Healthcare Cost-Containment Strategies that Lead to Richer Employee Benefits

With projections indicating that the costs of employer-sponsored healthcare will hit unprecedented levels in 2025 and considering that contributions have soared by over 200% in the last two decades, HR and benefits executives are now confronting another complex questions. How do I tell employees that we are increasing premiums again this year? Should I change my plan design all together? Will this impact the additional benefits my team is asking for?   These tough questions are prompting many leaders in the benefits field to rethink their employee health plan and benefits strategies entirely. This session will feature insights from two executives who have successfully navigated these waters. By introducing measures to contain costs, they've managed to save their corporations millions while maintaining consistent employee premiums for several years and redirecting those savings into entirely new employee benefits.  What you'll learn How to deploy health plan cost containment strategies that combat healthcare inflation, improve employee satisfaction, and retention.   How to effectively reinvest cost savings to meet employee needs.   How to advocate for employee benefits as a strategic business differentiator.

Transcription:

Stephen Sachtleben (00:09):

Great to see everybody. I'm Stephen Sachtleben. I'm with Imagine 360. I'm from North Carolina, so opposite side of the country where I left about. We've got about 20 inches of rain in the last 24 hours. So San Diego is like the perfect place to be when you're dealing with that kind of weather. So very honored to lead the panel discussion today. We've got two real pros here that you'll hear from in just a minute. And anyway, thrilled that you guys are all here today and everyone's got a job here today. You got to want this to be interactive. So sit back, think about some good questions to ask and I'll be asking for questions as we go throughout. Sound good? All right, here we go. Alright, so I'll just kick it off with 2025 as we go into, it's projected to be the most expensive year for employee health coverage in history with costs averaging about an 8% increase this coming year.

(01:11):

So that rising cost we know is going to force HR professionals companies to really think through some decisions to make this year and next year around. Where do you pass those costs onto to the bottom line of the employer to the employees to shift more cost to employees. Is it reducing or delaying company benefits or new kind of benefits that you're going to roll out or is it finding an alternative? And so both leaders to my right here have really chosen to implement cost containment solutions that have made a huge impact on their business. Most importantly, it has allowed them to keep employee contributions and premiums flat for a number of years. So while really focusing on reinvesting richer benefits that have literally saved lives in the process. And you'll hear some great stories from these two today. So we all know that healthcare is personal, so we will have each leader really describe the technical components, elements of their health plan and how that actually has impacted their people. So before we dig in, I want to quickly introduce each of you. Stephen Sachtleben is Director of Benefits at Hendry Marine, which is located in beautiful Tampa, Florida, a family owned shipyard. And Scott Baker is the Director of Compensation and Benefits for MV Transportation. It's the largest privately owned passenger transportation contracting services firm in North America. So thank you both for being here today.

Stephanie Koch (02:51):

Very glad to be here.

Stephen Sachtleben (02:52):

Alright, who wants to kick it off? How about Stephanie?

Stephanie Koch (02:56):

Sure.

Stephen Sachtleben (02:56):

All right,

Stephanie Koch (02:57):

So

Stephen Sachtleben (02:59):

Well, sorry. Throw out a question here for you. I know first of all, and I'm why I interrupted her, I have to brag about the great work that she's done. She just named one of employee Benefit News Excellence in Benefits 2024 award recipient for the work that she's done. So congratulations on that, first of all. Awesome. So in the ward writeup, you mentioned that you use a combination of cost containment, data insights, and a constant focus on employee needs to offer a Ritz-Carlton type of benefit. You got to be careful saying Ritz Carlton when you're staying in a different hotel.

Stephanie Koch (03:41):

Very true.

Stephen Sachtleben (03:42):

So can you walk us through that process you've undergone?

Stephanie Koch (03:45):

I can. So good morning, and as he said, thank you for choosing our session because you had a couple of other sessions you could have chosen, but I do appreciate you being here this morning. And like he said, my name is Stephanie Koch and I'm the director of Human Resources for Hendry Marine Industries, and I've been working in human resources over 25 years and there are two sentences I never thought would come out of my mouth as an HR leader. Number one, oh my god, I love healthcare so much. Let's go. I can't wait to open enrollment. And two, sure, I'll speak in front of your audience all over the country now at national conferences and share the Hendry Marine story. So we'll get to that in a little while and how I got to where I am today. But in 2016, after many years of being in HR and working with the BUCAs, blue United, Cigna, Aetna, we did everything in the fully funded space with my previous employers. We did self-funding with my last employer. And I always knew innately there is something wrong because nobody can really identify why the costs are going up or what's driving them. It was just you're getting an increase. And every year we would either switch carriers every couple years because chasing a number or maybe we had to switch brokers. Can anybody relate to that scenario?

(05:15):

Right? So you're definitely in the right place right now. So I did that for many years and back in 2016, prior to working for Hendry Marine, I was working for an organization that had 450 employees. And the reason that there's a reason I'm telling you this part of the story, we were self-funded with Cigna and despite doing everything that our broker at the time as well as the carrier suggested we do, in addition to having really good demographics, these are the demographics and employer dreams of for purposes of renewal and healthcare premiums and so on and so forth. We got an 18% increase for the renewal the following year. And after we got that increased proposal, we all kind of said, there's got to be a better way to do this. Just coincidentally, a couple of folks from our leadership team went to a benefit symposium and they met some folks from Imagine 360.

(06:16):

So they came back and again, we're revisiting what are we going to do next year? How are we going to keep costs down? Where are we going to go with this? After the benefits symposium, they come back and they speak to me and said, listen, we think we have a solution that might be very value added for the employees, and by the way, it's going to save millions of dollars on the plan and give the employees a better value on their benefit program. And as an HR leader, what do you think? I said, heck no, I don't know what you're talking about, but this sounds too good to be true. Well actually it wasn't, and it was actually the turning point of my HR career. So at that point we went full reference-based pricing with Imagine 360, and we jumped from one to the other.

(07:05):

Sometimes it's recommended that companies stair step, but nonetheless, we jumped right in. So from 2016 to 2019, that's where we were. We saved a million dollars consecutively for the first two, three years that we were on the plan. And then I left and I went to Hendry Marine, and that's really where the story started. So just a couple more minutes, got there in December of 2019, and lo and behold, I found out that they had just adopted the same reference-based pricing plan with Imagine 360 that I had just left. And they looked at me like I had three heads when I told them I love this plan. I had been doing this for three years already, let's go. So we started working on the plan. It was reference-based pricing with Imagine 360. We had to switch out the pharmacy because they kept CVS Caremark. So after the first year, we switched it out to a separate PBM and saved 30% on the pharmacy spend.

(08:06):

But where it really got interesting was in 2021. And the key thing here is transparency in the data. So getting back to Steve's point, we had transparency in what was going on in our healthcare plan. We were able to see the minefields that were happening and one of them came in the middle of 21 where we were doing a plan review and only 15% of our employees were utilizing the preventative wellness benefit. Now at Hendry Marine, we're a shipyard in the port of Tampa, 80% of our employees are men. They are late forties, early fifties. So my initial response when I saw that data point was we have a bunch of ticking time bombs walking around and we have to do something immediately because this was the true definition of people who essentially were uninsured, those people that have benefits but don't want to go use it because they're concerned about what it's going to cost them. So a month later we were at a conference and I found the best solution provider to work directly with Imagine 360, and that's the Walk-on clinic. So we found a primary care doctor's office that we put on site at Hendry Marine, and I don't know if you want me to keep going or

Stephen Sachtleben (09:31):

I say we keep going. Sounds good.

Stephanie Koch (09:34):

All right. It's a whole story. It's very exciting. So in January of 22, we decided to put Walk-on clinic, on site. And our initial thought was we need to get the preventative wellness utilization number up for our employees so they are able to identify any issues that are going on before something catastrophic happens. Now some of you know me personally, a lot of you don't. One thing about me is I'm very positive, I'm optimistic, and my thought was, if we bring this primary care doctor's office onsite, my employees are going to use it. Well, no, they did not want to use it because the initial impression was, why does my company want to know what's going on with my healthcare? You guys are all shaking your head so you can feel how I was feeling. And I thought, okay, we need to do something really fast. So this is literally me thinking on my feet and I said, okay, here's what we're going to do. I said, we're going to hold a contest. And every employee that goes for their preventative wellness exam between now and the end of April is going to get entered into a drawing to win five days of PTO.

(10:57):

That's pretty big, right? My employees love PTO. So as a result of us hosting this contest, we had a lot of utilization, but that was the turning point of how and why the walk-on clinic became such a huge part of our healthcare journey as an employer. And if I get choked up, I do every time we had one employee go in and the doctor said to him, did you know had a lump in your neck? Again, he was trying to win the PTO and he actually had stage four cancer. He had absolutely no idea. We had another employee go in who his blood sugar was so high, he almost had a stroke. I am very happy to report that both of them are happy and healthy. And because we were proactive and put a clinic onsite for our employees, those were just two examples in the past two and a half years where we saved our employees' lives because we knew we had to meet the employees where they were at.

(12:05):

We used the data to make decisions to drive our healthcare strategy. And the one thing that I really learned in this journey over the past eight plus years is healthcare is a strategy just like your sales plan, your operations plan, I look at it now as a business plan in the HR department. So we have to know what lever to pull, and we do that by working with providers that provide data insights that help guide you along the way. I don't want to take up the whole time, but that is a lot of the story. It's wonderful. I want to turn it over to my colleague here.

Stephen Sachtleben (12:43):

Hey, thank you for sharing that story. That's I think a great example of taking a different approach, finding savings, reinvesting that savings in your employees and bringing healthcare on site through a partner and getting care to people who wouldn't typically seek preventive care. So that what a great story. Thank you. Well, Scott, love to thank you for joining us. You've got a really interesting story of all the work that you've done at MV Transportation. One of the things that you mentioned during our prep call is that you've not increased employee health plan premiums in 10 years across two different companies. I mean, which is truly incredible. But that said, great company of mv. But I know when you started, you had some challenges around a multimillion dollar health plan deficit when you first started with mv. Can you describe the unique challenges you faced in your role and really the strategies you implemented to really tackle that deficit that you had?

Scott Baker (13:47):

Yeah, so imagine it's August 2nd, 2022. You start your new job and the first person comes to introduce themselves and says, our benefits really suck. I hope you can fix it. And I'm going, oh, okay. Why does it suck? Deductibles are too high. Premiums are too high. I want to copay at the doctor. I want to copay at the pharmacy. And I'm going, okay, I haven't even seen the plans. So I'm meeting with my team that day and a few different people had come in and introduce themselves and said, hope you can fix the benefits. Hope you can fix the benefits news to say back in 2018 when most people were introducing a high deductible health plan to meet Affordable Care Act, our company decided that they were going to do a rate structure. So we tiered rates and we tiered 'em based on salary. So my HRS manager comes in and we've got a hundred divisions around the country and she comes in and says that our rate structures, if we were to put 'em all in one Excel document is 260,000 lines.

(14:47):

And I'm going, there's no way. There's no way. But sure enough, that is accurate. And so we've got so many different divisions that might have four or five different medical plans, and now they've tiered these by salary by seven or eight different salaries. And then we've got four tiers per plan. So we've got one division that has 108 different lines of structure rate structures. So that was challenge one. Day one, the following Tuesday, we were on an airplane to Philadelphia to meet with Imagine 360. So for me, I had been introduced to Imagine 360 a couple years prior with a broker at my prior company. And it just wasn't for us. It didn't fit our needs. And what I learned was is because our broker didn't present it the right way, they didn't really share all the story. So once we learned that the right story, it made a lot more sense for us.

(15:43):

So some of our struggles really are we got to get away from the plan designs that we have. We have a hundred divisions. We have 80% of those divisions are unionized. 88% of our employee base are union. So we have tons of CBAs. And so a struggle for us is if we're going to go out and bid on work. And a little bit about our company, we actually started in San Francisco. We're celebrating our 50th year next year. And so our founder, we're still a private company, but they found that's back before Disabilities Act. So they found people on second and third floors, they could not get to the doctor, they couldn't get to the grocery store. So they would literally carry them down the stairs and put 'em in a van and take 'em to do these things. Well, that's grown into a company now.

(16:31):

We're coast to coast all the way up into Alaska. And so if you're in a major metropolitan area, let's say I met a gentleman out here, he is from Los Angeles, the city buses in Los Angeles, the buses are owned by Los Angeles. We come in and we bid on the work. So the drivers, the mechanics, the dispatch team, the people that run the system are now our employees. We might have a four year contract, it might be a five year contract. So if you were a bus driver in the city of Los Angeles and you worked there for 30 years, in theory, you could work for six different companies, although you never left your company. So it's a really unique business. So whenever we go in and bid on work and it's unionized to win the work, we have to adapt our benefit plans to what they have.

(17:17):

So we offer currently north of 30 different medical plans, and that's just company provided. We've got a bunch of trust plans. So that's some of our struggles is how can we balance this? So my first year in, we were hit with a 24% increase from Aetna. We were 6.1 million over budget, and our business margins are tight, so we needed to make a change. And so the first change was we got to get away from that. It's just not good enough for us nationwide. We had a big struggle down in Austin, Texas, and we needed to clean that piece up. So we moved to Blue Cross and Blue Shield. That was still an 18% rate increase, but that 18, that 6% difference was 3.1 million, right? So it was big. And then we thought, let's go rogue. Let's do something really unique here. And we went out and we started looking at reference based pricing.

(18:06):

Ergo, we flew to Philadelphia, met with their team. We met with two other different reference based pricing companies, and we landed on Imagine 360. And the reason we did that is because of the service model. We knew this was going to be a culture shift for our employees. We knew it was a change. For some of you that had been in this business long enough, you remember back in the early nineties and mid nineties when all of a sudden there's networks of doctors. We didn't have that before, but now we do. And now that's all we think about is networks of doctors. Well, imagine 360 has networks of doctors, but what we did is we implemented a plan that wasn't tied to a network of doctors. We offer it, but it's not tied. So our motto is, if they'll take our money, we're going to pay 'em. Most doctors and most hospitals will take your money.

(18:55):

But what we found is we implemented that. We went live one of 2022, big culture shift, a lot of education. We did a lot of training on it, did a whole big train. The trainer with each of these divisions, a hundred divisions. We have a hundred GMs, we have a ton of HR folks. So we trained them on the plan. We knew if we could get them on board and excited about this, then they would then spill that to the employee base. Our goal first year, we offered it as a side-by-side plan with Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Our goal first year was to get 450 people enrolled. We have 12,000 employees. About 8,000 of those are eligible for our medical plans. The other 4,000 are on trust plans. Our goal is to get 450, right? We got 648. We're pretty fired up about that.

(19:39):

In August of 23, we got a new CEO. We're presenting 2024 benefits and I'm sorry, 22, sorry. August of 22, we got a new CEO. We're presenting 23 benefits, we're showing the plans, and he is ecstatic that we have a reference-based pricing model. He goes, this is the right thing to do. If the employee utilizes this plan properly, it will save them potentially hundreds if not thousands of dollars. If the company utilizes it properly, it could save us millions of dollars. And year one, I told you my first year there we were 6.1 million over budget, or my second year there we were 4.2 under budget. That's pretty big. And so to kind of put that in perspective, if we look at today, this is we're completing our third year here. And so with our CEO, he said, if you're non bargained, you don't have a choice, buddy.

(20:27):

You're in that plan. There's no more Blue Cross. And so as some of our challenges as the CBAs come available, we're now implementing those in the CBAs if we have a new contract we're implementing on the CBA. So now we have just over 2300 employees in our Imagine 360 plan and 980 in our Blue Cross plan. So we've done a flip-flop. And why is that important? Well, we're going through renewal right now. You guys are right. We're looking at next year's numbers. Our per employee per month head count for Imagine is 7 0 4 a month. Blue is 965, right? It's huge dollars, right? We're seeing the money, we're seeing the savings. And so those are some of the hurdles that we've had to come over or come across. We're getting there. We're slowly getting there. It's going to take time, but it's been a success for us.

Stephen Sachtleben (21:17):

Yeah, that's great, Scott. Thank you for sharing that. Sure. Why don't we take a moment here and see who was doing their homework and has a question. Any questions? We got the mic walking around the back. All right. We will keep moving along, but I wanted to make, see if there's any questions first. I have one right there. Great. Thank you.

Audience Member 1 (21:38):

What are the big value drivers with reference space pricing that are really driving

Stephen Sachtleben (21:46):

Need me start? Yeah, Scott, can everybody hear that? First of all? Okay, great. Go ahead, Scott.

Scott Baker (21:50):

So the difference is this. Every claim outside of general doctor's office claim, that doesn't matter. That's all the same. The big dollars are inpatient, outpatient, MRIs, imaging. Every one of those claims is scrutinized line by line by a human, not a computer, but a human, right? So where that's big, as I can share an example, personal one, my daughter came home from college a few years ago, had to go for a little ingrown toenail surgery. The doctor calls, the anesthesiologist calls at two 30. She scheduled the next morning at eight. Hey, we need you to pay us. Oh, okay, well, can you not bill this for my insurance company? Right? So he wasn't the guy that was supposed to do it. He goes, no, we don't do that. We pay up front. So it was his office manager we're talking to. And I said, well, what do you bill for this?

(22:44):

And they billed $2,600 an hour for anesthesia. I said, my God, what gets paid for that? And she said, well, blue Cross pays us 625. I said, what does Medicare pay you? And Medicare pays 'em 96, right? So Medicare pays 'em usually what their cost of cost of actual the services plus, plus a range of anywhere between 12 and 20%. So Blue pays them 600% more than that. We don't pay that. We pay the middle. We pay a fair margin to the doctor and we scrutinize it. And so we're not overpaying for services that typically we were before. And I got one just yesterday. We got a hospital bill that's $232,000. Medicare plus 20% is $22,000. They've agreed to do it for 180. It's like, oh, thanks for the deal. I mean, it's like those are the things that we're now pushing back on. It's saving our employees a ton of money. It's saving the company a ton of money, and we're just not taking it anymore. We're standing up against it. So that's an example for me.

Stephanie Koch (23:56):

So I was actually going to talk about on the advocacy and support side. So having been involved with the Blue United, Cigna Aetna's of the world for many years, leading up to my relationship and working with Imagine 360, our employees would call and good luck if they're going to get a human on the phone. And if they had to call back, good luck getting the same human on the phone to help a problem being resolved, good luck getting help to navigate to a doctor or help at all. So what we found was not only did our HR team get more support, our employees got more support and advocacy than they ever had before, which in my mind, to the Ritz Carton service is my employees come first. Yes, the savings are tremendous and wonderful because we can help become a profit center for the company as an HR team, but my employees, they're going to have an issue. They're going to have someone that they're going to connect with, and that same person is going to walk them through until resolution. And that typically doesn't happen. And then I've seen the same results that Scott was talking about in relation to what we were paying per services, what our employees are paying now and again, it saves them tremendously out of pocket, and that's really what it's all about, is taking care of the employees.

Stephen Sachtleben (25:17):

Great. Thank you. Stephanie. Looks like we have another question in the middle there.

Audience Member 2 (25:22):

Yeah. I don't need so great stories, right? Cost savings is super important, and being able to take some of those dollars and employ them is great. But during this economy, I think the stat that I read was 5% of works are going to spend money on. How do you think about redeploying some of those dollars and what are some of the things that your employees are asking for? So

Scott Baker (25:53):

With our savings, the way we deploy those monies is offsetting the cost for Blue. We also have Kaiser, the big group out here. You guys, if you have Kaiser, you're getting hit with double and we're getting over 20% increases. And with Kaiser, so Stephanie's got a little bit different story than me, but our savings that we have here, we filter it back into the plans to offset the other carriers, to be honest with you.

Stephanie Koch (26:20):

So in our case, and I mentioned healthcare as a business plan strategy, so I'm happy to report in 2021, we had a million dollars of surplus in our healthcare plan budgeting process, and we were able to take that money and reinvest part of it into our claim spend for 2022. It helped us fund the walk-on clinic that our employees don't pay anything for, and they don't clock out. They don't have to take PTO. So the other things we're doing is taking additional money and seeing what's going on in our claims, and we're reinvesting it in programs or point solutions like a whole body vendor solution for diabetes, weight management, things like that. So we're going and we're doing what the plan data is showing that we need to do.

Scott Baker (27:11):

Earlier when I mentioned that benefits suck at our company, we were able to retool that. And now what we did is this, our Imagine 360 plan is a PPO based plan. We have copays at the doctor, we have copays at the pharmacy. Our deductibles are reasonable. Our out-of-pockets are reasonable. Everything's the same as a traditional PPO, but we were able to drop the rate by 40%. So that's driving people that way. And so now nobody can tell me our benefits sucked. I mean, I gave them what they wanted and I reduced their rate. So it's been a really big win for us.

Stephanie Koch (27:49):

Yeah, same with us.

Scott Baker (27:51):

I missed that part earlier. Sorry.

Stephanie Koch (27:52):

Yeah, no, it is. Change is hard. Change management is hard. You have to have your leadership on board from the top down in order for a change to be successful. And our employees there are, regardless. It's not a one size fits all. So I think whatever you offer to your employees, you have to make sure that you're educating them on an ongoing basis. And just because we've had really good success with our plans, we don't stop learning and trying to execute what the right things are to do for our employees.

Stephen Sachtleben (28:26):

Great. Thank you both. Any other questions? All right, great. Oh, sorry. We have another question there. Great. Go ahead, please.

Audience Member Serena Jenen (28:38):

No, that's fine. Hi, so my name is Serena Jenen. I'm actually a Benefits Advisor with a boutique agency out of the Sacramento area called Solve. And we also have some clients with Imagine 360, and we actually just had a renewal meeting yesterday with a client, and she sounded a lot like you guys. She was so enthused and excited that she took the chance on this program three years ago, and the results speak for themselves. My question is, what are some of your best practice strategies for mitigating the inevitable noise when you're making a transition to this plan? I think that's one of the biggest resistance points that we get from employers who say they have the mentality of, oh, sounds too good to be true, probably is. And so they kind of take a pause of actually taking action because they're afraid of the way that their employees are going to perceive it. And even after implementation, some of that noise. What are some success strategies that you guys have used to deal with that?

Scott Baker (29:43):

First thing we did is we did train the trainer. I mentioned we brought in all the GMs, we brought all the HR folks, all of our leadership, we had every executive enroll except for one. He's no longer with the company, but that's not reason why, but he executive at one. So we did that aspect of it, because if you're in a blue collar environment, which our company is out in the field, the HR and the GM employees go to them for everything. So we knew if we could educate them on how it worked and could get their buy-in that we would be good. So we started there. We actually have a postcard campaign that we use with Imagine 360 that goes out every month. And what we found was we usually hold enrollment at the beginning of November. It goes live one, one. So every December, expect your ID cards.

(30:33):

This is what to do. And it's interesting, the ID card's no different than your Blue Cross card, but people don't know how to read an ID card. It doesn't matter which one it is. So we educate them on how to read an ID card, and these are the components of it, and this is what's important for you. So there's a lot of that kind of stuff. One of the things that you're going to probably hear is what about the balance bills? That's the big negative. Have you guys ever had any balance bills with Aetna or Blue Cross or UnitedHealthcare? Yeah, a bunch, right? It happens,

Stephanie Koch (31:04):

Yes. It doesn't help you.

Scott Baker (31:06):

No. And so we don't have a problem with balance bills. I'm not saying we don't have 'em, but we don't have any more than we did before that. What's better about now is we actually have a system that can help 'em. Blue Cross didn't have that, so we never really promoted. We promoted it as, Hey, if you get a bill outside of your EOB, here's a number to call and they'll take care of it for you. But we don't make a big deal about it because we saw 'em with Aetna, we see 'em with Blue, we saw 'em everywhere. It's no different for us.

Stephanie Koch (31:41):

What was the question?

Scott Baker (31:43):

What are some of the strategies?

Stephanie Koch (31:45):

Oh, so I actually had a similar story. So at my last company, again, I'm spanning over eight or so years, had a lot of people in middle management that were managing the boots on the ground. That was the majority of the employees. So we actually wrote a presentation where we were going to be introducing our full shift from a traditional healthcare program to this space with Imagine 360. And we wrote the presentation and we presented it, and a guy in the audience raises his hand, and I'll never forget this. He said, that's great. The company is saving money, but how is it going to affect my employees? And we went, oh, no. So we had the Oh crap moment and then rewrote the script, represented it to everybody really, because we wanted to be employee focused. So they understood how it was going to be extremely beneficial to them.

(32:43):

It's the story of the a hundred dollars Tylenol. They can relate to things like that. They understand that the healthcare system is broken just like we in HR do, but sometimes we don't know why. It's things that are relatable to them that they can grab onto and really understand. The other thing that we did that was really helpful was we did FAQs, the frequently asked questions, and as we went through our open enrollment meetings when we were rolling this out, if somebody asked a question, we added it to the list. We translated it in English and Spanish because we have multi-languages. And we just kept pushing out the information just to make sure that everybody was clear, because we knew if somebody had a question, somebody else probably was thinking that same thing, but didn't ask it. But then it was ongoing marketing and communication. And Imagine 360 has an amazing marketing team and that will partner with you. So it really, it's change management.

Stephen Sachtleben (33:46):

Great, thank you.

Audience Member 4 (33:50):

Scott, Can you talk about your employee spotlight, you guys profile employees and their win?

Scott Baker (33:53):

Yeah. So we do this every year. Now. We do an employee spotlight. So year one, we had a gentleman that I work with and he just randomly brought it up one day, Hey, I'm glad we made this move. He could save me over eight grand this year. I go, so we get to talking between his premium and his deductible saved over $8,000. He goes, if I'd have had this last year, I could have saved more. He had had something that happened the year before. We did another one last year. We're about to release a new one this year. And this is an incredible story. One of our GMs actually, she served in California. We were talking about something else, and she randomly made a comment. She goes, I'm so glad that we made the move. This has been so beneficial for me. And I go, well, in what way? And she said, well, I really haven't told a lot of folks this. She said, but a little over a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer and a heart condition.

(34:49):

And she reached out to me because the hospital said, we need 30 grand before we're going to do anything. I said, no, you're not paying 30 grand. So I reached out to Imagine 360, and this is one of the reasons we moved there, so it's kind of nice to see it, right? I reached out to Imagine 360, said, I need a nurse navigator with her asap, right? So they reached out to Jeanette and they worked with Jeanette and worked with her for over a year. And when I say worked with her, immediately said, they called the hospital and said, no, she's not paying this. This is the insurance. And worked with her, I'm not kidding when I say this. They call her every single day to check in with her. When she first started the program, her heart was operating at 30%. They had to resuscitate her multiple times.

(35:39):

Her heart's now at 85%. She's doing great. She's totally cancer free now. So they had to take care of her heart before they could do that. Her navigator called her every single day. When her navigator went on PTO, she found someone to call her and check on her. I worked at UnitedHealthcare for years. I've worked with Blue, I've worked with, they don't do that. I've never experienced it at least to take that level of care. And so it's those type of things. The reason that we chose Imagine 360 over some of the other reference based pricing models, and we like to call it price protection, right? It's price protection now. But because of the service model that they have, the employee will get an ID card that has one phone number to call. They call the one number and they can get help for anything, a claim nurse navigator.

(36:28):

And this nurse navigator handled everything for her. She handled all of her billing handle, all of her scheduling of appointment. She did everything. And we had a call just a couple weeks ago with Jeanette and she got teary eyed, and she's a GM at a blue Cotter facility. She's a tough woman. And to hear her break down was really emotional for me. And she said, I don't talk to my family about these things. I can't talk to my friends about these things. She said, but I've never met this woman in person, but I think that she really cares about me and to the point that now she's going to seek outside mental health help to help her get through this, which she would've never done without this. So it's things like that. So she's going to be our employee spotlight this year during open enrollment to show these are the things that this company's doing for us that we've never experienced before.

Stephen Sachtleben (37:16):

That's fantastic. Scott, thank you. Another two powerful stories about the impact on your colleagues and what this can reinvesting in them and thinking about their health in this way. One question that I like to pose to both of you, it's really around, we've got a lot of benefit professionals in the audience here today. And if there's one piece of advice that you'd share with those folks, we'd love to spend some time on that as we close out the session. Stephanie?

Stephanie Koch (37:46):

Well, first and foremost, let's not forget the new, not new, but the fiduciary guidelines. So as an HR professional, it is our duty as a planned fiduciary, whether you're fully funded or self-funded, to really ensure that you are evaluating all of your options for your healthcare spend moving forward. So it's no longer just pressing the easy button and keeping your fingers crossed and hoping you don't get more than a single digit renewal. But for me, as an HR professional, it's be curious and welcome other opportunities that can really have a huge direct impact, not just on your company's bottom line, but your employees, because it's definitely put a new skip in my HR step.

Scott Baker (38:35):

So that's great. Thank you, Scott. Yeah, I would say educate yourself on it, to your point, right? I hadn't heard about it until a few years back. And then the first time it was presented, our brokerage just didn't do, they didn't present it right? We're Dallas based, but we have business all over the country, so well, they have a network in Dallas, they have a network in Atlanta. They're really good there. So you might want to carve these two pieces out. Well, we don't have to carve that out, and we didn't want to carve it out. It's like, no, we got something pretty good going on. We don't want to carve this stuff out. Well, if they would've presented it differently, well, we've got alternative networks. So we've got multiple networks that our employees get to choose from. You don't have to use a network. They can go to whatever doctor they want to go to, which we call our plan, the open choice PPO plan, because you're open to choose to go to wherever you want to go.

(39:26):

It's named purposely. And so educated on it, challenge your broker. If you're not a broker, challenge your broker about it. And it's funny, I had a call, if you're in my role, you get calls all the time for brokers trying to get in. And I tell 'em kind what we got, and they're kind of, why would you ever do that? And I start sharing numbers. And the number I shared with you earlier, our per employer per month is 7 0 4 versus 9 65. That's our renewal for next year. That's $259 per employee per month difference. That's huge money. And then they go, oh, hold on. And it's like I'm educating the broker. So challenge your broker. Learn about it. Teach me about it. That's what you pay him for to educate you. So I would just challenge you to learn about it, challenge your broker to learn about it, and really come to you with some good solutions.

Stephen Sachtleben (40:19):

Well, that's fantastic. Well, you're not going to believe this, but we ended exactly on time to the second, and so no more time for questions. But we'll be upfront. If you have any questions, please come on by. And just want to, if we could all thank Stephanie and Scott for your great.