Learn more about the Health Imagination & Transformation (HIT) Program including:
Learn more about the Health Imagination & Transformation (HIT) Program including:
Hi, this is Bridgette Cassety and I'm in the broker engagement department at Meritain Health. And thank you for joining us for another edition of In the Booth. Today, I have with me Jenny Shanks and Cari Randel and they are both senior business consultants here at Meritain in our product and strategy department. So, thank you so much Cari and Jenny for joining me today. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. Absolutely. And I thought we'd start out our conversation today just sharing with our viewers a little bit around what your role is inside our company. You're both in our market intelligence department and I thought maybe you could just share a little bit about the work that you do in that department that benefits our brokers and customers. Jenny, would you like to talk a little bit about that?
JS:I'd be happy to. So, like you mentioned, market intelligence is made up of a team of two, Cari and I and we live within the product and strategy team within Meritain. And in a nutshell, I always explained to people that our focus really is on the external perspective. So, we monitor the market trends that we see in the industry. We do that through articles, through conferences, just a lot of research and then we also spend a lot of our time gathering feedback from our broker partners that could be through face to face meetings. We sometimes hold interviews over the phone to ask them some questions and then we send out our annual broker survey and we use the insight from that external perspective for a number of things. Within our own product and strategy team, we contribute to our product strategy, so we help identify through that external feedback and what's going on in the market. We help identify what types of products and solutions that we need to implement in order to continuously meet our client and broker needs. We also use the insight to drive organizational strategy around market trends. So, as I mentioned, we keep an eye on the trend. We want to understand what's going to happen in the industry in the next three to five years. And having that insight allows us to be proactive and prepare for what the industry will look like so that we can make sure that we're developing products and solutions and strategies that will meet that need in years to come. And then finally we use the insight to contribute to a program that we introduced a couple of years ago called Health Imagination and Transformation, which in short, we call HIT. And that allows us to deliver our solutions to our brokers and clients quickly using startup vendors. And that's actually what we're here to talk about today.
BC:Well, thanks so much Jenny. And Cari, do you want to take a few minutes and just walk our listeners through what the goals are of HIT and how they could benefit from that? Is that working brokers and clients with Meritain?
CR:Absolutely. So as Jenny mentioned, we rolled out or began the HIT program a couple of years ago. And really the goal is to be able to bring innovative solutions to our broker and client partners. We know that there are a number of solutions that have begun to infiltrate the market and that we can't always build a solution for each and every one of the things that we're trying to accomplish. And we also know that there are a lot of opportunities that exist in the market from a solution standpoint that brokers and clients may not always have the resources to do identify themselves. And so what we have done is we've worked together with our products and strategy team, our broker strategy team, as Jenny mentioned, to identify what the market trends are so that we can look for potential solutions, where we can bring vendors to our brokers to help bridge the need. And so we at as the referrer, and one of the interesting things and one of the great things that we think about the HIT or Health Imagination and Transformation program is that we bring all of these solutions just as a value add. So Meritain isn't making any money. It really truly is an investment in our broker relationships and in our client relationships to meet their evolving needs.
BC:So, Cari, when you think about our listeners and they wanted to learn more about the HIT program and how it can provide value for their customers, how would one do that?
CR:Well we regularly send out, as we add new vendors to the program, we will send out broker blasts. However, we always encourage our brokers to engage either with Jenny and I directly or their account management team or sales team. That way we can continue to evolve the solutions to meet their needs, but also that we can provide them with information on what we currently have in the“portfolio” or HIT. Currently we have solutions ranging from musculoskeletal to second opinion services to bundled pricing and domestic medical tourism. So, what we can do is we can provide information on the vendors that exist, what the solutions are that they bring to the table and how those might fit with their existing client base or even their future client base.
BC:So, Jenny, if a broker had a question about a specific area that they might find a need for a client are not exactly sure what the solutions are out there, the best solution. Is that something that we could help them with through the HIT program?
JS:Absolutely. We're always open if we don't have a solution already in the works or implemented, we're always open to talking to our broker partners and understanding what gaps they might have in their portfolio when they're talking to clients about options. And with the HIT program, the nice part about it is that we're fairly nimble. It does take some time to work with these vendors. So, you know, we aim to implement about three to four a year. But, as is with the market intelligence, one of our objectives is collecting that external perspective. So, having the suggestions come from our brokers directly really helps us identify priorities when we're looking for what vendor next to work with through the HIT program.
BC:I know you talked about earlier, Jenny, with the market intelligence work that you do and sort of being forward thinking and industry trends. So how do you sort of use the work that you do every day in the market intelligence world, which is, you know, always forward thinking and leverage that to develop vendors into the HIT program. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
JS:I can. So right now, as Cari mentioned, so musculoskeletal claims--we have a couple of solutions already in place for that. And that's a result of understanding: one, reading a lot of articles and an understanding that as a high cost driver, but also we've used input from our internal partners. So, we understand as they might be doing an annual plan review, for example. And they noticed that a client, or maybe it's a majority of their clients all have musculoskeletal claims as their top 10 cost drivers. We use that information as well to identify, okay, we need to try to control costs in that particular area. Let's go out and see if any startup companies are addressing that. And as we found, there are actually many vendors. So, we just chose two that we thought would help control costs the most and that we thought offered a really strong solution. So that's one example of how we use our resources to identify targets.
BC:BC: Okay. And Cari, I think you might've had something to add in there. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to jump in. CR: No, I think Jenny covered it. Thank you. BC: Okay. So, as I sort of process our conversation that we've had here today, just around the work of market intelligence. And looking at market trends and specifically the health imagination transformation work that you're doing. The things that I've sort of heard is that this is an investment that Meritain is and to be forward thinking as Advocates for Healthier Living, making sure that we're looking at available new products and services that will help our brokers and clients drive down the Total Cost of Care. And the second thing I think I've heard you talk about is making sure that they're true solutions and so going through a vetting process to make sure that they deliver the value that our brokers and clients would expect. And then third that we're truly looking for innovators, folks that are solving for very specific problems that don't necessarily always have to be integrated into the portfolio but could be available to solve a very specific problems that brokers and clients might be facing, unique to their population. Is that sort of a fair summary of some of the things that the HIT program designed to? CR: Yeah, I think it's a great summary. Thank you. BC Well, I hope that I had that. I looked at our session today with Cari and Jenny and our market intelligence department has given our listeners a little bit of a purview into some of the work that we're doing at Meritain Health to bring creativity and innovation to the marketplace and manage total cost of care. Again, is Cari mentioned, if you have questions about our HIT program or market trends feel free to reach out to your sales or your account management team and they're happy to help you and we appreciate you joining us for another edition of In the Booth. Thank you and have a great day. hank you and have a great day.