Activate
Member Login
Close the Gap Between Better Care and Lower Costs
Healthcare is hard. It's complex, expensive, and too often difficult to navigate, but Dave Barnett, Chief Administrative Officer at DeVry University, believes employers can break the notion that better care has to come at a higher cost. He explains how DeVry used the AI-powered WayFinding® platform to give employees 24/7 guidance around benefits and clinical care, driving stronger engagement, helping people get the right care at the right time, and making the healthcare experience smoother, efficient, and less wasteful.
3 things employers need to know about balancing quality care and cost for better outcomes
Engagement turns strategy into ROI. A better health and care experience only creates value if people actually use it. At DeVry University, higher engagement helped translate that strategy into low single-digit year-over-year increases in the total benefits budget—beating healthcare cost trend by more than 50% every year.
Make it easier for employees to take action. The WayFinding® platform gives employees One Place to access benefits, find care, and get personalized support 24/7. Instead of leaving people to figure out what to do next, it combines agentic AI and clinical expertise to help people move forward with confidence—making informed decisions and getting the care they need with less friction.
Better experiences lead to better outcomes. Making healthcare easier to use can improve outcomes and reduce unnecessary costs. At DeVry University, success came from reducing friction and helping employees access the right care at the right time, rather than expecting them to navigate a fragmented healthcare system on their own.
As healthcare costs continue to rise, employers need solutions that do more than simplify benefits. They need experiences that help people take action, improve engagement, and connect them to high-quality care. When employees can move through their healthcare journey with confidence, better outcomes and lower costs can follow.
Dave Barnett: I'm Dave Barnett. I'm the Chief Administrative Officer at DeVry University.
Dave Barnett: We believe deeply in the idea that we can break the notion that there's a trade-off between quality care and cost. Healthcare is hard. Healthcare is complex, and so much of investment in healthcare at times goes toward things that aren't ultimately getting people toward the quality outcomes they need and deserve.
Dave Barnett: The partnership with Transcarent has really been about empowering our employees to more effectively use a really complicated system. Moving into the AI platform for really helping to take care navigation to the next step is a no-brainer for us. We can help people engage with a tool that can give them on-demand, 24/7 guidance around their benefits and clinical care.
Dave Barnett: We think that helps people to really pivot and move in the right way to get the right care at the right time so that they can ultimately have a smoother journey, a higher quality journey, and reduce waste in the system.
Dave Barnett: This last year, I think our ROI came from the fact that we had great engagement with the platform. Leaning into engagement matters so much. If people can more effectively engage with healthcare, they will have a better experience, and it will keep our costs down.
Dave Barnett: Transcarent can plan outreach the moment they need the intervention the most, versus doing all those things at scale and broadly.
Dave Barnett: When we talk about Transcarent financially, the results have spoken for themselves. DeVry has managed to see low single-digit year-over-year cost increases in our total benefits budget, beating trend by over 50% every single year. And so yes, we made a bet. Yes, we took some work on the front end to sell the idea in, but it's paid off exponentially.
