A better way to engage your employees in high-quality care

Garner uses better data and smarter incentives to steer care to the best doctors in your network, driving cost savings for employers and better outcomes for employees. Members search the Garner app or ask the Concierge team for a recommendation, and get reimbursed for their out-of-pocket costs when they see a Garner Top Provider. Garner helps you save on the cost of your benefits because better doctors follow the latest research, avoid unnecessary procedures, and help patients get healthier faster.

The savings come from steering members to more appropriate care. Higher quality care is often actually less expensive. The best-performing doctors are more likely to diagnose the first time correctly, order the right tests, and recommend surgery or medication only when it truly helps the patient. They don’t order unnecessary procedures and have lower surgical complication rates, keeping costs down while improving member outcomes.

Garner evaluates doctors using one of the largest medical claims databases in the country, covering 75% of all claims nationally and more than 320 million patients. Using 550+ clinical metrics across 80+ specialties, Garner identifies the top doctors in your network who follow the latest medical guidelines, avoid unnecessary procedures, and help patients get healthy faster. Recommendations are personalized to each member's location, network, and care needs.

The incentive follows the doctor, not the building. When a member has a procedure with a Top Provider, the eligible out-of-pocket costs tied to that episode of care qualify, including separately billed services like anesthesia and pathology. Members are never penalized for parts of the care team they did not choose. You decide which cost categories (such as emergency services or prescription drugs) qualify under your plan design, and your Garner team maps those rules during implementation.

No. Garner works as an out-of-the-box solution that doesn’t require network changes or further integrations. For your employees, it’s as simple as installing the Garner app and finding the best doctors in their network immediately.

HRA incentive size and plan design changes are key drivers of behavior change. When employees are rewarded for choosing higher-performing doctors, we see real behavior change, and real improvements in outcomes and costs. You set your incentive to match how much you want to shift member behavior. A small incentive adds a reward on top of your existing plan for modest savings, a standard design pairs that reward with a small deductible change to disincentivize non-Top Providers, and an enhanced design combines a higher deductible with a larger incentive to drive significantly more engagement and savings. The bigger the incentive, the more members engage, which is why many employers now start with a richer design.

Yes. Garner works with PPO and HDHP/HSA plans alike, whether self-funded or fully insured, and does not affect your employees' eligibility to contribute to their HSAs. On an HSA-qualified plan, the incentive is structured to follow IRS rules, either by reimbursing costs after a member meets the IRS minimum deductible or by rewarding members from the first visit through Garner's first-dollar HSA model.

Yes. Under IRS rules, paying a member's costs before they meet their deductible would normally make them ineligible to contribute to an HSA, so Garner rewards members through the account itself instead. Garner's first-dollar HSA model, available with WEX, Optum, HealthEquity, and other major HSA providers, seeds the member's account with an amount equal to their out-of-pocket cost, which is designed to preserve the member’s eligibility while still rewarding them for choosing Top Providers. Members have a reason to engage on day one, and we see that the share of employees seeing top-performing providers nearly doubles in the first year (from 23% to 43%). If you offer an HSA plan, we’ll determine the right setup during implementation.

The incentive is structured as an employer HSA contribution, so it follows federal IRS rules and works consistently across the country with a few state-specific considerations that may require extra planning. The main difference to plan for is state income tax, since a few states (including California and New Jersey) tax HSA contributions even though the federal government does not. That changes how a contribution is taxed for some employees, not whether they can receive it. Garner reviews any state-specific considerations for your population during implementation.

Garner charges a simple per-employee-per-month fee. That fee already includes administration and the amount Garner will pay out in member incentives. There are no hidden costs, and fees are tied to Garner's performance against an agreed savings target. Your Garner team will model the exact pricing and projected savings for your population during evaluation.

Garner ties its fees to a net trend target and backs that target with its own money. For groups with 500 to 5,000 enrolled, up to 300% of fees are guaranteed against the target, and larger groups are guaranteed up to 100%. The per-employee-per-month fee already covers administration, broker compensation, and the most Garner will pay out in incentives, and 100% of any surplus is returned to you. Garner carries real downside if it does not deliver.