By Manan Shah, President, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Nevada

Access to healthcare is more than a recruiting or retention tool. It's one of the largest employer investments and a critical factor in workforce stability. Employers are facing a difficult equation: healthcare costs continue to rise while employees expect the same convenience and personalization they experience in nearly every other part of their lives.

Yet for many, navigating healthcare still feels fragmented, time-consuming, and overwhelming – from finding the right care provider to understanding benefits and costs to scheduling appointments.

As employers compete for talent and work to keep employees healthy and engaged, access to healthcare must better reflect how people live and work. Employers are also looking for solutions that lower the total cost of care while improving the overall experience. The future isn't fully virtual or entirely in-person but hybrid: seamlessly combining digital tools, virtual support, and in‑person care with greater speed, precision, and connectivity.

We see this shift firsthand with the members we serve. For employers, it's clear: healthcare must be easier to navigate, more integrated across care settings, supporting a more coordinated, whole-health approach. Our goal is to help employees – our members – in Nevada spend less time managing care and more time focused on work and life, while helping lower their cost of healthcare and simplify how people navigate the system.

Why hybrid healthcare is a business imperative

Today's healthcare system was largely designed around in-person visits, which no longer aligns with modern schedules or expectations. Access can be limited, wait times are long, and coordinating care across providers is often left to the individual. At the same time, the workforce expects flexibility. When nearly two-thirds of hourly workers receive their schedules only a week in advance, care requiring long wait times and limited appointments don't work for employees or their employers.

In Nevada, where nearly 1.9 million residents, or two-thirds of the state's population, live in areas with shortages of primary care providers, improving access and care coordination is especially important.

Hybrid healthcare addresses this gap by combining digital tools, virtual care, and in-person services into a simpler, more integrated experience. This includes more coordinated approaches across medical, pharmacy, and behavioral health. Together, these capabilities make it easier for people to access support quickly, identify needs earlier, avoid unnecessary office visits, and get the right level of care when they need it. For employers, that translates to fewer disruptions during the workday, better employee engagement, and lower costs associated with missed work or delayed care.

Using technology responsibly to simplify and personalize care

The opportunity to improve the experience is significant. A Harris Poll survey found that people spend eight hours a month coordinating care. That's time most employees don't have.

At Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, our focus is on making healthcare easier to navigate by using technology, including responsibly leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), to help remove barriers, simplify decisions, save time, and support earlier, more personalized interventions.

For our members in Nevada, we support this model in several ways:

• A single digital front door: Digital tools like our Sydney Health platform allow members to find innetwork providers, check benefits, estimate costs, and schedule appointments in one place.
• Personalized guidance: AI‑enabled tools help surface relevant information and recommended next steps based on an individual's needs and strengthen decision-making with data-driven insights – while maintaining privacy, transparency, and human oversight.
• Proactive support: By combining data with outreach like app notifications, text messages, or emails, we can engage people earlier with more personalized support for preventive services, medication reminders, or chronic condition resources.

We're also investing in systems that allow health information to appropriately and securely move more easily across the care continuum. When data is connected, providers have better visibility of their patient's health, and employees spend less time repeating information or tracking down answers, and administrative complexity is reduced.

Why interoperability matters

Hybrid care only works when information can follow the individual. Without that connectivity, hybrid care breaks down creating fragmented experiences, delays in care, and unnecessary complexity for employees trying to navigate the system. When this happens, employees spend more time managing their care, face avoidable delays, and are more likely to postpone treatment, leading to higher downstream costs and more disruption during the workday. It should feel simpler and more integrated.

Interoperability helps make those transitions seamless by creating a simpler, more integrated experience, reducing repeated questions, duplicative tests, and avoidable delays. For employers, those inefficiencies show up as real costs – in higher healthcare spending and employees spending more time away from work managing care instead of receiving it.

When information moves more seamlessly, providers can make more informed decisions quicker, enabling earlier intervention and better coordination across care settings. In 2024 alone, the U.S. healthcare system avoided an estimated $258 billion in administrative costs through electronic transactions and improved data exchange. Through Health OS, our digital interoperability platform, we're connecting data from the various corners of healthcare to give care providers and consumers a more complete view of a person's health and healthcare, helping to create a more integrated healthcare experience.

Raising expectations for the healthcare experience

People expect healthcare to fit into their lives. Meeting that expectation requires a connected, flexible approach that seamlessly blends technology with in-person care.

Building a more effective healthcare system will require continued partnership across stakeholders, including employers, care providers, and health plans. Smarter, more connected care approaches can improve the cost of care, simplify the healthcare experience, improve outcomes, and support a healthier, more productive, workforce – strengthening businesses in Nevada.

Learn more at anthem.com/healthcareinnevada.