Issue #21 of Competitive Advantages

I was caught in some projects this week that delayed this newsletter to Saturday. Hopefully, it catches you as you rest up and you enjoy your weekend.

On to this week's edition of Competitive Advantages!

HR Leaders are Exhausted with Digital Solutions

Something I am seeing more and more is how exhausted and stretched-thin benefit managers and HR leaders are today. With the explosion of digital solutions and companies trying to break into employer health plans, HR leaders are being courted and sold to a much higher degree than ever before.

This quote from an article about Omada partnering with Intermountain Health caught my attention:

Duffy said selling to health systems doesn’t mean Omada will stop marketing its products to employers, but he noted employers are starting to tire of having too many digital health solutions.

“We recognized three or four years back that at some point heads of benefits would start to say, ‘I’m deploying Omada for pre-diabetes, Livongo for diabetes, Hinge Health for musculoskeletal, Hello Heart for hypertension. I’m managing five different vendor contracts and five different implementations,’” Duffy said. “We’re seeing more request for proposals where employers are like, ‘I just need to consolidate my point solutions.”

We're working on some ways to consolidate solutions because it's just not feasible for benefits managers to deal with 5+ different contracts every renewal on top of their existing insurance plans and health plan.

Centivo Announces 21 to 33 Percent Cost Savings for Employers

We at the LBL Group absolutely love what Ashok Subramanian and his team at Centivo (?? Kibuchi Banfield , Blake Mosher , Gillian Printon and others!) are doing to help employers provide affordable and accessible healthcare to employees.

This last week, they announced results from a study that analyzed their 2022 healthcare spend and found a 21 to 33 percent cost savings for employers. That's huge for companies. Results like this can be a real game-changer for groups.

So how did they do this?

They made healthcare more affordable and accessible.

It's that simple.

When we put the Centivo plans in place for an employer, they often feature no deductibles, no/low co-pays, no/low-coinsurance, and free primary care. Does that work? Well, the analysis showed utilization that led to healthier members via more primary care visits and fewer emergency room visits and inpatient admits.

?? High deductibles suck. They often just lead to care avoidance and just make costs worse long-term

?? Put pressure on providers to demonstrate a track record of good outcomes and hold them to it (value-based, coordinated care)

?? Put advanced primary care front and center as the key to delivering a differentiated healthcare experience

?? Emphasize transparency and accountability at all levels

If you want to offer affordable and accessible health plans with no deductible and lower premiums than your current plans, let's talk.

Microsoft rolls out ChatGPT Features

ChatGPT has gotten a lot of attention in recent months and for good reason. It's enabling people to use generative AI in a really practical and helpful way. It's also helping certain people come up with funny applications like turning the Star Wars opening scroll into a story about health insurance.

Microsoft is rolling out a feature in Teams where ChatGPT will simplify meetings by generating automatic meeting notes, recommending tasks, and creating meeting templates for users.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how Microsoft will leverage its multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI as it competes with Alphabet/Google. I'm curious to see further applications and how this AI technology can supplement what we do in our jobs.

Catch a Replay of my DEI Webinar with Dr. Leroy Nunery!

On Wednesday, I spoke with Dr. Leroy D. Nunery II, NACD.DC of Evolution Advisors about the opportunity in front of companies by embracing DEI. He's received acclaim within our industry for his research on DEI within the insurance industry after releasing "The Next Steps on the Journey" a study on the experiences of Black/African-American risk and insurance professionals and their representation in our industry.

We spoke together because the way Dr. Nunery sees it, businesses that take DEI seriously have a competitive advantage in their market today (that's the name of this newsletter!).

Let's say you're focused on improving recruiting and retention.

Employees want to be part of a corporate culture that values inclusion, diversity and encourages empathy. DEI helps your business and it's strongly tied to employee retention and loyalty.

? Employees have twice as high job satisfaction with strong DEI support over weak DEI support (8 in 10 versus just 34%)

? Employees at inclusive corporate cultures have 70% higher well-being and are 25% less likely to experience anxiety and depression.

? Members of Gen Z are almost twice as loyal and want to stay at an organization if it promotes a positive impact on society.

For more reading on inclusion and benefits, check out:

• What is inclusive healthcare by Collective Health
• What is Perinatal Mental Health and Why Health Plans Should Care
• A Med School Student Created a Guide for Diagnosing Conditions on Dark Skin
• Health Inequities in Infant Mortality: Black Doctors Reduce Black Infant Mortality by 39% to 58%

Sign up for Acrisure's Upcoming HR Leaders Summit in March!

Looking for a breakthrough virtual leadership summit for people leaders? I got good news for you!

Acrisure is once again hosting our HR Leaders Compliance Summit for 2023 from March 7th through March 9th!

This summit includes subject matter experts on various HR-related disciplines covering topics ranging from labor regulation updates, employee benefits trends, and human capital management best practices…all made infinitely more complex given today’s unprecedented times.

Not only that, but this event also includes Robin Arzon and?Mike Abrashoff?as our keynote speakers in their capacity as organizational and thought leaders.

We've got an awesome line-up of sessions on breakthrough performance, leadership, HR compliance, DOL audits, optimizing your people strategy, and specific CA and Tri-State sessions. Our speakers include?Jeremy Hertz,?Deborah Hyde, and?Dawn Alvarez, PHR, CHRS, among others.

And while the event usually costs $495 to attend, you can use the code "LBL" to attend for free!

Sign up to attend any of the sessions you want and receive recording and presentation materials if you can't make a session.

Impact of migraines on employers and employees

I had an eye-opening conversation this week with Elizabeth Burstein on the impact of headaches and migraines on employees, and the associated impact on businesses.

She founded Neura Health to work with employers and their employees on this issue. I'm exploring opportunities to support our groups with this service and it's something you might want to check out.

Here's an interesting HBR article on the impact of migraines - the TL;DR is that businesses lose $13 billion every year due to productivity losses due to migraines, which affect 47 million Americans.

They do this through migraine education, coordinated care management, and a model that emphasizes care and outcomes.

For more, check out this article on Elizabeth and Neura Health.

MrBeast Cures Blindness (For 1,000 people)

If you don't know who MrBeast is, your kids probably do. He has the most subscribers on YouTube and he is really creative with the videos and content he makes. Most recently, he uploaded a video of how he helped 1,000 people see for the first time.

What does he do for these people? He provides them with cataract surgery, a relatively simple and safe medical procedure. Unfortunately, many people lack access to this procedure and go through life with impaired vision.

The thing I find so interesting about how MrBeast operates is he views these videos like a business with a PnL. He figures out the cost of providing the surgery and the prizes people win and then creates a video that commercializes this process in a way that funds this project and future projects.

There is some chatter about performative altruism but I think stuff like this is fantastic and the criticism is very myopic. He sees a problem (inaccessible and unaffordable surgery), comes up with a solution (100M+ views on YouTube video will pay for it), and executes on it. He solves this problem with money earned by showing the problem, and in the process increases awareness of cataract surgerys and organizations like See International.

GoodRx Fined by FTC for Sharing Health Data with Google, Facebook

GoodRx, the company that allows you to find low-cost drugs, was fined $1.5 million by the FTC but admitted no wrongdoing. They were sharing information with Google and Facebook, so all those drug ads you received are driven by your own searches on their website. Yikes!

That's it for this week's issue of Competitive Advantages! Subscribe to get future issues delivered directly to your inbox and for future updates.

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