5 ways to proactively manage and mitigate rising healthcare costs

Rising healthcare costs are placing significant pressure on benefits budgets – and on the professionals trying to balance them with employee demand, wellbeing targets and company expectations.

Those looking to manage and mitigate rising healthcare costs are often looking to prevention and early intervention to help them control expenditure, avoid large claims - and reduce the impact of ill-health on their business.

Here’s what to think about when implementing them:

1. Balance reactive and proactive care

Preventative health measures are increasingly popular, particularly as a whole of workforce ‘solution’. REBA’s Health and Wellbeing Research (2025), now in its 10th year, shows that more than one-third of employers added prevention measures to their private medical insurance in 2023-24, and nearly half (47%) are considering doing so.

There’s certainly evidence it’s a key part of the picture of improved wellbeing. Things like flu-jabs can prevent sickness absences, while health checks can spot potentially serious or chronic conditions early – making them easier to deal with and improving health outcomes.

But illnesses and injuries - and long NHS waiting lists - are all facts of life, and something preventative health measures can’t solve in isolation.

Those seeking greater control over health and wellbeing need to balance prevention with early interventions.

2. Choose and edit services carefully

Whether you’re looking at the contents of health checks or the levels of service provided by early intervention services like virtual GPs, it’s important to understand what your people will get, if it reflects what they actually need - and if they’ll actually use in practice.

As all benefits professionals know, it’s not a case of ‘build it and they will come’.

There could be people who don’t take up their health test, or who order it but leave it gathering dust on the kitchen side. Likewise, while around 80% of employers now provide digital GP services (up from just 12% when the REBA survey started its Health and Wellbeing survey in 2016), actual usage can vary wildly.

Understanding the value of your products, and the barriers to their use, is key.

Look for preventative health services, for instance, that offer choice over tests, and GP services that can provide private prescriptions and open referral letters if people need to escalate a health problem.

And be curious about when and why your people are or aren’t using the benefits you’re providing.

3. Use data driven insights

Data is vital both in controlling costs, and reaping value from your health benefits.

Rising healthcare costs can be driven by a relatively small number of high-cost conditions, repeated claims patterns - or demographic risk factors within the workforce.

HR teams should be making the most of people data by looking at high-frequency health issues across teams, identifying absence and presenteeism patterns, tailoring preventative and early intervention provision and targeting communications campaigns accordingly.

One size doesn’t necessarily fit all. Your office-based teams may have different health needs and require different interventions to factory or field-based teams.

That might look like a cholesterol-lowering drive in your offices using digital channels, and face-to-face workshops or physical collateral on the factory floor targeting prostate or heart problems.

4. Include MSK and mental health provision as a cost prevention strategy

While it will vary from organisation to organisation, the top three causes of sickness absence in the UK are now minor illnesses, MSK conditions, and mental health issues – and it’s worth noting a strong bidirectional link between the latter, according to Arthritis UK.

If you’re looking to improve health outcomes alongside expenditure, especially in a business with employees involved in physical roles, think about how you can boost prevention and early intervention provision for musculoskeletal issues and mental health issues.

These can both have a big impact on the escalation of symptoms, how much time someone takes off work, and how quickly they’re able to return.

5. Promote usage consistently

Healthcare costs and value are linked, and businesses get the most value from their services when they are being used. That means consistent and clear promotion of services throughout the year, not just in a single benefit-choosing window.

We’re seeing lots of organisations unpicking complex or duplicated benefit offerings, in order to simplify messaging and increase understanding and usage of the core services that are making the biggest difference to both their employees, and their business.

HR teams can create clear pathways and tailored communication campaigns, but it’s also incredibly important to provide guidance for line managers as the frontline ‘triage’ for health conditions.

Manager capability is a low-cost, high-impact lever in healthcare cost prevention. These team leaders can spot the subtle changes in behaviour, performance, or attendance which often appear long before a formal health issue is disclosed.

With support, they’re your secret weapon to start supportive conversations and signpost people to the appropriate prevention and early intervention services.