Why More Healthcare Choices Don’t Always Lead to Better Care, with Kristin Bacon

What if the biggest barrier to better healthcare outcomes isn’t access but awareness? Even the most valuable benefits can fall short when employees don’t know how to use them at the moment they need them most.Kristin Bacon, Senior Director of Benefits at Brookdale Senior Living, shares how her team moved from voluntary engagement to a guided care approach for high-cost procedures. She discusses the challenges of reaching a distributed workforce, communicating benefit changes, and creating pathways that connect employees with high-quality care while managing costs. Listeners will learn how thoughtful design, communication, and guidance can transform healthcare engagement.In this episode, you'll learn:How guided healthcare pathways can increase engagement with valuable benefits and improve care decisionsStrategies for communicating benefit changes to distributed workforces and building employee trustWhy mandatory care pathways can help employees access high-quality providers and better outcomesHighlights: (00:00) Why valuable benefits still struggle with engagement (01:04) How Brookdale supports a frontline workforce across 41 states (01:51) The healthcare cost challenge behind finding a solution (03:40) Why voluntary programs were not driving enough engagement (04:19) How guided care pathways changed employee access (05:52) Addressing concerns around mandatory healthcare programs (07:22) How communication helped employees embrace the change (08:46) Why early health plan coordination matters for success (10:19) Explaining the value of high-quality lower-cost care (12:08) How Brookdale increased specialty care engagement (13:02) Why benefits leaders should rethink voluntary adoption (13:34) What retirement auto-enrollment teaches healthcare leaders (14:52) How guided pathways can improve healthcare outcomes Resources:Nancy Ryerson’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancyryerson/Kristin Bacon’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristin-bacon-290a3053/