More from the final day of the World Health Care Congress - Health Plan Innovation Conference in Orlando.
The Keynote Panel starts the day:
| OPENING KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Supplemental, Adjacent, Ancillary and Specialty Lines – Innovative Product Development, Cross Selling and Up Selling Strategies to Maximize Revenue | ||||||||||||||||
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Michael Phillips: On a quest to banish the word "Ancillary."
Innovation is about diversification. Moving to Business to Business to Consumer.
Looking at Retail experiences and bringing them to health.
Deconstruction of Products. Take products. Deconstruct in to most important pieces and make them offerings to consumers.
Complex products are not translating well to consumer sales. Too difficult to understand. [Ed: One size does not fit all]
Diane Souza: Media focused on medical and disability. But there are more opportunities for integration.
164M/Year work hours lost from Dental issues.
Eye Problems cost employers $8B/year.
70% of Americans don't have disability programs.
Integration is not just medical but financial.
Driver is increased productivity for employers.
Richard Greenhaigh:
First plan in MA to offer Adjacent products to members. Positive reception.
Three Reasons:
1. 40%+ market share had limited revenue growth potential.
2. Product differentiation for additional revenue.
3. Geographic dispersion of revenue sources.
Buy, Build or Partner.
Chose Buy and Partner. Life and Speciality Partners (27% ownership stake in company that supports 13 other plans)
With brokers - first step is to "Get on the Spreadsheet" but that is not the ultimate objective.
Needed to get sales people licensed to sell new products. Licenses not required to sell medical insurance.
Get Senior Leadership on board. Compensation plans include speciality benefits targets across the company.
Diane: Specialty Sales Force sells the specialty products. Medical sales reps have sales targets for specialty products.
Medical and Specialty Reps work together in a consultative sales process.
Michael: Focused specific sales people on specific products. Teams for Pharmacy, Dental and Vision and Retirees.
19% of sales in a consultative sales process.
Richard: Single sales force with specialist support. Message in MA is single point of contact for Broker or Employer.
Q&A: How do you coordinate customer service across all products.
Richard: Soft transfer to partner.
Diane: separate dedicated team for speciality products to handle installation, enrollment etc. Coordinated via Account Management team.
Michael: Integrated Service objective.
Employee Assistance Programs:
Michael: Looking at EAP as opportunity to break down product and let employees choose items from a menu. They don't tend to understand all the features that are bundled in a program.
Critical Illness Products:
Lots of choices that have been added to over the years and are now complex products.
Richard: Big push to High Deductible Plans. Also seeing plans with different co-pays for different hospitals. Make recommendations to fit the medical policy. Giving large range of choices leads to no choice.
Diane: Industry has not provided the tools to make it easy for consumers to go with the High Deductible Plans. Need to provide educational opportunities. Individual voluntary products are simple. Pay premium and get this payment when condition arises. But this gets complicated as products are combined.
Michael: Products need to stand on their own. No loss leaders. There are not enough products to meet consumer needs. Need to diversify to find new products to meet needs.
Diane: Consumers want one price, one bill.
Health Reform and Insurance Exchanges - more separation between Medical and specialty products. Whole case underwriting is more challenged by the insurance exchange.
Richard: MA experience is that regulators will prevent medical and life coverage meeting.
What are game changing ideas?
Michael: change discussion to more of a consumer financial discussion. Present health data as part of a financial discussion.
"You can only be a consumer until you are a patient"
How do we translate health data in to a "what it means to me discussion"
Not an easy task.
It happens today in other parts of the financial industry.
Diane: Integration.
Richard: in MA - Addressing Early Retirees concern about running out of money. Can a product be created to address the continuation of health coverage through retirement.
Hottest products at the moment:
Michael: Vision
Diane: Critical Illness
Richard: Critical Illness
