February 2016

This week, we’re talking to our subject matter expert is Julian Lago, co-founder and President of Benezon about how benefits advisors can help employees raise their “Healthcare IQ”. In light of recent reports that as many as three-fourths of employees don’t understand even basic benefits terminology, this offers yet another post-reform opportunity for adding value.

Julian has spent the last five years working to understand how advisors can create a concierge service for employees to help them begin to understand the complexities of their plans and their claims. We also explore how having an advocate can help employees become better consumers. He believes it boils down to three key focus areas: awareness, engagement, and improvement.

In this conversation, we talk about what you need to look for in your practice and how to keep a high touch environment while using technology to take the burden of every-increasing client demands for higher levels of customer services off your support staff. Julian is a Regional Vice President of the National Association of Health Underwriters and spends a great deal of time talking with benefit advisors who share the same common needs: being able to find time to build their practices while delivering world-class customer service without breaking the bank.

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

• How you can account for the continuing high level of health care illiteracy.
• What “Healthcare IQ” means.
• Whether more transparency will drive greater engagement.
• Whether “high touch” still matters.
• Julian’s 3 three key focus areas of advocacy for plan members.
• What’s the sword and what’s the shield?

Featured on the Show:

• www.Benezon.com

Listen to the Full Interview:

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At the recent Ascend! conference in Nashville, we caught up with Russ Blakely, President of Russ Blakely & Associates. In the course of our conversation, it became apparent that Russ is doing a lot of the things “the right way,” and we decided to invite him to the program to talk about best practices. Russ is a great example of the things he’s doing in the benefits arena that you can likely learn from and implement in your own practice.

In this wide-ranging discussion, we cover how taking ownership of client problems may lead you to saving money, and when it makes sense to implement onsite clinics and pharmacies and how that may impact the pharma and medical spend. We also talk about how Russ has created a proprietary physician network and what it did for their firm, as well as how they discover “at-risk” employees and what conditions they find most prevalent within a given population.

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

• What to do when expensive care happens outside a clinic.
• Why it is important to leverage data and do directed mining.
• Whether the onsite clinics in the public sector are unusual.
• What prompted the initial physician recruitment and how that grew into a network.
• What a “network within a network” is and why it is important.

Featured on the Show:

• www.RussBlakelyAssoc.com

Listen to the Full Interview:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This Episode is Sponsored by:

Enjoy The Show?

• Don’t miss an episode, subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher or RSS.
• Leave us a review in iTunes (here’s how)
• Join the conversation by leaving a comment below!