Why Benefits Strategy Must Start With the Whole Person

When we review quarterly and annual benefits data, we often group by place of service, clinical category, or average member total cost, which is valuable only if it is paired with a deeper understanding of the unique whole people seeking care and creating those costs. Continually looking for ways to better understand each person is essential: is it hypertension or chronic pain, depression or chronic pain, or chronic pain leading to depression? Medical trainees are taught to “treat the patient, not the data or diagnosis,” and the same applies to benefits strategies: if you want the best outcomes, treat the people, not the data, by focusing on who they are and what they truly need, not just what they are buying. PROACTIVE CARE, for example, means identifying people with chronic pain who may be becoming depressed and addressing them holistically, including monitoring and treating blood pressure as appropriate, a decision that cannot be made without truly understanding the individuals within the population. This whole-person approach is reinforced by evidence showing that chronic pain may independently increase the risk of developing hypertension, with part of that risk mediated by depression, suggesting that early identification and treatment of depression among people with chronic pain could reduce downstream hypertension risk (Qin et al., 2025).

Qin, P., Ho, F. K., Celis-Morales, C. A., & Pell, J. P. (2025). Chronic pain and hypertension and mediation role of inflammation and depression. Hypertension, 83(1). https://doi.org/10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.125.25544