How Concert Health saves money on leave administration

Concert Health is a mission-driven behavioral health medical group dedicated to integrating behavioral health treatment into primary care settings across the United States. Concert Health makes it easy for primary care teams to expand their services by providing patients with evidence-based, high-quality treatment options for common behavioral health conditions like anxiety and depression.

Working “in concert” with primary care partners, the clinical team at Concert Health takes a Collaborative Care approach designed to improve patient outcomes and enhance the patient experience from start to finish.

The medical group has cared for over 70,000 people nationwide and has a proven track record of implementing behavioral health treatments—and getting results. Concert Health patients see a 50% reduction in depression and anxiety symptoms within 90 days of starting treatment.

Behind those impressive numbers are a symphony of experienced clinicians and passionate professionals working toward Concert Health’s larger mission. To support those employees, including Concert Health’s HR team, the company partners with Sparrow for end-to-end employee leave management.

Providing an employee-first experience

Concert Health prides themselves on providing patient-centered care in the field and employee-centered care in the workplace. “We prioritize an employee-first experience at Concert Health,” said Amber Raver, Human Resources Manager at Concert Health. That’s one of the reasons the company recently restructured their total rewards package for employees.

“The key elements to our total rewards framework are in full alignment with our organizational values of learning, rigor, service, and trust,” Amber explained. “Our rewards are centered around our mission and our vision to build the country’s best behavioral health medical group using the Collaborative Care model.”

In addition to a robust compensation package, Concert Health’s employee rewards and benefits include remote work, equity options, educational paid time off, training and development opportunities, and generous paid parental leave.

“Our total rewards package is designed to attract, motivate, and retain top talent who will embrace and drive the company’s success, mission, vision, and values,” she added.

To help execute their new rewards package, Concert Health needed more leave administration support behind the scenes.

The challenge: Managing leaves manually without a streamlined system

Before partnering with Sparrow, Concert Health’s HR team was managing leaves without a reliable or efficient system. “When I came in, the process was entirely manual,” Amber said.

Keeping track of eligibility notices, state notices, and claims was constant, tedious work. “I ended up taking on a lot more, spending five to 10 hours a week managing the pre-approval and approval documents, the determination letters, and the notices, as well as overseeing the claims process,” she said. “And that was just the bare minimum.”

Compliance was an ongoing challenge and key concern for Concert Health. “When I stepped into my role, we were missing the mandated notices that had to be sent out based on where an employee lives. Since we’re a national company, New York and California were two of the biggest ones,” explained Amber. “There was no formal system around it; the HR team tracked it on a spreadsheet.”

In the process of trying to develop a more efficient leave system, Amber began noticing major problems. “There were a lot of missed opportunities with record keeping and payroll. There was no checklist or quality control process,” she said.

The employee experience before and during leave was also suffering. Not only were employees expected to complete leave documentation without much guidance from HR, but there was minimal communication throughout the process. “A lot of employees didn’t know they were supposed to notify HR of when they were going on leave and returning,” Amber added.

Amber quickly realized she didn’t have the capacity to overhaul the current system, create a new process from scratch, and handle the day-to-day management herself. “I was trying to fill in the gaps where I could whenever I had time, but I was being pulled in too many directions,” she explained. “I wouldn’t have had the capacity to do even half of the leaves without hiring another person.”

That’s when she decided to explore and pitch third-party a third-party leave vendor to her leadership team. “I explained that as a growing company, we needed to get ahead of leave management,” she said.

Concert Health needed a user-friendly solution that would have a healthy ROI. “Leave management is a very niche industry, and it can be hard to find a broker who understands the nuances of case management and compliance,” Amber said. “I wasn’t having any luck finding options that were both cost-effective and user-friendly.”

Then, Amber was referred to Sparrow. “I really gravitated toward the Sparrow team that I met initially,” she said. “I knew it was the right place for us to be at the moment—and it’s been great ever since.”

The solution: Outsourcing leave management to Sparrow

Partnering with Sparrow has transformed Concert Health’s leave administration process from the inside out. Offloading the nitty-gritty compliance tasks in particular has been game-changing for Amber. “We’re a very lean HR team, so having Sparrow’s hands-on support is critical,” she said.

Not only does Sparrow stay up to date on changing state leave laws and keep track of deadlines, they also manage all of Concert Health’s paperwork and liaise with state agencies and Concert Health employees to ensure compliance and minimize Concert Health’s risk.

“We were really missing out on state benefits before working with Sparrow,” added Amber. “It was a project to get those letters from our employees, especially the employees that live in New York and California, to determine how much we were supposed to be paying out in payroll.” Because the state benefits filing process was such a heavy lift, Concert Health ended up missing out on significant cost-saving opportunities.

Now, however, Sparrow handles every aspect of the leave process—including calculating payroll and generating custom payroll reports—saving Concert Health tens of thousands of dollars a year. In 2023, Sparrow saved the company more than $40,000 by utilizing wage replacement.

“I did an ROI analysis before partnering with Sparrow, and I put in the total wage replacement recovery, the total salary savings, the price points, and the estimated ROI percentage we could expect each year with Sparrow’s help,” Amber said. “And those ROI predictions turned out to be accurate.”

Leave also became much smoother on the employee side. With Sparrow acting as the primary point of contact between Concert Health’s HR team and employees taking leave, employee communication improved dramatically.

“The employees who’ve gone through Sparrow have said it’s an excellent experience,” said Amber. “They appreciate all the communication, including the deep dive at the beginning during the intro calls and the regular check-ins, as well as the guidance on completing required forms.”

Sparrow guides Concert Health employees through the full leave cycle, taking time to educate them on their eligibility and benefits, explain the leave process step by step, fill out paperwork for them, liaise with their insurance providers, and send follow-up messages and reminders. Along the way, Sparrow Leave Specialists send regular updates to Amber and her team, keeping them in the loop on key dates and leave statuses.

Concert Health built upon Sparrow’s personalized guidance by developing an internal return-to-work process to better support employees with the transition from leave. “We ask employees coming back from leave what accommodations they might need, and discuss opportunities for re-training and how to get acclimated back into the role,” said Amber.

“Working with Sparrow allowed us to strategize about this element of the leave process,” she added. “If we were still doing leave manually ourselves, I think we could still miss the mark on communications and support to our employees returning from a leave.”

The result: Valuable time and money saved

With Sparrow’s end-to-end leave management, Concert Health has a much more streamlined—and cost-saving—system in place. As a result, Amber and her team are able to focus on day-to-day tasks without worrying about leave compliance and employee communication.

“Saving time was our top priority, in addition to making sure our employees were taken care of internally,” Amber said. “The next priority was allowing myself time to build on the strategies necessary for our organization’s growth and success. With Sparrow’s help, I can focus more on the business operations of my role and furthering our mission.”

Want to cut costs, save time, and give employees a stress-free leave experience? Sparrow can help. Review our offerings or book a demo today.