Advisor Creates Platform For Lifetime Health Care Planning

Like retirement planning, health care planning is easiest for the young. Unlike retirement planning, time is rarely on the client’s side when it comes to health care.

A recently created educational platform and digital portal, HealthStyles.net, hopes to deliver awareness of lifetime health care planning options to families and individuals via institutions, employers, associations and advisors.

When clients are young and healthy, they can avail themselves of more plentiful and less expensive options to cover their future health care expenses, and as they age, their options become fewer and more expensive, says J. Heywood Sloane, principal of Diversified Services Group, the Wayne, Pa.-based financial consultancy that created HealthStyles.net.

Yet advisors are rarely engaging with clients in health care planning until they are at or near retirement, says Sloane, which is why HealthStyles.net was created.

“Right now, what’s happening is that advisors aren’t addressing client health until Medicare or Social Security decisions are coming up,” says Sloane. “Other advisors only discuss these issues through the portfolio, or products. Advisors have to get away from that investment centricity if they want to add value to their services through healthcare planning.”

HealthStyles.net offers tools to foster collaborations between individuals, their families, their health care team and their financial team. For example, the platform tailors an “information map” to each user’s health objectives and the solutions necessary to meet their desired outcomes.

Educational modules teach users about caregiving roles, financial tools and government programs that can be used to fund health care needs, manage risks, and foster health care communications.

The program was originally designed as a collaborative platform with two parallel educational programs that advisors and clients could use in tandem, but Sloane focused more on institutions as the need for awareness and knowledge around health care planning became clear.

Advisors are often reticent to discuss health issues with their clients, notes Sloane, which is one reason the topic is often neglected until a decision involving Medicare or Social Security is made.

“When advisor are asked whether their clients are concerned about health care, almost all of them recognize it as a top-of-mind issue,” says Sloane. “Yet when advisors are asked if they’re capable of helping their clients address health care funding concerns, we find that most of them say ‘No, we don’t have the expertise.’”