This week’s episode features a conversation with Doug Geinzer, Founder and President at High Performance Providers. Bundled plans provide cost benefits to providers while also connecting patients to quality healthcare. Direct contracting gives patients lower costs which are transparent upfront and provides options for destination medicine too. For an even more attractive offer, patients also get safety guarantees in high performance networks with proven reliability.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• 01:51 Direct contracting: Benefits for both purchasers and providers
• 09:06 Bundled plans for destination medicine
• 12:04 Tailored bundles, hospital transfer agreement, and superior service
• 16:04 Connecting patients to quality healthcare

Quotes:

04:32 “In a bundled arrangement, the terms are negotiated before the surgery even occurs. So there is a flat amount. It’s transparent and that purchaser writes one check rather than multiple checks.”

05:52 “The purchasers want it to be easy. The providers want to earn more money. And this satisfies both of their needs.”

07:43 “From the provider side, you’re eliminating your administrative department that is doing the billing, the coding, the appeals, the collections, everything that comes with it. They’re spending about 27% of what they’re billing collecting what they charged.”

08:52 “Patient doesn’t have any patient obligations, so the plan will waive the co-pay and the deductibles for the patient because they’re saving so much money and they know they’re going to be able to get that patient back to work sooner.”

19:23 “With all of the providers that I work with personally, they have to publish their outcomes every year. So now their outcomes are out there because we need to guarantee that we are in the upper 5 percentile of the practitioners in the United States.”

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This week’s episode features a conversation with Matt Scovil, CEO at Medefy. Apps and AI are essential pieces in modern healthcare but having real people communicate with members, using technology to assist, has produced significantly higher engagement. Also, a multi-channel approach that involves the entire household empowers individual members to make much more informed healthcare decisions.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• 01:58 Outdated methods cause a lack of member engagement
• 05:05 Using AI and apps to support rather than be the face of healthcare products
• 11:34 Opening up communication channels that members want to engage with
• 17:05 Reaching out to demographics with a multi-channel approach

Quotes:

03:32 “In the 2000s, people are different. They want to consume things differently. They want to interact with things differently. And so the scope of the problem really fell on how do we get down to the user level, the patient level, the member level, and do things the way they want to do.”

06:24 “We have found the best fit for those types of machine learning AI pieces is to support a real person rather than try to make it the face of the product, which is still very much lacking in terms of complexity for the average healthcare experience.”

13:37 “We’re able to reach out to the population live and because it’s real people, we’re starting these communications or these conversations and people reach back. They want to talk. They don’t turn off these notifications. They want to be engaged.”

17:51 “Getting the spouse engaged if it’s a heavy blue-collar male-dominated group, you know, the female of the household makes 85% of the healthcare decisions on average for her family. So getting her engaged is very, very important.”

19:08 “People have the best health outcomes when they can talk to somebody that already knew what to do.”

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This week’s episode features a conversation with Dave Romeo, author of “How to Wow! — The Art of Consistently Delivering Legendary Customer Service.” Giving customers a user experience they’ll remember is not complicated. It does however require a genuine demonstration of your desire to help. Not only does this spark lasting connections, but it also returns your investment several times over.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• 04:11 Customer experience is the next competitive battleground
• 06:51 The bank story: A lesson in delivering legendary customer service
• 14:31 How to deliver customer service
• 19:03 The $4,000 thank you card

Quotes:

04:25 “When you can demonstrate to your customers that it’s more important to you that they have a great experience doing business with you than it is to them, they will be wowed.”

14:34 “It’s very easy to know what legendary customer service looks like when you’re a customer. But sometimes when we’re supposed to be delivering to our customers, we forget about that.”

14:56 “If the obstacle is a commandment, obey it. If it’s a law, change it. If it’s a rule, break it. And if it’s a policy, ignore it. And that’s good advice if you want to deliver legendary customer service to your customers.”

18:39 “I found that if I memorized people’s names, they pay attention, they stay engaged, and they never forget it.”

21:32 “Little things don’t mean a lot. They mean everything.”

References:

Order How to Wow! — The Art of Consistently Delivering Legendary Customer Service at Dave’s website: www.daveromeo.com

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This week’s episode features a conversation with Matt Newman, best-selling author of “Starting at the Finish Line.” Cancer is not a solitary disease and Matt shares his family’s journey with it and how it eventually afflicted him too. Writing was his catharsis and his ability to strengthen others and teach that their conditions do define them became his inspiration for writing his book. Matt teaches that negativity gains you nothing while positivity leads to success.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• 04:30 A family history of cancer leads to Matt’s diagnosis of brain cancer
• 12:18 Lessons from Larry: Finding strength and the fragility of life
• 14:39 Writing as a catharsis and inspiring people on a global scale
• 18:24 Surround yourself with positivity and success follows

Quotes:

06:32 “The reality is people want what they can’t get. They want life insurance after they can’t get it, long-term care after they can’t get it, a financial plan if they lose 30%, and I would preach every day of the necessity of why we need these plans.”

12:24 “I used to believe in irony. I stopped believing in irony. And I understood that he put in that place to teach me how to act, how to have independence, how to have dignity, how to fight, how to be there for family.”

13:39 “One of the greatest lessons in life in the deepest, darkest of times, we’re given this new set of lenses that we look through them, we see life absolutely differently when we’re understanding how fragile things can really be.”

13:53 “Strength is not how big your arms are. Strength is now how much you bench press. Strength is something that’s located deep down in our bellies at those deepest and darkest of times. We can find it. We can grab it. We can own it.”

18:45 “When you surround yourself with negativity, nothing good comes out of it. And you have to learn to live. It’s sometimes not about tomorrow, it’s not about yesterday, it’s about now. It’s about living in the moment and appreciating the now, right now.”

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This week’s episode features a conversation with Sara Hames, Principal at NBS Advisors. Navigating health plans is a complicated process BUT it shouldn’t be. By simplifying the available options and providing a phone number to call, members and employers can make the most informed decisions for them. Also, providing a better healthcare experience involves educating advisors on attractive packages and networks that they can actually offer their clients.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• 02:54 Improving health plan members’ user experience
• 05:27 Simplifying healthcare shopping for more informed decisions
• 11:16 Conversations personalize the healthcare experience
• 13:20 Educating advisors on available plans and networks
• 17:19 Provide an aggregator number and the clients will come

Quotes:

04:23 “There’s a significant disconnect between what employers think their plans do and what they actually do.”

04:56 “To motivate you to be a good consumer, go out and shop for healthcare. But guess what, you can’t in most cases. In most cases, it is impossible to find out the cost of a service before we incur it. So how is a member supposed to shop?”

05:51 “You’ve already learned I’m not the HSA-qualified plans. And if you stay away from those, you can offer free services to members.”

15:45 “That right provider is generally a direct contracted provider and those types of providers are eager to put together bundled pricing for employers who are willing to steer their employees to them for a set price but at no cost to the member.”

18:35 “The other tool that we’re using quite a bit is the Brainshark, which is just a PowerPoint with a voice-over, but we can put it on the Internet, we can put it on YouTube and people can go back to it as often as they want.”

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This week’s episode features a conversation with Dr. Cristin Dickerson, Founding Partner of Green Imaging. There is a stigma that scanners in hospitals are better than freestanding facilities. However, there is no difference in hardware and professional skill in handling these machines. Knowing this can help patients and employers cut their medical spend for these services by two-thirds and enjoy greater satisfaction with their dedicated concierge.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• 03:22 Why doctor’s do NOT refer to freestanding imaging
• 06:06 How Green Imaging saves money and utilizes existing structures
• 08:18 There is no diagnostic advantage of using hospital scanners
• 13:23 Guaranteeing patient satisfaction with lower costs and better service
• 17:58 Future-proofing imaging centers

Quotes:

05:22 “The hospital price of an exam is somewhere, except for the specialty hospitals, is going to be somewhere around $1,300 to $1,600 and we’re about a third of that. And sometimes we’re lower here.”

06:46 “We’re Green for two reasons. We’re green because we save you money and we’re green because we also are using existing brick and mortar, not just adding more brick and mortar to the system.”

08:32 “Typically, the scanners are the same. Maybe the hospitals change them out a little more regularly because they’re incentivized to do so by the vendors, but there is really no diagnostic difference in scanners really within the last 20 years.”

13:06 “If it’s an employer sending the patient our way, there’s an invoicing process. But it’s really a much-simplified process. There’s not a two-day wait for an auth and all the complicating factors that happen when you’re in a hospital.”

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This week’s episode features a conversation with Niko Caparisos, Principal at Prosperity Benefits. Employers struggle with controlling costs and balancing innovation with tried and tested tactics. For a more strategic and less fragmented approach, having buy-in from the c-suite is critical. On the employee side, empowering them with information and initiative can make them use the plan with as little friction as possible.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• 01:49 3 pressing challenges to employers: Cost, Innovation, and Education
• 04:09 C-suite buy-in drives innovation and strategic multi-year planning
• 10:06 Getting light bulb moments on creating cost savings
• 15:19 Educating employees on how to best use their plans

Quotes:

05:53 “Having the c-suite onboard with the idea of making changes is certainly where you have to begin because typically other departments don’t really want to see change and things are working just fine.”

08:32 “Once you shift the mindset of the owners of the company and the financial partners, they think well, it does make more sense to be strategic. Why don’t we see this over two or three years instead? Or longer.”

16:56 “‘Don’t go to the hospital for an MRI, head to a free-standing imaging facility.’ It depends upon, I think, the employers wanting to share that information, but certainly always framing the plan as being better in several ways is useful to the employee.”

18:00 “I have found that the more health plan sponsor can do, and usually health plan sponsors are where it originates, the better.”

19:48 “Call the number, call the number, call the number. You don’t want, at the same time, you’re being unhelpful or disingenuous in your messaging to say hey, call a 1-800 number, but it’s truly the best structure for an employee to get help immediately.”

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This week’s episode features a conversation with Monica Coleman, Chief Energy Officer at Inside Information Coaching and Consulting. Being adaptable means moving forward and embracing the unknown, the realm where every possibility exists. The P.E.A.K. Process (Perform, Evaluate, Adjust, Key In) gives particular emphasis on its Adjust step where Ego can get in the way of reaching your goals.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• 01:49 Adaptability not accomplishment
• 03:50 Adapting with the P.E.A.K. Process: Perform, Evaluate, Adjust, Key In
• 10:06 Managing your ego and creating positive energy flow
• 18:02 The limiting nature of labels

Quotes:

02:56 “If we don’t adapt and you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. And that’s really the truth.”

05:16 “If you’re not adjusting and taking in the data, you’re not going to be able to be better than you are. You’re just going to ingrain what you’ve already done.”

08:49 “Everything that you ever want in life that you don’t really have is out in the unknown. The unknown is your friend. It’s where everything exists. Every possibility.”

14:19 “If you want to create experiences, you’re going to be severely limited when you’re stuck in your ego all the time.”

References:

“It’s Time to Replace Ambition with Adaptation” Article by Rosie Spinks

“The One Thing” Book by Gary Keller

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This week’s episode features a conversation with Ashok Subramanian, Founder and CEO of Centivo. Plans succeed or fail based on the end-user experience they create. By optimizing the primary care-centered models and offering tailor-fit solutions regardless of the network construction, plans can remove the clunkiness of administrative tasks while ultimately providing the care and satisfaction that users are looking for.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• 02:16 User experience: Why traditional plans fall short of modern expectations
• 06:06 Approaches with network construction
• 10:47 Optimizing the tried-and-tested primary care-centered models
• 16:14 Pharmacy affordability: A question of clinical efficacy vs economics
• 19:14 Communicating with employees to drive engagement

Quotes:

03:57 “Folks are starting to get more sensitive to and starting to understand in much more detail that, as good as a thick network of doctors might feel at the time of enrollment, it’s kind of useless if you can’t actually get into that doctor.”

05:00 “A big part of user experience on the health plan side is increasingly becoming less about the payments of claims and the administrative processing, and far more the integration points around the usage of the healthcare system itself.”

07:13 “The most optimized plans are introducing tailored networks, narrow networks, using reference-based pricing, and other types of approaches to be able to get the efficiency and the value.”

15:04 “When you work more closely with partners by not trying to be all things to all people, you can deliver a better user experience by really optimizing on a simple set of things that matter to members.”

19:56 “For too long now, we’ve simply assumed that the buyer is the employer and employees are simply takers of what those employers decide for them.”

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