Long-term impact of COVID-19 for employers

Springbuk Population Health Practice Leader Jennifer Jones joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss about the increasing health care costs on COVID-19 patients.

Video transcript

KARINA MITCHELL: And welcome back. While COVID cases may slowly be coming down in the country, but the residual effects on society, particularly employers, do remain. Here with further insight on this, let's bring in Yahoo Finance's editor Adriana Belmonte, along with Springbuk Population Health Practice leader Jennifer Jones. Adriana.

ADRIANA BELMONTE: Yeah, hi, Jennifer. Taking a look at this report, I think it's pretty crazy that those who are hospitalized for COVID end up incurring 10 times more health care costs than those who didn't need hospitalization. So talk to us a little bit about these findings here in your report.

JENNIFER JONES: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me today. And, you know, we really-- we put these trends reports together, really, to help employers identify what those key trends are, as they begin their planning for their benefits for their employees. And this is definitely one of the ways that they can use this data to really help maximize the management of their health investment. So this report, as far as for this year, is really based on where than 4,000 employers aggregate data that we have in our system.

But as you mentioned, it's really staggering as far as we began to look into the data as far as the impact of COVID and really being able to try to explore what that impact is beyond just the initial acute phase of the infection. When we began to see it really separate out as far as those that were hospitalized versus non, it's pretty miraculous as far as a 70% increase from the same or similar time frame from 2019 of those that were hospitalized.

What was significant about that is we didn't necessarily see them really leveling off as far as with their trends, as far as their cost, until about month four or month five after the initial acute infection. Now with the nonhospitalized, they still sell about a 25% increase per individual as well. But we definitely saw a leveling off of their cost well into month 2 as far as with after that initial acute diagnosis.

ADRIANA BELMONTE: So talk about some of the long-term implications for this. I guess, to start off with employers, what does it mean for them, especially as they're the ones providing health care to their employees?

JENNIFER JONES: Yeah, it's definitely key as far as now that we have some of this quantitative measure, they can begin to really understand what the risk is as far as within their own population. It's really important for employers to know what that underlying risk is. With those hospitalized individuals for COVID, we know that they had a lot of commonalities as far as with other conditions, as far as asthma, diabetes, hypertension, and other health issues.

So knowing-- you need to know what that exists as far as within your population. How many diabetics do you have? How many people with hypertension do you have? And be able to associate some cost as far as with risk and understanding what can you do today to really help members to address those specific chronic conditions. So if they do become infected with COVID in the future, ideally, they wouldn't have to be hospitalized and be able to avoid the significant cost increases that we saw.

ADRIANA BELMONTE: And does this trickle down to employees, even employees who maybe haven't been hospitalized for COVID yet or maybe won't be at all? But does this affect them in terms of how much they're going to pay for their premiums down the line?

JENNIFER JONES: That wasn't necessarily the scope as far as how we wanted to look at this. But when you think about health care in general, there's definitely if there is an increase in ongoing cost to the employer, there's certainly always the opportunity for them to potentially pass on some of those increases in costs to the employee as far as with premiums. But I think the big takeaway here, again, is knowing what that risk is, intervening and being able to manage those chronic conditions to help individuals make sure that they're not put in a position as far as where they're hospitalized with COVID.

Now, we still have the continuance as far as what we call long COVID that we need to make sure that we're addressing and dealing with, but ideally, making sure we're following through with practices we know can help spread COVID and what we can do as far as to ensure again that we're not ending up in the hospital, as far as with those more severe cases to really help mitigate that cost going forward for both the employees and then also the employers.

ADRIANA BELMONTE: OK, well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today, Jennifer. Back to you, Alexis.