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Leading Your Post-Pandemic Workforce

by City on a Hill
August 24, 2021

With new rules and regulations, the post-pandemic Olympic Games has been a different experience for athletes and coaches alike. But perhaps one of the most talked about events of the Summer 2021 Olympics has been Simon Biles’ surprise withdrawal from the games. And her reasons are honorable. 

The Olympic gymnast, who is considered to be one of the top gymnasts of her time, withdrew from the summer games to protect her mental and physical well-being. Her coaches and teammates are all in support of her decision because they know the consequences of continuing to compete in the Olympics could have been disastrous.

The strength in admitting this to the entire world is admirable, a lesson our teachers should be sharing with all of our students. 

Closer to home than we think

The pandemic has affected all of us in different ways and as we head toward a post-pandemic way of doing business, we can look at Simon Biles decision to protect her mental health and apply it to the inner workings of our schools. 

To do this, we need to take a step back and look at the way we are leading our people. We need to support them on an individual level, representing any concerns or needs they may have. If we take care of our people on an individual basis we can make our teams, and our schools stronger.

Dig in and talk to your employees

Taking care of our employees is more than ensuring we have the proper protocols in place, we need to dig in and reach out to each employee to confirm we are taking care of everyone.

For example, a friend of mine works for colleges by participating in an extensive mental health awareness program. He is always on scene to talk with high-risk individuals, helping them through their crisis. While it is an excellent way to support staff and students, no one took the lead in caring for my friend, to help him deal with his own trauma of absorbing everyone else’s. He is trained to deal with suicidal people, but nobody looked at what he would need to decompress after those experiences. 

A missing step in a protocol designed to help employees. How can we protect our own people from situations like this? We need to take it back to the benefits. We need to look at how employees respond to us as an organization. In a recent Conner Chat webinar, Ben Conner talks about mission-driven benefits, which can help us be more efficient with our insurance benefits. 

By considering our employees individually in our benefits strategy we can create a better deliverable for our schools and allow our staff to feel a part of our culture and by doing so we can unlock revenues that we can put back into the business, to take care of our people.

We can also open the doors of communication to allow our staff to feel comfortable telling us when something is affecting them on a personal level.

Support your company culture

Simon Biles felt comfortable making a tremendous decision at this year’s summer games perhaps because she knew she had the support of her coach and team behind her. By taking care of her mental health and by giving her the tools she needs to repair, her team becomes stronger.

We cannot neglect the importance of mental health recognition within our schools. By listening to what they need and adjusting our benefits program accordingly we can support our people and grow a stronger team. This is especially important heading into the post-pandemic workforce.

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Save Your People from the Complexity of Medicare

by City on a Hill
July 26, 2021

Understanding Medicare is difficult for many staff members within your school board. In fact, for some employees reaching sixty five, the challenges that Medicare enrollment presents may cause them to avoid the program even when they qualify. 

When employees avoid enrollment into Medicare, they could miss deadlines, choose the wrong plan or delay enrollment, which can cost teachers and staff considerably, due to penalties and late fees. 

When considering the federal health care program, there are some unique aspects that teachers need to take into account such as additional investments, 403b plans, pension and social security, all of which can further complicate Medicare and the retirement process. 

Proactive education.

Addressing these concerns with your employees should occur early and often. Resources, such as consultations with advisors, informational emails or workshops, should be available throughout the school board to help answer difficult questions that come when considering Medicare enrollment. 

Part of the reason Medicare is so complicated is because it comes with multiple options. Some aspects of Medicare that employees need to consider are:

  • Part A – Hospital insurance, which covers in-hospital and patient care.
  • Part B – Medical insurance, which covers outpatient and medical care.
  • Part D – Prescription drug coverage, covers most self-administered prescription drugs.
  • Medicare – includes Part A, Part B and the option of adding Part D
  • Medicare Advantage – considered an “all in one” alternative to Medicare, and includes Part A, Part B and sometimes Part D as well as other benefits such as vision/dental etc.
  • There are also premiums, deductibles and copays to consider. 

Many employees need and welcome the opportunity to to learn more about Medicare insurance, everything from options to eligibility as well as the relationship between their traditional health insurance plan and Medicare benefits. The more information and resources that are supplied, the better choices your people can make.

Discussing these choices with a professional who knows the answers to their specific questions can be beneficial. For example, some teachers pay into a Teacher Retirement System within their state, these teachers will need to know how Medicare enrollment affects this account.

Practical concern. 

About 25% of people are unsure about what a traditional health plan covers and the fact that Medicare is even more complex, some teachers may find Medicare simply too difficult to navigate or may even avoid it entirely.

By educating staff and spreading awareness to the possibilities medicare offers, an employee could find medicare is in fact a better option for them, helping them to enroll into Medicare at the right time. 

Understanding Medicare can be difficult for your employees, but by setting up consultations with an expert to talk about their individual health insurance needs, you can help employees who are considering Medicare enrollment make positive, smart decisions.

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Solving New Retirement Challenges with Your Benefits Plan

by City on a Hill
July 26, 2021

Teachers make up a large portion of the American workforce and with 18% of the teaching population over fifty five, many are approaching the age of retirement, an age that comes with a variety of emotions and concerns.

A large portion of those over fifty five may also have elderly parents to care for. The balancing act of teaching, preparing for retirement and caring for a loved one can carry a significant impact on work performance, causing stress and a disconnect from the workplace. 

The emotional and financial stress caused by these significant life stages can affect not only the teachers, but students, support staff and the school board. Taking a proactive approach to manage the stress your teachers experience is essential. 

By viewing your benefits plan as more than an insurance policy and using it to educate and protect your employees, you can work towards relieving stress to a large degree.  

Benefits

Retirement is something that will occur for all teachers and staff within the school board, one of the rare circumstances in business that can be said with certainty. Everyone will eventually reach an age where they start to consider retiring and some may have the additional responsibility of caring for aging family members. 

The importance of creating a stress free environment within your organization is essential, as there could be implications for students within the school board. Providing a benefits plan designed with your people in mind can alleviate the stress that comes with the transition to retirement, allowing teachers to focus on the classroom. 

Supporting the aging population with a benefits plan designed for your people shows you care about them and promotes a positive work environment. 

Education 

Variables such as a 403b plan, social security, pensions and Medicare coverage make retirement for teachers a unique challenge. There are many decisions that need to be made and if you can help your staff navigate those choices, the entire school board can benefit. 

By providing educational material, training and workshops to highlight the resources available for retirement preparation, you can not only help employees navigate retirement and long term care plans, but also ensure the plan is being fully utilized. After all, no one benefits from an unused plan, especially your people.

In addition to programs and material presented within the school, extending the opportunity for education and guidance about benefits plans to outside sources can be very helpful.

Experts

A gym teacher who coaches football players may need the advice, expertise and knowledge from outside specialists and educators. If students seem disconnected or unfocused, consultations with these professionals are usually set up and after speaking to the right advisor, students can return to the team and are able to better focus on the game.

The same metaphor can be applied to the inner workings of the school board. Teachers and staff who are worried about approaching retirement or distracted by caring for a loved one can experience more absenteeism and decreased productivity, which can affect the students and the school. Employees who receive guidance from professionals can empower them to make smart decisions and eliminate stress and distractions.

That’s where we come in. As experts in health insurance and with partners in benefit plans, we position ourselves as advisors that can offer professional guidance. We teach, train, and problem solve alongside your teachers, so you and your teachers can continue to focus on what matters most, our future citizens. 

Culture

Providing guidance for your employees about their benefits plans, with a focus on the aging demographic, is a valuable strategy for your school. Bringing ease from the difficulties of navigating retirement and long term care options for loved ones can change the dynamic of your school board and create a culture that your employees value.

When you begin conversations about navigating health insurance, benefits, Medicare and retirement you begin to enhance employee experience by showing your people you truly want the best for them.

The decisions and choices your staff face can be confusing and overwhelming and with almost a quarter of your school board reaching the age of retirement, the importance of a well structured benefits plan to support them is essential.

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Mindset: Benefits vs. Insurance

by City on a Hill
June 22, 2021

Reframe the potential of your benefits plan by changing the mindset of the insurance transaction. In other words, designing a benefits program is more than signing a yearly contract renewal, paying for an insurance plan, and hoping for the best.

Educators know that being well prepared is key to the success of the students. Lessons are carefully planned with consideration given for each student’s individual needs. Students would be lost if a teacher assigned a project without reviewing the material beforehand. However, when it comes to employee benefits, most schools set it and forget it. No one does their homework or even has the education they need to do the homework.

Most organizations genuinely want the best for their employees and offering a strategically planned benefits program can be a way to translate this. A benefits program tailored to your faculty’s needs can improve recruitment and retention while potentially freeing money for other programs.  

Meeting Your Unique Needs. 

Many employers have key objectives for their insurance plan and use the renewal period as a time to check these boxes. Due to the cost of investment and the importance a benefits program carries, a thorough design using research and new tools that can address the changing nature of employee needs and includes the growth of the business is critical. 

Educational institutions present a unique set of needs to keep in mind when developing a benefits program for its people, including tight budget constraints, compliance with government regulations, and designing communications to enhance the understanding of the programs within the day to day procedures of a school environment. If these requirements are met, your school board may see a significant return on investment. 

Integrating the help of an insurance advisor or expert in benefits for educational institutions can be a useful asset. 

Designing Your Unique Plan.

Beyond cost-savings, offering benefits designed for your staff is a way of letting your people know you see them as more than their profession. For example, younger employees may value paid time off, older employees may value a retirement plan, whereas employees with families may place more value in paid sick days or family plans.  

There is more than asking your employees what they need, of course. Other aspects of a comprehensive benefits plan are:

  • Careful financial planning – fixed premiums, routine costs of care, and the unexpected costs such as growth of the organization and the changing needs of benefits.
  • Benchmarking – comparing your benefits plan metrics to other institutions to stay ahead of the competition.
  • Data analysis – knowing the numbers and predictions to enable beneficial outcomes, both financially and structurally.
  • Maintaining clarity with employees – hearing feedback, gathering ideas, and knowing what works for them and what doesn’t
  • Offering training and Q&A’s – continuous availability to programs that can help in choosing care, understanding procedures, and bringing awareness to the available programs. 

The more information your business and your employees have, the more impact your employee benefits plan will have. For example, the program has more potential to be fully utilized if the benefits have been requested directly from staff. Furthermore, awareness of the programs available can lead to fewer sick days due to preventative and diagnostic care, which leads to a more sustainable program for all. 

Delivering Your Unique Benefits.

Finally, with a well-thought out plan, your institution could become unequalled, attracting top talent. Happy employees who care about their work are more likely to exceed expectations and produce higher productivity. Which in an academic world, positively impacts the students they are teaching. Investing the time and energy into a well designed benefits plan can seem challenging, but the rewards are too great to ignore.

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Benefits Are More Than Insurance

by City on a Hill
June 22, 2021

Insurance plans are a way to manage risk and protect from loss. Your benefits plan on the other hand is a potential tool for growth and gain. In other words, when we look at insurance as a transaction we are missing the opportunity to see our benefits plan as a strategy for improving our organization.

When deciding on a benefits plan, choosing the most expensive plan feels like the path of least resistance, because in theory a costly plan is more comprehensive. However, a standard plan is not developed with your people in mind, and in any other area of business, we would not consider the risk of implementing a procedure that is not designed for our organization. 

With the diverse nature in schools today one of the most important tasks in taking care of your employees is listening to them. 

The Problems with Some Benefits Plans

Flexibility and choice is key to providing a benefits plan that is focused on the health, wellness and future of your people. By listening to what your employees need, your benefits plan becomes more likely to be fully utilized which can introduce cost-saving capabilities leaving more money in the budget.

Quality of care will look different for different school boards. However, we find there are common areas of concern in many benefits. They are:  

  • Employees are almost always overpaying for prescription drugs. With greater control, you can source the exact same prescriptions for significantly lower rates in nearly all cases.
  • Plan perks may not match the needs of the population. Different types of workforces often benefit from different kinds of benefits, so a generic benefits plan often ends up having large chunks of programs that are underutilized.
  • Quality of care is not a priority in the current plan. Traditional benefits programs push patients to certain networks with no insight into the actual quality of the care they receive, which can mean more pain and suffering from employees as well as more downtime. With a more thorough approach, your people can see higher-rated professionals–often for a lower cost.
  • Communication and support are lacking. Navigating a benefits plan is typically a major frustration for employees, especially if they need to talk to an insurance company. This leads to a poor experience and underutilized benefits, but with a concierge or dedicated support person available, experience and care can actually improve.

Keep in mind, even a great benefits plan can fall short if you aren’t properly equipping your people to use it. 

Addressing the Delivery and Ongoing Benefits Education

Providing a written handbook, no matter how comprehensive and discussing the package in detail during the onboarding process (a time that is usually hectic for a new employee) is often not enough. Benefits training and ongoing support for all employees should be addressed often, for all staff, all year. 

The use of technology in the form of apps or an employee website can give employees the ability to view their benefits at all times. Some employers are even looking to utilize decision-support tools to support their employees, which can make the decision process faster and easier. 

Engaging team leaders, who are often the first to know about personal challenges an employee faces, is also a great way to support employees which can improve employee morale and overall culture of the school. Designating dedicated support people, within the school board or an expert in benefits for educational institutions can further support these tools for success.

Adapting Your Plan to the Needs of Your People 

Adapting your benefits plan to the changing needs of the population and growth of the organization can continue to improve employee recruitment and retention, while maximizing your cost-savings. What was a well utilized benefit last year, could become under utilized next year. For example, paid parking expenses for teachers may be less valuable in a world of online schooling.

Encouraging a happy and healthy workforce is a primary concern for most employers and perhaps most important in a school setting, where your employees have a direct impact on the next generation. A benefits plan based on what your employees need is not only protecting your school but creating an environment for nurturing education.

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The Right (and Wrong) Way to Cut Costs

by City on a Hill
May 19, 2021

Your benefits options are expanding each year as insurance providers introduce new offerings and as the healthcare exchange rolls out subsidies and plan alternatives. In this environment, your business has several potential choices, and chasing radical cost-cutting can be tempting.

For example, we have encountered organizations considering this path:

  • Outright cancel the organization’s benefits plan
  • Remove the internal mechanism for administering benefits (such as an HR lead)
  • Direct all employees to the exchange to pick their own plans
  • Leverage exchange subsidies and the staff reduction to lower costs

Would this mean lower costs for a school like yours? Yes, but that’s only part of the story.

Balancing Benefits Cost-Savings with Disruption

Costs are not always purely financial, and the rewards you unlock from something like a benefits plan are not always measurable in pure dollars nor does your benefits plan exist in isolation. It is interwoven into the whole of your organization.

You’re familiar with this concept already and likely apply it to other areas of your school. 

You could, for instance, save a significant amount of money by cutting or reducing your physical education program. Gymnasiums are expensive. Sports equipment is expensive. Children have the potential to get injured in any physical activity, making liability expensive. You have to have at least one phys. ed. teacher on staff or divert one teacher’s course-load to teach phsy. ed. 

If you gutted that program, you could save a lot of money, but the consequences would ripple through the rest of your work. Families considering your school might find your school less appealing because this offering is reduced or missing. Current students would get much less physical activity, which could not only affect their long-term health but also lead to potential disruptions as students get restless in class. Your staff might suffer also as teachers of other “non-essential” courses like music and art begin to worry that their jobs and their programs are next.

Yes, you saved on budget, but was the return really worth it?

The Big Return on a Benefits Plan

Most businesses, and schools are no different, find that their healthcare spend is their least controllable and most frustrating expense. You are right to want to find better solutions for this problem and to pursue alternatives to what you’re doing now, but be wary of losing sight of what an effective, in-house benefits plan does for your organization.

If you take the exchange-only approach or radically reduce your benefits coverage, you may encounter the following problems: 

  • With a benefits plan, employees can come to a central source to have questions answered and to use their coverage. If everyone is on the exchange, everyone has to fend for themselves.
  • Benefits plans naturally include an advocate for your people, which can be an internal HR representative or an advisor who is motivated to fight for your employees, making sure they are treated fairly and get access to the care they need.
  • The lack of uniformity can create tension. With every employee choosing their own plan–often based on their personal financial situation–you could breed tensions over who has procedures covered and who does not, even though they made those choices personally.
  • The employee experience can be painful and navigating the current system is difficult. One of the top considerations for job candidates is the benefits plan, so forcing everyone to the exchange removes that bargaining chip and also transfers more responsibility and frustration to the employees themselves. In addition, the messaging to employees, pointing them toward subsidies based on their compensation can be a very touchy one.  
  •   Relying on subsidies handcuffs compensation. If you increase wages based on merit, the hit from payroll taxes and the potential loss of a subsidy can mean that a raise has little material value and may even hurt the business and the employee financially.

Your benefits plan should be a strategic tool in your business. Managing costs is important, and you have more options for improving that than you may realize, but your benefits plan is also an employee retention tool, a recruiting tool, and a culture tool. If you do want to make big changes to your plan, do so carefully and with an experienced partner guiding you. Otherwise, your benefits plan might cost you far more than dollars.

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New Benefits Transparency Regulations for Christian Schools

by City on a Hill
May 19, 2021

Health insurance and employee benefits have been top-of-mind concerns for legislators, and those concerns are turning into a slew of new regulations and policies. While the intentions behind these rules and requirements are positive, they increase responsibilities and liabilities for employers of all types, Christian schools included.

The first major set of compliance requirements goes into effect Jan. 1, 2022.

New Benefits Transparency Requirements

The first element in this rollout is a set of new rules around pricing transparency in benefits. Employers must communicate their contracted benefits rates to employees, which means that your employees need increased access to the actual costs of the care they may receive under your plan.

The insurance network behind your benefits plan has all of this information and is the party setting and managing prices, but the responsibility for complying to this new rule is on the employer. You have to provide the right information to the right parties or risk being out of compliance.

If you are like most of our clients, your experience with getting answers from your insurance provider may be less than positive, making this particular obstacle significant for many organizations. Because of the complexity of your benefits plan and the potential scope of the information you need to gather and share with your people, complying with new transparency requirements should be a part of your rollout plan today.

If you wait until January, you are likely to encounter serious problems.

Planning Ahead for Painless Compliance

One of our team members has compared the torrent of new legislation to a tsunami. There is a lot coming, and you don’t want to get caught on the beach when it hits. If you plan ahead, you can put your school safely on the high-ground, entering 2022 with everything you need and all of the right processes in place.

In addition to the new transparency requirements, you should also prepare for the following:

  • Compensation disclosure requirements for vendors providing benefits services
  • New rules for surprise billing
  • Reporting requirements for new plan RX data
  • Mental health parity compliance
  • Section 125 plan relief
  • Exchange open enrollment and premium tax credit expansion
  • COBRA subsidies

We practice what we preach, so the same preparation we are encouraging you to take is a part of our process with clients. We recently hosted an in-house webinar for our clients to walk them through the upcoming changes and to answer questions about how they might be affected. You are welcome to view the webinar to catch up.

And, as always, you’re welcome to reach out to us directly to talk through your exact needs. All of this is entirely manageable and solvable if we work together and start early.

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The Kodak Lesson That All Schools Should Know

by City on a Hill
March 15, 2021

The 90s and into the 2000s were pivotal years for photography. As the costs of film and access to photography development services grew, disposable cameras began entering the market and were soon followed by the earliest versions of digital cameras. At first, these devices were big and clunky and expensive, but tech evangelists and key players in the photography industry saw them as the beginning of a new era for photography.

Kodak, however, disagreed. Kodak decided that digital photography was a passing fad and opted to not pivot the business into digital.

Today, we know how that story ends. Kodak is still around, but it is far from the behemoth it once was. Kodak had all of the resources it needed to seize and dominate the blossoming digital photography market, but the leadership chose not to act. And that inaction proved to be a costly mistake, opening the door to competitors to chip away at Kodak’s customer base and market dominance.

The Cost of Inaction

Kodak’s story is not a new one, unfortunately. Powerful businesses often miss new ideas because they fear change and believe that inaction is a safe strategy. 

Sear’s, with its national chain of department stores and thriving mail order catalog business, could have evolved to become what Amazon is today. Disney famously derided 3D animation and passed on supporting what would become Pixar only to buy the company later for $7.4 billion. And the examples go on and on.

If you apply this lens to your own organization, you will discover that inaction can hobble your business at many unexpected points. For example, our work with employee benefits means that we see, again and again, how painful inaction can be.

Sure, changing your benefits plan is a complex challenge, but what are the costs of not changing? Here are some top-level consequences:

  • You pay more than you should. If you overpay for your benefits, the total loss of revenue year over year can be substantial. It’s expensive to sit still.
  • You lose potential growth. All of the revenue you wasted on your bloated, ineffective benefits plan means fewer dollars to reinvest in your organization, slowing progress across the board.
  • Employee morale suffers. Choosing to not address your benefits plan means that the quality of your benefits will likely decline each year, which means more frustration and heartache for your people, and that adds up quickly.

Adopt a Proactive Perspective

To avoid becoming a Kodak in your own way, you need to be willing to pursue new ideas and try new things. That’s scary, yes, but inaction should scare you even more.

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Share More To Grow More

by City on a Hill
March 15, 2021

Internally, we learned early on that the more we improved communication between team members and the more we were open about triumphs and challenges, the more we grew. Then we had a radical idea: What if we took the idea and turned it outward?

So, we started to connect with like-minded advisors, meeting regularly to discuss our industry and to compare notes on our observations. We still do this today: We talk about what’s working, what’s not working, what developments might impact our clients in the near and distant future, and on and on.

More Minds Make for More Impact

Technically, all of these advisors are competitors. They could, in theory, serve the exact same clients and prospects that we serve. For many business leaders, that fact alone would derail this initiative because it seems like giving away the keys to the kingdom, but that’s not what we’ve found.

Instead, we’ve found the following:

  • We have access to far more information than we ever would alone. Since this group is comprised of other industry experts, we get to see far more of the landscape than we would with our minds and doors shut.
  • We can innovate much more rapidly because we have a broader perspective. Not only do we see more ideas through these relationships, but we also get more direct feedback from experts.
  • We can identify trends much sooner than we could alone. When we work independently, deciding whether a new change is an anomaly or a sign of big things to come can be difficult, but with a panel of experts, we can swiftly identify when a change is going to affect all of our clients.

Growth Means Going Beyond Your Bubble

Ultimately, the lesson here is that growth will always require some degree of discomfort and probably some level of risk. Fear of that discomfort and fear of potential risks can lead to inaction. It feels safer to not do anything at all.

And that’s a trap. Inaction is just as dangerous as taking the wrong actions. A mastermind-style group like the one we describe might not be the action your organization needs, but hopefully, it starts to get you thinking beyond your bubble.

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7 Ways Private Schools Can De-Risk Self-Funding

by City on a Hill
February 8, 2021

Self-Funded Options are Available to Private Schools

We have found that private schools in our region, especially the Christian ones, have grown accustomed to doing more with fewer available resources. These institutions are so mission-driven that every person in the building is committed to delivering on their promises to their students, so they get creative with scheduling and staffing and with budgets.

Unfortunately, this scrappiness can sometimes lead to assumptions about what they can and cannot afford. Faced with ever-rising benefits costs, we have met with dozens of leadership teams who believe they simply have no option but to endure annual rate increases because of their size.

“We just aren’t big enough to do anything else,” they say.

This isn’t true. No matter how small the organization, you have more options available to you than you may realize.

Before we dive into what those options are, you should know that employee benefits plans are often divided into groups: Fully insured traditional plans and self-funded plans.

Fully Insured Traditional Plans

This is your classic employee benefits plan. The plan gives you coverage for a set rate, and you (as well as your employees) pay 100% of the premiums regardless of how much or how little the plan is used. At the end of each year, these plans typically increase in cost by 10 to 20% while employee deductibles and quality of coverage decline.

Self-Funded Plans

Under a self-funded model, you “pay as you go.” By directly managing your benefits plan, you pay for only what you use, giving you an opportunity to control the overall cost of your plan. Self-funded plans typically include a range of tools that enable employees to access better care but for lower prices.

Unlocking Rewards with Smaller Groups

Historically, larger groups have had the most success with self-funding because they are in a better position to absorb large claims. When smaller groups consider the possibility of self-funding care for an employee’s major illness or expensive prescription, the risk seems too high, so they go back to their broker and renew their traditional coverage.

We have clients with as few as 2 lives on self-funded plans, and that’s possible because of these tools:

  1. Stop-loss insurance – By capping your potential costs, stop-less insurance protects you from a bad year of claims so that you have stability and security at all times.
  2. Pharmaceutical programs – Prescription drug costs are one of the most common sources of high benefits costs, and we have tools that enable us to reduce (and sometimes eliminate) out-of-pocket costs to the employee while dramatically reducing the costs to the plan. For example, we have been able to provide $80,000 prescriptions for $30,000.
  3. Collective buying power – We use coalition and alliance models to bring several smaller schools together, giving everyone more negotiating power and better access to coverage,
  4. Direct medical contracts and reference-based pricing – In the benefits world, higher costs often do not equate to better care. We help your employees get the best possible care at fair prices, generating huge savings for your plan while giving them a better experience.
  5. Alternative delivery models – Benefits plans are full of waste. With telemedicine and prescriptions by mail, we can give employees more care at a lower cost.
  6. Progressive change – Your organization can gradually implement self-funded options overtime to make change more manageable for your leadership team. In other words, keep your plan but start saving at the same time.
  7. The right partner – The right advisor for your business will take your concerns seriously and collaborate with you to customize an approach that meets your needs.

Your Next Steps

You likely renewed your benefits plan recently, and that’s okay. Not only do we have options we can begin pursuing today to lower the costs of your current benefits plan, having more time between now and your policy renewal gives you more flexibility in your planning and your preparation. Next year, your benefits costs will go up. That is a certainty. But, if we start working together soon, we can unlock a new strategic advantage for your people without putting them at risk.

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