Canton-based Phia Group offers employees premier healthcare benefits

The Phia Group headquarters is located in the former LoJack building at 40 Pequot Way. (Matthew Painten photo)

The cost of healthcare is an often-discussed topic, especially in election years. A huge medical bill that insurers refuse to pay — or worse, a collection of such bills, resulting in catastrophic expenses threatening a family’s financial stability — are, unfortunately, not unusual subjects of media coverage. With the American system of paying for healthcare, the benefits offered by an employer are critical, and the quality of those benefits often have an enormous impact on decision-making about job offers.

As a business specializing in healthcare cost containment, the Phia Group is especially aware of these realities. The Canton-based company has worked with many human resource departments across the country since 1999 to make healthcare benefits more cost efficient. Drawing on its knowhow in cost management, Phia has been offering a distinctive program of benefits to its own employees, totaling almost 300.

The program has several components. No one pays deductibles, and co-pays are waived for all generic drug prescriptions. Starting in 2019, free health benefits, with no premiums required, became available for five-year employees. (Currently, Phia has 63 five-year employees; that number will increase to over 70 this year.)

David Ostrowsky, manager of corporate communications for the Phia Group, explained that the company makes the program work in part because they “educate employees about making prudent healthcare decisions.” The company holds periodic workshops to keep employees informed on using various tools to access healthcare package components. There is an app for Direct Primary Care, which employees use to identify conveniently located primary providers and make appointments, which are often available that same day.

This model means that physicians avoid fee-for-service insurance billing, instead charging patients what amounts to a membership fee, which in this case is paid by Phia. Doctors also have lower numbers of patients enrolled, generally allowing for quicker availability and longer appointments.

Another way Phia shaves unnecessary costs is by not contracting with any insurers but instead operating independently, administering its own benefits. Offering employees incentives to access some aspects of the program further helps to cut costs. Giving birth at a hospital from a Phia-approved list of high-quality, low-cost institutions means the employee is eligible for a monthly reimbursement for diapers and wipes (up to $300 per month for a year). Employees may also submit medical bills for a claim audit review in which the bill is checked for errors, with 20 percent of any savings passed on to the employee.

Adam Russo, co-founder and CEO, is passionate about what Phia does. “Health care is too expensive,” Russo said. “We feel every person in this country should be able to get high-quality care at a lower cost.”

Helping individual employees to afford improved care is a spin-off from Phia’s mission of helping its client organizations to save money. Describing how the company’s name and logo are based on the Greek letter Phi, meaning a search for truth, Russo noted that his organization empowers its clients.

Phia counts a wide variety of organizations as clients, including casinos, New England private schools, Kaiser Permanente, and many municipalities, typically working with third-party administrators who manage benefit plans for these organizations. Clients have access to a slate of consulting services, such as benefit document drafting, claim negotiation, and subrogation, or recovering costs from other insurers. These services are most often provided by Phia’s legal department or insurance recovery specialists.

Russo expects that Artificial Intelligence will soon boost Phia’s ability to save money for companies even further. He predicts that it will be able to expand the analytics capability of the benefit review process and increase speed, thus reducing the time required for each review from an average of 15-20 hours to only one hour. “It’s a game changer,” he said of advancements in AI.

Phia is already hiring and in “aggressive growth mode,” noted Russo. With five additional North American locations, including one in Quebec, the company is headquartered in Canton, having moved into the former LoJack building off Route 138 during the pandemic. “We expect to be here a long time,” Russo said.

Ostrowsky said that Phia employees are happy with its healthcare benefits: “It’s pretty unanimous.”

His own young son was born eight weeks early at Newton-Wellesley Hospital and had to stay for two months in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The child is healthy now and Ostrowsky is grateful that Phia benefits made that stressful time a little easier. He noted that the hospital costs alone would be “life-changing for many people.”

Supercharged healthcare benefits like those offered by Phia are rare, but the advantages for both employees and employers are significant.

“It’s the number-one thing we use for recruitment and retention — it’s hard to give up the kind of benefits we offer,” Russo said.

Its identity as one of the few companies in the nation offering what amounts to free health care is a big plus for Phia, but it’s certain that employees of other companies would love to see that kind of approach to benefits spread far and wide.

Share This Post

Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=123739