Broken Benefits

Advanced healthcare benefits strategies didn't just happen overnight. They were created, enhanced, and innovated over time thanks to the efforts of some key individuals. One of those people, is Sally Welborn.

On the latest episode of Broken Benefits, we're thrilled to welcome Sally Welborn, the Former Senior Vice President of Global Benefits for Walmart Stores, Inc., and hear numerous stories that provide benefits leaders with insight into developing strategic benefits strategies at the highest of levels!

Sally is an institution in American healthcare, in running the benefits strategy for America's largest retailer for nearly a decade! This episode is packed with nuggets of insight and stories from Sally's decorated career in benefits. Enjoy!

Timecodes:

0:15 - Introduction and overview on the guest of today's show

1:39 - How Sally approaches healthcare problems different than most

4:25 - If Sally could steer the whole industry in one direction...

7:02 - How to know which benefits strategy to use?

13:40 - Sally's process for identifying trends in healthcare

20:50 - The biggest opportunities that Sally is excited about these days

24:46 - Is an innovation really an innovation if it's impossibly unaffordable?

31:40 - How to run small tests as a large employer

36:32 - How Sally would sell new programs internally

40:20 - Getting leaders to be comfortable with "taking risk"

43:50 - How to connect with Sally

44:40 - Closing remarks

Connect with Lee Lewis:

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Dr. Bob Galvin looks at healthcare through a unique lens. After graduating medical school, he later became the Executive Director of Services and Chief Medical Officer for General Electric. Later, in 2010, he transitioned over to Blackstone and became the CEO of Equity Healthcare for Blackstone.

As a physician, Bob was able to provide a special perspective into the healthcare and medical solutions that were presented to self-funded employers. Bob's medical expertise, alongside his countless years of experience in healthcare benefits, provides our audience with a wide range of stories and key takeaways to help reinforce your company's benefits strategy.

Enjoy!

Timecodes:

0:03 - Self-funded employers are handling their own risk

0:33 - Who is Dr. Bob Galvin?

1:30 - Bob's big realization in the healthcare industry

4:00 - Self-funded employers are essentially their own insurance company

8:09 - How many stakeholders are misaligned against employers

15:36 - Fixing misaligned incentives

22:07 - What we should be adding to our healthcare plan management

28:07 - The variation in physician and hospital performance is staggering

32:38 - Apply business principles from one side of your organization to the other side

36:09 - Internal support from your leadership team

41:07 - A story from Bob's career

47:35 - At the end of the day, healthcare is personal

50:40 - How to connect with Dr. Bob Galvin

51:09 - Closing remarks

Connect with Lee Lewis:

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It's not easy to pave the way for innovation among large employers, but Marilyn Bartlett was always up for the challenge!

On the latest episode of Broken Benefits, we're joined by Marilyn Bartlett who has quite the decorated resume... to say the least. Marilyn held financial management positions in various industries, narrowing her focus to health care financial management and serving as controller for a Blue Cross Blue Shield carrier, chief financial officer for a regional third-party administrator, Montana State Employee Health Plan administrator, and special projects coordinator for the Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance. When she took the helm of the Montana Employee Benefit Plan, she led efforts to move the plan from projected reserves of minus $9 million to positive $112 million in less than three years. For her accomplishments, she was selected as #13 of Fortune Magazine’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders of 2019.

In today's episode, we're unpacking some of the key takeaways from her career and advice for those looking to further innovate healthcare.

Timecodes:

0:33 - Introduction and overview on the guest for today's show

1:24 - Marilyn's groundbreaking idea while working for Montana

7:32 - Additional business practices that are lacking within healthcare

10:17 - The mistakes that people are commonly making in healthcare

14:56 - The biggest risk that we might be sitting on without knowing

18:36 - You need to be taking a hard look at your data

23:34 - Employers are going to be held more accountable moving forward

29:24 - Reference based pricing models

33:01 - Marilyn not being able to do direct contracts with hospitals

37:49 - Leverage your data in making strategic decisions

42:30 - Analyzing a transparent pass-through

45:35 - How to get in touch with Marilyn

46:40 - Closing remarks

Connect with Lee Lewis:

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On the latest episode of Broken Benefits, we're taking a closer look at the innovative work Arielle Bogorad has done throughout her career in healthcare, as well as the importance behind advocating for implementing fresh perspectives and strategies.

Arielle is a healthcare innovator to her core. Currently, she is the Senior Vice President at Progyny, where she's developing new ways to advance healthcare for the greater good.

In this episode, Arielle shares her experiences running benefits at Cerner Corporation for over a decade and running a self-administered program.

Let's get right into it!

Timecodes:

1:00 - Who is Arielle Bogorad?

4:03 - Landing at Cerner Corporation and working on Executive Development

5:32 - Bringing a big university and a privately held company together

9:36 - Getting to try new things, which is rare in healthcare

11:21 - Working alongside many minds that have different perspectives on healthcare

17:48 - Positive metrics that Arielle was able to generate with Cerner

21:05 - The guiding principles at Cerner

25:11 - Getting metrics to help drive decision-making

31:40 - Bariatrics and the considerations Arielle was faced on this front

33:30 - Advice for people entering the healthcare benefits space

37:15 - How Arielle's employer was able to be self-administered

43:06 - Ways that Arielle and her team designed benefits

48:35 - How Arielle and her team calculated ROI

54:10 - How you can get in touch with Arielle and ask questions

55:20 - Closing remarks

Connect with Lee Lewis:

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She's led benefits for a Fortune 100 employer, provided countless bits of insight through her consulting work, and was influential in the changing of healthcare costs over the years!

On the latest episode of Broken Benefits, we're thrilled to welcome Hellen Darling, a revolutionary healthcare innovator, to share her experiences from a lengthy career in healthcare.

Throughout her career, as well as her time leading the National Business Group on Health, Hellen was the primary lead business voice in Washington, DC advocating for jumbo employers.

Let's get started!

Timecodes:

0:06 - Introduction and welcome to the show!

1:51 - Welcoming Hellen Darling to the show

4:28 - About 2/3 of people with healthcare have it paid for by employers

7:16 - Why the healthcare market doesn't deliver what customers want

14:58 - Developing the appropriate plan design changes

19:19 - The invisible subtext of healthcare

25:33 - When Hellen realized that we were lacking quality measures in healthcare

31:00 - Hellen and her team wanted the health plans to provide reporting

33:50 - A message from today's sponsor

35:52 - How Hellen built internal support within her organization

43:58 - Bringing people together and conducting a multi-employer effort

49:04 - The recipe for finding success when enacting change in healthcare

52:25 - How you can get in touch and connect with Hellen Darling

53:20 - Closing remarks

Connect with Lee Lewis:

LinkedIn

On the latest installment of Broken Benefits, we're pleased to welcome Brian Marcotte, Former Vice President of Compensation and Benefits at Honeywell International, for a deep dive into his extensive career in benefits.

Brian and his team were responsible for implementing a nationwide network-based point of service plan that was transformative for its time. Additionally, their team was able to achieve seven straight years with a flat trend at Honeywell.

On this episode, Brian shares some of his most valuable wisdom along with stories to help inspire today's benefits workers.

Timecodes:

0:30 - Introducing Brian Marcotte to the show

1:26 - The high points during Brian's career at Honeywell

3:17 - A quick word from our sponsor

3:47 - Discovering new strategies and bringing them into reality

6:50 - Lessons that Brian learned along the way

10:08 - "Elevating the health of the population requires being innovative and nimble"

11:17 - Where to begin in developing an efficient health plan

20:00 - The difficulty of displaying and discussing data with different company sectors

23:08 - How Brian presented the health plan like a financial plan

24:16 - Handling pushback from his CEO

28:12 - The most difficult conversation Brian had with his CEO

31:46 - The importance of being data-driven and data-focused on these efforts

36:10 - Lessons learned from having difficult conversations with leadership

39:17 - How Apple's engineers were able to get Steve Jobs to buy into the iPhone idea

43:03 - Report on the experience and the quality outcomes, not costs

46:06 - Closing remarks

Connect with Lee Lewis:

LinkedIn

On the latest episode of Broken Benefits, we welcome Former Senior Vice President of Walmart Health to discuss the monumental footprint he left at the world's largest retailer!

Marcus Osborne and his team were impacting over 100 million lives with their benefits strategies at Walmart Health and he shares countless experiences that paved the way towards innovative and successful benefits strategies.

Marcus provides a wealth of knowledge and expertise within this episode! So, what are you waiting for? Click that play button now!

Timecodes:

0:22 - Introduction and overview on the guest of the day

1:53 - How Marcus approached solutions to healthcare challenges

6:03 - Why do businesses not engage healthcare problems like Marcus did

11:43 - Marcus is known for addressing trends within markets

18:46 - The pros and cons of using carriers to be our integrators

30:40 - Some misconceptions around what you're paying your carriers for

40:15 - Do we have the data and tools needed to make informed decisions

44:43 - The big discoveries Marcus had throughout his career

59:12 - A word from today's sponsor

1:00:00 - The common mistakes that employers are making that are easy to correct

1:05:08 - How big companies can run small tests

1:10:36 - The ripple effect of change on hospital systems

1:17:12 - How to connect with Marcus online

1:18:40 - Closing remarks

Connect with Lee Lewis:

LinkedIn

We're back with an all-new episode!

Joining us on Broken Benefits is Mike Adams, Innovative Benefits Thought Leader, who shares his experiences as a top benefits executive at Fortune 100 companies throughout his career.

Mike was a pioneer and developed foundational healthcare strategies that are now leveraged by many in today's day and age. Listen as we explore his career, the risks he took along the way, and the lives he was able to help change as a result of his innovative work!

Timecodes:

0:30 - Introduction and overview on Mike Adams

1:52 - How to approach vendors and manage those relationships

3:06 - A message from our sponsor, Catalize Health®

5:30 - It's important to deeply discuss the scope of work with your carriers

8:13 - What is a fireable offense within this relationship?

12:23 - Mike managed a -4.5% trend (compounded annually) at Dean Foods

15:40 - What a sustainable relationship looks like

20:32 - It's very important to understand the leadership team at the company you're working with

22:39 - How to take risks and protect yourself

24:14 - Dumping the vendor and not the strategy

28:03 - How to manage member disruption and mitigate it overall

30:00 - Working with populations across all demographics and care dynamics

35:33 - Healthcare has become transactional in today's day and age

37:53 - How Mike would approach working with a new company

39:40 - How you can get in touch with Mike

40:55 - Closing remarks

Connect with Lee Lewis:

LinkedIn

Welcome back to Broken Benefits!

We're so excited to follow up out launch of the show with another great episode, featuring Christin Deacon, Thought Leader and Healthcare Disruptor, and a great discussion surrounding some of the political challenges within healthcare at large.

Christin shares not only her experiences with these challenges, but also how she implemented the first reverse auction PBM for a $900,000 plan.

There's so much wisdom and great insight packed into this episode and we're thrilled to share this fantastic conversation with you. Enjoy!

Timecodes:

0:46 - Introducing Christin Deacon and sharing her background

1:50 - How Chris deconstructed and approached the challenges in healthcare

4:06 - The common misconceptions about being fiduciaries

10:00 - You have to acknowledge that you have a problem!

16:20 - Christin's biggest goal and what she was aiming to achieve in healthcare

18:58 - There isn't a technology silver bullet that can solve these issues

27:26 - What we can do as employers to make primary care more centric

35:56 - Why health insurance operates so differently than other insurances

40:00 - The risks Christin took throughout her career

47:37 - How to get in touch with Christin for more information

48:00 - Closing remarks

Connect with Lee Lewis:

LinkedIn

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Broken Benefits!

We spend billions on benefits, yet healthcare is unaffordable and complicated. More than half of Americans don't even take their paid vacation, yet people are burning out faster than ever and remote work is scrambling company cultures. It doesn't have to be this way. Great benefits can attract and retain top talent, communicate your values, rejuvenate your productivity, move your stock price, and even save lives. 

On our first episode, we welcome Stephen Hoelper, Digital Health Executive, onto the show for a deep dive into his extremely interesting career with Comcast. Stephen managed 1% trend for seven years at Comcast and credits the success to running benefits like an incubator.

Click that play button and enjoy a fantastic dialogue from one of the industries leading legends!

Timecodes:

0:22 - Welcome to Broken Benefits!

0:40 - Who is Stephen Hoelper?

1:54 - Deconstructing what is broken about healthcare from the employer's lens

4:01 - The surprises that Stephen found within analyzing data

5:48 - Tactics that Stephen's team utilized that were outside the status quo

9:11 - Benefits leaders are inundated with vendors

11:08 - Distilling feedback and working alongside the vendors

14:49 - Who should you hire when running a health plan?

18:06 - What are the tactics that benefits managers should be focusing on most?

21:00 - Take a moment and think like an actual person

25:19 - Stephen creating over $500 million in savings

34:20 - The various contradictory alignments throughout the healthcare space

38:30 - The biggest risks that Stephen took during his career

42:06 - Quantity is quality! As you do more, you find the big wins

44:21 - You have to treat benefits like a business!

46:22 - How to connect with Stephen and learn more

46:44 - Closing remarks

Connect with Lee Lewis:

LinkedIn