affordability and quality. But we fall short on the convenience piece. So far, the only way for employees to access AIMM service is by calling us. Through the CareChat™ platform we are now able to offer online services and our teams can support employees at enormous scale.”

About ALICORN^® Inc.:

We help people improve their health and work productivity. We achieve this goal by offering a suite of health and productivity solutions to employees in businesses of all sizes.

Our health solutions reduce employers’ health insurance costs by 10-25% annually and help employees get easy access to medical care. Our products include CareChat™ Platform, SymptomsChat™, Virtual Primary Care, DocRatings™, MagicRx™, and MedRecords™.

Our productivity solutions include chatbots for employees in Sales, Account Management, Benefits, and HR functions. Our SalesChat^®, BenefitsChat^®, and HRChat^® products are designed to meet employees where and how they work - by integrating with Microsoft Teams, Slack & Google Chat - and turbocharge revenue generation activities while increasing productivity.

For more information, visit https://alicorn.co and follow us on LinkedIn.

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Inquiries:

Praveen Mooganur

[email protected]

Source: ALICORN Inc.