Benefits leaders hear a lot of promises about healthcare cost containment.
After 25 years working in benefits, Doug Merkle has heard most of them.
“I was skeptical at first,” said Merkle, Benefits Director at the Southwestern Ohio Educational Purchasing Council (EPC). “So many things have come and gone. We get calls every day about someone who’s got a new solution for healthcare cost containment.”
For EPC, the answer was to start with its own data.
The organization pools purchasing power and manages health benefits for school districts across Ohio. When EPC looked at the conditions affecting its population, hypertension stood out as one of its most prevalent health issues.
That mattered for more than clinical reasons.
“My number one job is cost containment,” Merkle said. “The claims are the heart of the issue.”
EPC knew that uncontrolled cardiovascular risk could eventually lead to some of the most expensive events in healthcare, including hospitalizations, heart attacks, and strokes. The question was how to help people take action earlier.
Starting with the problem, not the solution
Rather than adding another benefit and hoping employees would use it, EPC used its population data to identify where it had an opportunity to make a meaningful difference.
Approximately 16,500 adult health plan members were identified as eligible for Hello Heart.
What happened next surprised Merkle.
In the first year, 25% of the eligible population enrolled in the program.
“I think what we saw from the very beginning was the adoption rate,” he said. “People were using it and using it like we had never seen before when we introduced something new.”
Even more telling was what EPC heard directly from its members.
People began contacting the benefits team without being asked, sharing how they were using Hello Heart and bringing their information into conversations with their doctors.
“When you have people calling our office saying, ‘Oh my gosh, this was amazing,’ and showing their doctor the app, people are taking ownership of that,” Merkle said.
Turning engagement into measurable results
Engagement was only part of the equation. EPC also wanted to know whether the program was producing measurable results.
Among participants who began the program with stage 2 hypertension, 74% lowered their blood pressure, with an average systolic blood pressure reduction of 18 mmHg.
EPC’s claims analysis also estimated approximately $1.5 million in program savings for members enrolled for at least 12 months, representing approximately a 2:1 return on investment.
The analysis found lower spending on inpatient care and emergency services among Hello Heart users, alongside increased spending on primary care.
For Merkle, those numbers made the program easier to defend to the people ultimately responsible for EPC’s benefit dollars.
“When I can bring them numbers and say, ‘See, we’ve had this much engagement, and it resulted in this,’ that’s powerful stuff,” he said.
The benefits director became a member, too
Merkle’s perspective on Hello Heart is not only professional.
He has managed hypertension himself for about a decade. Heart disease has also affected his family. An uncle had a heart attack at 53, and his father has dealt with cardiovascular problems later in life.
When EPC introduced Hello Heart, Merkle initially signed up because he wanted to understand what his members would experience.
Then it became part of his own routine.
At a recent primary care appointment, his doctor asked him to take his blood pressure for 10 days and record the results.
Merkle already had them.
“I was like, ‘I already got it, doc. I already know where it is. I’ve been doing it,’” he recalled.
That regular connection to his numbers has also made him think more about the everyday choices that can affect his health.
“Every time you put that cuff on, it’s like, all right, what’s it going to be?” he said. “It makes me think, what did I do over the last day? How much salt did I have?”
And the reason for paying attention is deeply personal.
“I want to be here for the long haul to see my grandkids grow up.”
A lesson for other benefits leaders
Merkle’s advice to other benefits leaders is simple: start with evidence.
“Use your data to drive your decisions. Don’t chase theory. Chase something that’s real and you can quantify.”
For EPC, that meant identifying hypertension as a meaningful health and cost challenge, finding a program members would actually use, and then measuring what happened.
The result is what Merkle calls a rare win on both sides of the benefits equation.
“It connects on a financial level. It connects on a member level. And that’s pretty unique.”
See how Hello Heart helps organizations support healthier members and more balanced budgets: helloheart.com/outcomes