Candour

Candour is a veritable skill for a leader. It speaks to the ability of a leader to communicate transparently by showing that they value honesty over superficial niceties. This was the atmosphere at our stakeholder engagement event held in March 2024. A conference that is held annually for our partners at Hallmark HMO. We have in attendance our regulators, various associations that represent hospital owners (HCPAN), HMOs (HMCAN), and Lagos State Health Insurance Scheme (LASHMA). Our topic for this year's event was Transforming Healthcare Delivery: Integrating Customer Centric Technology for enhanced access and affordability.

Dr. Ngozi Onyia was the keynote speaker at the 3rd Edition of Hallmark HMO Stakeholder Engagement.

She stated the need for us as an industry to come together and collaborate, her analogy was very graphic and relatable. The old time musicians who will go with a truckload of band members and will take time setting up to modern musicians who work solo and feature other artists, with technology, you dont see any band members just a studio and an album is out.

In her words, modern-day artists are leveraging technology to grow and become rich together.

She is currently on the board of Leadway Health Insurance and is also the Medical Director of Paelon Memorial. She has acted as a corporate doctor for a multinational, and from these three roles, she could conclude that the way forward for our industry, HMOs, is collaboration.

I like her candour, she did not sugar coat any point, she identified the problem with enrolees, users of the HMO services, who makes unreasonable demands of the scheme. She also highlighted the need for organisations to consider what the HMOs are offering in light of economic reality, beyond negotiating the premium, and to consider fair pricing for the services. As leaders, when procuring services for your staff, it is expected that you go beyond price lowering to quality of service for your team.

Hospitals were not exempted from her charge. Before she became a board member, she, just like other directors of hospitals, was of the opinion that the HMOs were making so much money. Now she could state categorically that the HMos are not recording profits because the claims are high and the margins are very low. She advised the hospitals in attendance to follow the principles of business ethics and not allow their practise to be used for fraud because they have the wrong impression about HMOs.

The need for us to come together is now, the industry can still be made to work if we all are honest and sincere with the current challenges we are facing. If the market knows that we are collaborating, it becomes almost impossible to take advantage of us as individual companies.

Healthcare is a need and not a luxury, however, accessibility is a luxury because of the cost. Our regulator needs to understand our pain points and review their policies to align with the needs of the industry. The industry can achieve its goal of sustainability of business if the business environment allows it.

I agree with Ngozi Onyia the time to collaborate is now. Hygeia HMO AIICO Multishield Limited LifeWORTH HMO ClearlineHMO and other Reliance HMO, Leadway HMO, AxaMansard HMO, GNI HMO, Avon HMO etc.

#universalhealthcarecoverage

#stakeholdersengagement

#candour

#leadership

#nhia