Preventive Care Is a Cost Strategy—If You Can Get Employees to Use It

In 2025, the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family coverage rose to nearly $27,000, with workers paying about $6,850 out of pocket, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey. As organizations look for sustainable ways to control health care costs, preventive care stands out as one of the most effective—and most overlooked—solutions.

The issue isn’t whether preventive services are covered. Most employer health plans already include them at no cost. The real challenge is ensuring employees use these services. Effective communications are what bridge the gap between coverage and action, turning passive benefits into proactive health decisions.

Preventive Care: Small Spend, Significant Financial Return

Preventive care, including annual checkups, immunizations, screenings, and chronic-condition monitoring, addresses the largest cost drivers in health care. Consider this:

• Fewer than 1% of members drive nearly one-third of total plan spending, according to Segal’s own client experience. Many of those claims stem from conditions that are preventable or more affordable when detected early.
• Chronic and mental health conditions account for nearly 90% of U.S. health care spending, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Health and Economic Costs of Chronic Disease.

When conditions are identified early, care is typically simpler, less invasive, and far less expensive. When care is delayed, costs escalate quickly, through hospitalizations, specialty services, and long-term medication use. This is exactly the high-cost utilization employers are trying to avoid.

The Cost of Inaction and the ROI of Engagement

Despite broad coverage, preventive care remains widely underused. The gap between access and action carries clear financial consequences for employers.

• Nine in ten Americans delay or skip recommended preventive screenings, even when they know those services are covered, according to the 2025 Aflac Wellness Matters Survey.
• Nearly 60% avoid preventive care altogether, increasing the likelihood of later-stage diagnoses and higher-cost treatment, also reported in the Aflac Wellness Matters Survey.
• Routine cancer screenings have generated $6.5 trillion in economic value over the past 25 years, primarily through earlier detection and less intensive care, based on research published in BMC Health Services Research by the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, and study sponsor Grail LLC.
• Forty-four percent of cancer deaths are potentially preventable through risk reduction and early detection, according to the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention & Early Detection Facts & Figures.

When employers actively promote, explain, and incentivize preventive care, the return is measurable.

• Claims analyses of advanced primary care models show that engaged employees use 21% fewer health care dollars overall, including fewer emergency room visits and inpatient admissions, according to Marathon Health’s claims analysis of advanced primary care.
• In this Segal client example, wellness participation tripled (from 24% to 88%) when plans applied behavioral nudges, simple commitments, and incentives.
  

The takeaway is clear. Results like these require more than an offer-it-for-free-and-they-will-use-it mentality. When employers consistently explain preventive care, personalize the message, and make next steps clear, employees are far more likely to act early rather than delay care.

The Core Strategy: Move from ‘Information’ to ‘Activation’

Most employers communicate preventive care as information: what’s covered, where to go, what the plan includes. But you can up your game if you reinforce the need to act by describing why it matters, that it’s easy, and exactly what to do next. Here’s how:

Start with one clear message. Give employees one thing they can remember even if they’re just skimming an email. Effective anchor messages include:

• “Your annual preventive care is covered at 100%—no deductible.”
• “You don’t need symptoms to use preventive benefits.”
• “Most serious conditions are cheaper and easier to treat when caught early.”

People act when uncertainty is removed. Cost confusion (“Will I get a bill?”) and fear of the unknown remain major barriers to preventive care use, as highlighted in the Aflac Wellness Matters Survey. Clear, reassuring language reduces friction and increases follow-through.

Shift the focus from “health” to “life disruption.” Employees don’t avoid preventive care because they don’t value health. They avoid it because it feels inconvenient, scary, or unnecessary right now. Reframe preventive care around avoiding surprise medical bills, preventing missed work and stress, and catching issues before they become emergencies, like:

• “A 30‑minute annual checkup can help prevent months of treatment and unexpected costs later.”

Behavioral research shows people are more motivated by loss avoidance than long‑term benefits. This framing makes preventive care immediately relevant.

Communicate all year, not just at open enrollment. Open enrollment is when employees are least able to absorb new information. Seize other moments to make your case for preventive care:

• Onboarding: “Schedule your free preventive visit in your first 90 days.”
• Seasonal hooks:
  • Spring is a great time for an annual physical.
  • Fall is best for flu shots.
  • Birthdays are a perfect time to promote age‑based screenings.

Make the next step obvious and easy. Every preventive care message should answer one question clearly: What should I do next? Equally important, access design matters. Employers that reduce friction—by simplifying scheduling, improving provider access, or offering convenient primary care options—consistently see higher preventive care use and fewer downstream complications over time.

• “Log in to [provider portal], and schedule your annual physical.”
• “Call your primary care doctor—no referral needed.”
• “Use the app to find an in‑network provider near you.”

Make sure you have one call to action per message, link directly to your provider search or scheduling tool within the message, and steer clear of jargon.

Measure and share. Reinforce trust, and demonstrate how employee actions make a difference. Did claims costs decrease for the Company and contribute to better renewal rates?

• “Because more employees completed preventive visits this year, emergency room use declined.”

When preventive care is communicated this way, it stops being a benefit employees have and becomes something they use.

The Bottom Line

For employers facing relentless health care inflation, preventive care becomes a financial strategy only when employees are actively encouraged, reminded, and supported in using it. Coverage establishes permission, but communication, access, and engagement determine return. That engagement depends on clear, repeated, and purposeful communications.

Read Next

• Building Trust and Dispelling Fears: Encouraging Preventive Care Through Healthy Activity and Smart Incentives
• 6 Tips to Reenergize Your Well-Being Program
• Inspire Employee Action with the Right Messaging