ER visits down 30%. Urgent care visits down 85%.

This is a Texas school district with 4,500 employees and 3,000+ dependents on a self-funded medical plan with three benefit options. They added the benefit in 2024, and 60% of the covered population used it that year.

What that did to the rest of the plan: ER visits fell 30% and urgent care visits fell 85%. Both of those are among the most expensive routes into the system, and members chose to use the included benefit instead. The plan saw a 6% drop in total claim spend in Year 1 — about $2.3M in net savings against what running the plan without the benefit would have cost.

Employee response held up with it. NPS averaged 90+ across the year. No copays, no deductibles, no surprise bills — and that showed up in the survey numbers.