Offering competitive ancillary and pharmacy benefits continues to be a key differentiator for employers looking to attract and retain talent. While medical coverage is the foundation of any employee benefits package, offerings like pharmacy and ancillary services like dental, vision, life insurance, and wellness programs are essential to supporting overall employee well-being. In this article, we’ll explore what ancillary benefits include, why they matter, and how employers can simplify administration while maximizing value.
What Are Ancillary Benefits? A Quick Overview for Employers
Ancillary benefits refer to the supplemental coverage options employers may offer alongside traditional medical insurance. These benefits are designed to support broader aspects of employee health, financial security and quality of life.
Common examples include:
- Dental and vision coverage
- Life and disability insurance
- Critical illness or accident insurance
- Wellness programs and other voluntary benefits
Unlike core medical plans, which provide coverage for hospital visits, physician services, and emergency care, ancillary benefits fill the gaps by addressing additional preventive care, everyday wellness, and unexpected events. For example, dental benefits may cover routine cleanings and X-rays, while vision plans often include eye exams and allowances for glasses or contacts.
While sometimes viewed as optional, these offerings play a strategic role in workforce satisfaction and retention. Employees increasingly expect comprehensive benefit packages that support every stage of life—not just when a medical emergency arises.
The Employer’s Challenge: Managing Pharmacy & Ancillary Benefits Separately
For many employers, pharmacy and ancillary benefits are still managed in silos—often handled by different vendors with separate systems, contacts, and timelines. Dental, vision, pharmacy, wellness, and life insurance may each come with their own invoices, renewal schedules, and eligibility files, making coordination difficult and time-consuming for HR teams
This fragmented approach creates several challenges:
- Increased administrative burden from managing multiple platforms and vendors
- Limited visibility across benefits due to disconnected data sources
- Inconsistent experiences for employees, who may struggle to understand or access their coverage
When programs aren’t integrated, it’s harder to spot gaps in care, track total benefit utilization, or coordinate support for employees with complex health needs. For both employers and employees, the result is often more confusion, more manual work, and missed opportunities for better outcomes.
The Case for Integration: Why Bundling Pharmacy and Ancillary with Medical Pays Off
Managing pharmacy and ancillary benefits doesn’t have to be complex. BHPS simplifies administration through its Create® Technology platform, which brings medical, dental, vision, pharmacy, and other benefits into one connected system. By bundling ancillary coverage with core health plans, employers can reduce complexity and deliver a more cohesive experience for employees.
Key advantages of this integrated approach include:
- A single monthly statement for easier billing and reconciliation
- One eligibility file to streamline enrollment and reduce errors
- A unified member experience, with consistent access across all benefit types
- Connected claims data that enables better care coordination and oversight
This level of integration creates new opportunities to improve efficiency, lower costs and better support employee health.
Key Benefits of Ancillary Integration
Integrating ancillary benefits with core medical coverage isn’t just about convenience. When systems and data are connected, employers gain new ways to control costs, improve care and reduce administrative complexity. Here are some of the most impactful advantages of an integrated approach:
Lower Costs and Smarter Pharmacy Oversight
Pharmacy benefits can be one of the most expensive and difficult areas to manage. An integrated platform allows for more proactive oversight, including:
- Pharmacy case management for chronic conditions and medication adherence
- Opioid risk monitoring and strategies to steer members to lower-cost, clinically appropriate sites of care
- Flexible PBM options, whether using a partner network or integrating with an existing vendor
These capabilities help employers identify cost drivers earlier and ensure members are getting the right medications, at the right time and in the right setting.
Centralized Data for Better Insights
When integrating medical benefits with pharmacy and ancillary benefits, employers get a complete picture of member health and more opportunities to act on it. Employers benefit from:
- Real-time tracking of out-of-pocket costs and accumulator status
- Early identification of care gaps or high-risk conditions
- Preventive interventions based on trends across benefit types
Centralized data supports better decision-making and enables population health strategies that are hard to execute with siloed systems.
Seamless Administration and Member Experience
A fragmented benefits experience can frustrate employees and create extra work for your internal team. Integrated administration solves for both:
- One account team and single point of contact for all benefits
- Simplified processes for enrollment, renewals, and billing
- Consistent experience for members, who can log onto one portal to access all benefits.
The result is a more efficient operation and a more user-friendly experience for your workforce.
Dental and Vision Benefits That Drive Value
Dental and vision plans are often the most frequently used benefits in an employee’s health package, yet they’re sometimes treated as secondary. In reality, these low-cost, high-impact benefits can play a key role in employee recruitment, retention and early detection of health issues.
Integrated dental and vision offerings help reduce out-of-pocket costs and encourage regular preventive care. Features like no deductibles, fixed copays, free exams and no claim forms lower the barrier to access and simplify the experience for employees.
Vision benefits also support overall wellness by helping detect early signs of chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Dental exams can lead to early detection of medical conditions such as oral cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and sleep apnea.
Make Ancillary Benefits Work Harder for Your Team
Ancillary benefits are no longer optional—they’re essential to building a benefits strategy that supports the whole employee. From improving health outcomes to simplifying administration, the value of integration is clear. Employers who take a more strategic approach to bundling ancillary, pharmacy and medical benefits can unlock better insights, reduce costs and deliver a smoother experience for their teams.
If you’re looking to make ancillary and pharmacy benefits easier to manage and more impactful, Brighton Health Plan Solutions can help you get there.