Headline News
LifeCare Utilization in 2003 Tops 37%, Year-End Analysis Shows
LifeCare Saves Client Employees Average of 15.5 Hours Per Case

In a time when HR departments nationwide are challenged with justifying the costs of their benefits programs, LifeCare clients can do so with confidence: the company’s annual, year-end utilization analysis shows that the utilization rate across LifeCare’s entire book of business was 37.9 percent for 2003.

“It’s extremely gratifying to see this level of utilization,” says LifeCare co-founder and CEO, Peter G. Burki, “because it means two important things. First, it means that our client employees continue to strongly rely on LifeCare to help them manage their busy lives. And second, it means that our clients can continue to rely on us for high-quality services that deliver a superior return on investment.”

Equally gratifying, Burki notes, is the fact that client employees who completed Quality Assurance Questionnaires—forms that are sent to all employees who use LifeCare services—estimated that LifeCare saved them an average of 15.5 hours per case in 2003. “Again, it’s a strong confirmation of the value of our services and the impact they make on peoples’ lives,” says Burki.

The analysis also shows that callers interacted with their LifeCare specialists an average of five times per case, and specialists delivered an average of six qualified referrals per case. The interesting thing to note here, Burki points out, is that LifeCare specialists pre-screened an average of 30 providers to deliver those six qualified referrals. “Imagine if these employees had to find qualified providers on their own. They’d spend hours making calls every work day, when providers are open for business.”

When considering utilization, it's important to note that utilization is defined differently from one work/life provider to another, and therefore, it is not always appropriate to do a straight utilization comparison between work/life vendors. LifeCare's 37.9 percent annual rate includes usage of the following:

		Specialist Requests—Cases involving contact with specialists for referrals and/or education materials
		Educational Materials—Number of educational materials sent
		PDF Library—Number of visits to the "LifeCare Guides/PDF Library" section of the web site
		Web Site Logins—Number of times employees or dependents logged on to the web site
		Seminar Participants—Number of employees who attended a LifeCare seminar

If you have any questions about your particular utilization rates, how they compare to those in our overall book of business, or how they compare to those of other organizations in your industry, contact your account manager.

Here are some other highlights of LifeCare’s year end results.

Solid Quality Results

Client employees who completed Quality Assurance Questionnaires gave LifeCare’s specialists, educational materials and overall services high marks:

		96 percent rated the helpfulness and attitude of their specialists as good to excellent
		97 percent rated their specialists’ professionalism as good to excellent
		94 percent rated their educational resources as good to excellent
		96 percent rated the quality of our overall service as good to excellent

Most Frequent Cases

The types of cases handled most often by LifeCare in 2003 were (in order of frequency):

1. Child Care (includes Prenatal)
2. Adult Care
3. Personal Services
4. Academic Services
5. Special Needs

Web Utilization

When employees logged onto the LifeCare web site, the top five communities they accessed to seek information on their own were (in order of popularity):

1. Family
2. Health
3. Finance/Legal
4. Education
5. Daily Life

The top 10 subcommunities employees accessed in their searches were (in order of popularity):

1. Prenatal
2. Child Care
3. Parenting
4. Diet/Nutrition
5. Relationships
6. Aging Loved Ones
7. Credit/Debt Management
8. Health
9. Work and Family
10. Financial News

The top article topics accessed via the LifeCare web site were (in order of popularity):

1. Divorce/Separation
2. Relationships/Conflict Management
3. Depression
4. Having a Baby
5. Legal
6. Buying vs. Leasing a Car
7. Budgeting
8. Caring for Aging Loved Ones
9. Child Care
10. Weight Loss

Discount Center Utilization

The LifeCare Discount Center (which provides access to hundreds of money-saving deals on a wide range of products and services nationwide) continued to gain popularity with clients and employees alike. The Discount Center was accessed over 252,000 times in 2003 alone, and the most popular types of discounts accessed were (in order of popularity):

1. Amusement Parks
2. Movie Theaters
3. Computers
4. Hotels/Motels/Inns
5. Electronics

Seminars

LifeCare currently offers clients 90 seminars on a wide range of work/life topics. These seminars were available in a variety of formats during 2003: some were delivered live by a LifeCare instructor at client sites; others were streamed live to clients via LifeCare’s web technology; and others were stored on the LifeCare web site in a pre-recorded format and made available to clients and their employees 24/7 throughout the year.

Live seminars delivered at client locations increased by more than 75 percent over 2002. Top live seminars requested by clients were (in order of popularity):

1. Coping With Change in the Workplace
2. Stress Management
3. Managing Work and Life
4. Building Better Relationships through Effective Communication
5. Living a Healthy Life

Participation in LifeCare’s monthly WebCast seminars (live seminars delivered via the web) increased by 158 percent over 2002. The seminars that drew the most participants in 2003 were:

1. Parenting Your School Aged Child
2. Communicating with Your Older Loved One
3. Protecting Your Child
4. Budgeting Basics
5. Encouraging Good Homework/Study Habits

The most popular pre-recorded e-learning seminars accessed by client employees via the LifeCare web site were (in order of popularity):

1. Pursuing a Graduate/Continuing Education Program
2. Budgeting Basics
3. Strategies for Healthy Meal Planning
4. Before- and After-School Care
5. Stress Management

“Our year-end analysis provides a helpful snapshot of LifeCare’s overall utilization trends,” Burki states. “But we always remind our clients that they can get a truly customized analysis of their own organization’s utilization rates by contacting their account manager. In addition, our recently enhanced ROI tool offers a detailed analysis of the cost savings LifeCare provides in the areas of reduced absenteeism and turnover and enhanced productivity.”