At Cornerstone Preferred Resources (CPR), we understand you have choices when it comes to selecting a Third Party Administrator (TPA). That’s why we use a state-of-the-art administrative system that is designed to facilitate all aspects of plan design, enrollment, reporting, and billing, which enables us to review, verify, and process claims in an efficient and timely manner.
What Is a TPA?
A Third Party Administrator (TPA) operates much like an independent CPA or law firm. It provides continuing professional services and outside claims and benefit plan administration for client employers and benefit plans. TPAs often become the employee benefits office for the covered workers and employers in the client plan. Traditionally, TPAs have sought a behind-the-scenes role and the identity of the employer or sponsored plan is emphasized as opposed to the TPA firm. Thus, the names of even the largest TPA firms are often not widely known to the general public.
Most TPA client plans employ some degree of self-funding, though in recent years the hallmark of the TPAs success has been their willingness to custom-design and implement plans for the specific needs of each employer or group of workers or health provider arrangement. Because efficient TPAs are often able to provide administration at 40 percent of what insurers and others charge, insurance companies, HMOs, medical providers, and others have increasingly been outsourcing their plan administration to TPAs.
Who Uses a TPA?
Through innovation and careful planning, TPAs have led the way in making cost-effective group employee benefit coverage available to all types of organizations…even the smallest employers.
TPA clients include every size and format of employment, including:
- Large Taft-Hartley unions/management
- Single employers
- Trade association group employers
- Multiple employer configurations
- State and local governments
- Religious groups
- Hospital- and doctor-sponsored plans (such as PHO, EPO, etc.)
- MSAs
Additional services that CPR clients can expect to receive include:
- Customized employee communication materials
- On-site involvement at employee enrollment meetings
- Continued plan benefit phone support for employees
- Preparation of plan documents, SPDs, employee identification cards, and claim form(s), if required
- Benefit plan design, maintenance, and enhancements
- Shopping and securing of excess or “stop-loss” coverage to limit your liability
- Assistance in establishing banking arrangements
- Statistical data analysis support/review for future cost projections
- Complete renewal quoting procedures
- Consultation on the full range of employee benefits
- Assistance on your filing of form 5500
24/7 Account Access
Your account information is important and should be available to you anytime from anywhere. CPR provides registered clients easy and secure access to their account information 24/7, with real-time account updates, claims and benefit information, billing statements, reports, and more.
Members and Dependents
- Real-time access to eligibility and claims information at the click of a mouse
- View, print, and save EOBs at your convenience (option to go paperless)
- View the summary plan document from any mobile device
- Access individual and family balances for current or past years
- Make member enrollment changes
- Online Customer Support provides real-time answers to your questions about claims, eligibility, and more
- Request replacement ID cards
- Print temporary ID cards for immediate use
- Find an in-network doctor or hospital in your area, as well as a map and driving directions
Providers
- Real-time access to eligibility and claims information of members and dependents
- Access to coverage information and balances of members and dependents
- View, print, and save EOBs at your convenience
- Online Customer Support provides real-time answers to your claims-related questions
Employers
- Enroll new employees and their dependents
- Modify enrollment information of members and their dependents
- Verify and approve/reject new enrollments, as well as enrollment changes made by members
- Securely receive billing statements, documents, and reports
TPAs and Regulatory Compliance
The TPA industry has helped shape and implement accurate compliance with a host of new government requirements. Every year more than 1,000 new laws, regulations, technical decisions, opinions, court cases, interpretations, and other rulings from about 300 government entities are put into place that employers, plans and/or administrators must obey. Only about 33 percent are adequately announced or explained by the government or technical trade press. And unfortunately, only approximately one percent of all requirements are provided with formal, comprehensive guidance on how to comply.
Contributing to the growth of the TPA market and the Society of Professional Benefit Administrators (SPBA) membership is the desire of plans and employers to ensure that the professionals well-versed in these government requirements are those who are handling their employee benefit plans. SPBA members take great pride in the role they have played in spreading coverage for workers and smoothing the often bumpy road of government legislation and regulation.
