Every year, the U.S. wastes about $1 Trillion dollars on healthcare. The ramifications are deep and widespread:
Seeing that 30% of the average American’s lifetime wages are being diverted to healthcare and health insurance, its no wonder healthcare routinely polls as the number one issue in the Country.
Here’s the good news: the solutions needed unlock that $1 Trillion dollars in trapped capital are widely available — it’s really a matter of scaling them.
Since most American’s receive healthcare benefits through their Employer, we choose to scale solutions by building high-performance health plans for Businesses.
We work with Employers across the Country who reject the complacency and dogma of the status quo and seek higher quality healthcare at a better price for Employees.
Contrary to popular belief, there are infinite ways to build Employer-sponsored health plans. Because we get paid by our clients — not the insurance industry — we maintain a state of true objectivity and are incentivized to recommend, implement, and manage best in class solutions that reduce spend and improve employee satisfaction.
Although traditional options are available to our clients, many achieve greater optimization with our custom-made, high-performance, plans.
We solve our Country’s healthcare problem by building high-performance health plans for Businesses.
We hold the highest designations in the health insurance and benefits industry and understand that objective, expert advice is the key recommending and building effective health plans for Businesses.
Are you working with an accredited expert? How do you know?
You want to work with Benefits professionals who have the Registered Employee Benefits Consultant designation. Like a PhD in other fields, the REBC designation is the highest designation in the Benefits industry — it matters.
“What makes you more objective than our Broker?”
Unlike most of the Brokerage community, we refuse to get paid commissions or year-end bonuses from health insurers. This allows us to be truly objective in the recommendations we provide. Just as importantly, it means we have access to a much larger set of solutions and the objectivity and incentive to recommend the right ones at any given time. No more spreadsheets and increases every 12 months.
“That’s interesting, but we like our Broker and according to the benchmarks they showed us, we’re doing better than most companies”.
Keep your Broker. But given the complexity, expense, and fiduciary status Employers play, many Companies find it helpful to get a second opinion about their program.
Benchmarks aside, for many companies, health plans have become cancers on corporate balance-sheets. Extending the metaphor, if you were diagnosed with cancer, would you be ok just working with your Primary Care Doctor for 10 minutes at a time, or would you want an in-depth analysis, treatment plan, and strategy from a Specialist. Given our expertise and objectivity, we are the Specialists companies seek council from. We check your Broker’s work and make recommendations for a fee or percentage of savings.
“We’ve had some increases and don’t think our Broker is giving us 100% — can you be our Broker?”
Yes, but we won’t just work with anyone. Being in the problem solving business requires many resources, and we have to be selective about who we work with — not every company is a good fit. However, for companies that are engaged, we can typically come to an agreement that benefits everyone — with us, it’s win – win, or no deal.
“If you don’t get paid by insurance companies, how much will you charge us?”
Here’s the thing: working with us SAVES you money. Not because our fees are always less than what your Broker currently makes on your group, but because our intellectual property helps you optimize spend (remember the $1 Trillion wasted every year?) and these savings allow us to improve benefits for employees. Here’s what we can always guarantee — are you sitting down? — our fees will always be fully transparent to you, our valued client. No commission grabs or year-end kickbacks from insurers — nada, zilch, nothing.
Although we have our recommended process, we understand that every Client is unique, and we often need to mold our process to fit the needs of an organization.
In a perfect World, here’s what we recommend:
With unemployment at record lows, the race for talent is on. Although many Employers use benefits to attract and retain top-talent, it’s good to clarify and reaffirm program goals with stakeholders.
2. Survey Your Population: With so many benefits and shiny objects in the market, selecting which benefits to offer can be dizzying. Although Employees overwhelmingly value strong health plans above other benefits, we see value in getting your employees feedback and buy-in.
3. Identify a Goal: Once a goal is identified, then everything we do must move us closer to achieving it. For example, if your company wants to reduce their healthcare spend 10% without watering down coverage next year, we need to develop a road-map to get there. If you want to reduce spend by 20%, we’ll need a different map.
4. Develop a Multi-Year Solution: Companies that want to reduce spend and improve benefits need to think beyond their next renewal date. Since every client has their own tolerance to change, we give clients the ability to decide if they want to “crawl, walk, or run”. We show them the pro’s and con’s of moving fast or slow and let them decide their preferred course of action. Groups with a high tolerance to change often choose to aggressively change their program in order to achieve maximum savings in year one. Others prefer a more gradual approach that is less disruptive to their population. The choice is completely yours.
5. Implementation: Once a direction is chosen by clients, it’s important for us to educate employees on how to use the new plan. We do this by meeting with employees in groups or individual settings to explain how the benefits work and give employees the opportunity to ask sensitive questions in a HIPAA compliant environment. This level of consultation takes time, but significantly improves employee satisfaction and plan performance. We also create benefit guides and other instructional materials to educate employees.
6.Benefits Management: After your company has migrated to the new plan, it’s time for us to manage it. Key components include helping employees and company administrators with service issues, managing vendors to ensure they are performing well and fulfilling contractual obligations, identify opportunities to improve plan performance, monitoring claims, auditing vendors and eligibility.
7. Review and Innovate: In the third quarter of each plan year, it is especially important to review plan performance, prepare for the next phase in our multi-year strategy, and innovate as needed. From here, the cycle loops back step 5.
Like most people in the Benefits industry, Donovan’s career didn’t begin there. He played drums professionally in New York for ten years and, during that time, saw how America’s health care and insurance industry were extracting economic rents from employees, impairing their standard of living.
“I lived in Manhattan after 9/11 and during the Great Recession, and you could see the devastation on every city block…people were hurting. Toward the tale-end of my music career, I fractured a bone in my kick-drum foot while opening for the band “Heart”. It was my first encounter health systems and health insurance — it wasn’t pleasant. I didn’t know much about the insurance business, but I knew there must be a way to make things better. Ultimately, this experience inspired me to move into the benefits industry”.
In an effort to learn the industry from the inside-out, Donovan cut his teeth with a multinational insurance Carrier before moving to the brokerage side of the business.
“Although there are many great professionals in the insurance business, too often, the incentives embedded in the architecture of the industry work against employers and their employees. In our view, this is unnecessary”.
As an antidote to the status quo, Health Compass Consulting was formed.
“By sitting on the same side of the table as our Clients and providing them with objective expert advice, we are able to reallocate a significant portion our Client’s operating budget back to their bottom line — where it belongs”.
