Plan sustainability

Evolving our approach to disability

Disability cost management remains a critical concern for plan sponsors. We’re moving to an enhanced case management platform. This past year we progressed through several pre-implementation milestones, with implementation for plan sponsors planned in 2022. This new platform will:

• enable greater digital and data analytics capabilities.
• improve communications and help us determine the best approach (such as education, interventions, or treatment) to manage each absence.
• provide further automation opportunities for administrative tasks. This will enable our case managers to better focus their time on value-added case management and support to our Clients and their employees.

We’ll also be piloting several disability models to help us determine the longer-term disability product of the future. These products will balance organizational cost management needs with the needs of plan members for financial protection.

Expansion of Product Listing Agreement program

In 2021, we continued to expand negotiations with drug manufacturers to deliver significant savings to our Clients. In the first three quarters of 2021, our Product Listing Agreement program generated savings of more than $111 million. Since the program’s beginning in 2014, we’ve brought over $437 million in savings to our Clients and plan members.

Fraud toolkit

Our new plan sponsor fraud toolkit has communications that help you share fraud awareness resources with your plan members. It also has information on how Sun Life actively prevents fraud – and responds to it when it occurs.

Encouraging health consumerism

We added several new paramedical specialties in Lumino Provider Search. These searches include information on the cost of services. By expanding the list of searchable providers, plan members can compare costs across a variety of new paramedical categories. This can save them – and the plan – money.

Dental contract changes

As part of managing plan sustainability, we regularly review contract wording and the scope of coverage. In 2021, we added or updated our reasonable and customary (R&C) definition to our dental contracts. We did this because our standard dental contracts didn’t list limits for all expenses covered. We also added new scaling and root planing limits that better align to industry standards and dental best practices.