You’ve likely seen numerous digital health solutions that promise to lower medical spend. You’ve probably zeroed in on the top conditions with significant digital solutions in the marketplace: musculoskeletal (MSK), mental health, and diabetes.
For most companies, prioritizing MSK care over other digital health solutions will drive the biggest benefits for your employees and your bottom line when it comes to savings.
Given the multitude of vendors, platforms, and solutions available, prioritization can be a daunting task. How do you choose from among the thousands of digital health tools? What combination of condition focus and solution selection will drive the best outcomes for your population and the biggest return for your business?
Where do you start? The answer is MSK care.
To get started, benefits buyers must ask a few key questions:
How many employees are affected by MSK issues?
Musculoskeletal pain is not a fringe workforce issue. It touches a meaningful share of employees across almost every organization. In Sword Health’s MSK Money Pit guide, Sword analyzed nearly 170,000 people eligible for MSK treatment and found that 24% had at least one medical procedure for MSK-related care in a single year.
The same guide notes that MSK conditions account for $505 billion in annual U.S. healthcare spend, showing how quickly individual aches, injuries, and delayed treatment can become a major cost and productivity problem for employers. For benefits leaders, the takeaway is clear: MSK is already present in the workforce, whether it appears as claims, missed work, reduced productivity, or employees quietly pushing through pain.
Preventable MSK costs are draining healthcare spend
With half of adults in the US experiencing MSK pain, it’s unsurprisingly a top cost driver. MSK accounts for $380 billion each year. Both behavioral health and diabetes cost between $110-180 billion annually.
Of this, $20 billion is spent by employers annually on direct costs for treatment, including surgery, opioids, x-rays and MRIs, spinal injections, ER visits, and more. The ER accounts for the fast-growing category in MSK care, followed closely by outpatient hospital care facilities.
On top of direct pain, MSK impacts sleep, productivity, absenteeism (missed work), mental health, obesity and other co-morbidities. Add on a long list of disability claims, bed days, and treatments and MSK-related conditions account for $40 billion in indirect costs per year.
The goal for benefits buyers is to reduce cost of medical spend while increasing quality of life.
When we look at savings for digital solutions, MSK has the highest savings per member per year when compared to behavioral health and diabetes.
Why? Because clinically-sound, MSK care serves many avenues of physical health.
Sword delivers the industry's highest independently verified ROI
Sword Health is the only digital MSK care provider to receive Validation Institute Level 1 (Savings) and Level 2 (outcomes) certification.
For Validation Institute Level 1, the Institute performs an analysis of our direct, claims-based savings. That covers upfront healthcare costs which impact your business—chronic condition treatments, surgeries, injections, ER visits, and other procedures. The health economists at Validation Institute have determined that Sword delivers $2,472 in savings per member per year, and are willing to back up their analysis with a $25k guarantee.
Why does this matter?
We now have uncontested third-party certification which ensures we save money and improve health, outcomes, and cost.
When seeking out digital solutions, lock down your choices with confidence.
- Choose a solution that’s third-party verified.
- You should also seek vendors that offer outcome-based pricing so you know your payments are tied to measurable healthcare outcomes.
- You should expect tracking and reporting on success.
You want to find a genuine partner with a vested interest in combined success.
Digital MSK care plans also reduce indirect organizational costs
8 in 10 people with chronic pain screen positive for moderate to severe mental health conditions.
At Sword, patients are screened for anxiety and depression on day one, understanding that pain and mental health are deeply interdependent. The physical therapists who see our patients understand that overcoming pain doesn’t just come from prescribed exercises.
Patients must also be guided through mental and emotional obstacles that can inhibit long-term recovery, which is why they undergo Cognitive Behavioral Therapy through Sword.
Beyond mental health, MSK can offset indirect costs from challenges such as productivity, disability claims, and presenteeism. The most reliable way to do this? By trusting care to a licensed doctor of physical therapy who monitors every exercise, every session, every time.
As you build a benefits suite with savings and quality top of mind, take care to note the importance of vendors with clinically validated outcomes, and a care model that supports a whole-person approach. This guide to building an employee benefits plan can help your team offer the type of MSK care that helps your people heal on their terms.
Sword's digital AI care delivers proven results on a global scale
Sword Health is the world’s fastest growing digital musculoskeletal (MSK) care provider, on a mission to free 2 billion people from acute, chronic, and post-surgical pain. It is the first digital solution to pair its members with a licensed physical therapist and the Sword Health Digital Therapist, to deliver a clinically-proven, personalized treatment plan that is more effective, easier, and less expensive than the traditional gold standard of care.
Sword Health believes in the power of people to recover at home, without resorting to imaging, surgeries or opioids. Since launching in 2015, Sword Health has worked with insurers, health systems, and employers in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia to make high quality musculoskeletal care accessible to everyone.
About the author
Sword Editorial Team
Evidence-based healthcare insights
