Summary: Sales & Marketing Value Visit 2024

Health Plan Alliance

05/10/2024

 

Alliance member sales and marketing leaders convened May 6-9 in Scottsdale, AZ to discuss how to exceed strategic growth targets and strengthen their market position. If you were unable to join us, here's what you missed.



Day One

Rick Koven of Koven Consulting and Coaching set the stage for our meeting by laying out Commercial enrollment trends in the Alliance membership. Alliance executives built on his analysis and primed us for the rest of the day's conversation by laying out their current challenges and plans for strategic growth. 

Matt Gibson of John Hancock and Tanya Little of Vitality invited members to re-imagine their value propositions, urging a shift from reactive "sick care" to proactive health care. They also broadened the ongoing discussion of competitive advantage by moving beyond the usual brand, pricing, and product differentiators, instead centering on the potential of using incentive alignment to drive value, unlock new sales channels, elevate net promoter scores, and foster profitability.

Katie Poole and Nancy Wise of Spring Street Exchange led us through a visioning exercise to design the products of tomorrow. Spring Street's scenario planning approach encouraged us to look beyond today's landscape to consider how shifting market needs and new technologies might impact our product design in the near- and longer-term future.

David Shultz of Media Logic led us through an interactive poll designed to stoke thinking about opportunities for differentiation for regional plans -- customer service, tight collaboration with doctors and providers, and focusing on serving members versus making a profit, to name a few. In his case study, he also showcased how a regional health plan partnered with the community to develop a truly tailored Medicare Advantage offering that resonated with its members. 

Nick Kraft and Patti Scott of Capital District Physicians' Health closed out our day with case studies that drove home how their plan defines and delivers on a differentiated value proposition. Their five-pillared growth strategy underscores how they were able to leverage relationships, bring the right people to the table, and emphasize their local, integrated delivery to win contracts.

Health Plan Alliance led an exploration of a potential "Peer Review Website Audit Program" and a "Best Marketing Campaign Library" in a lightning fast 30 minute brainstorming session. The feedback doesn't end here -- if you have thoughts or suggestions, email Nicole Fultz or Joe Lastinger to be part of the driving force behind these exciting initiatives and share your expertise.

 

Day Two

Day two was a whirlwind!

Milliman kicked off the day with a data-rich presentation breaking down how your product design impacts premium pricing. These slides had tons of numbers and figures about benefit richness, claims cost, and differentiation strategies that you'll want to take back to your team -- make sure you download the presentation.

The rest of our day was jam-packed with case studies shared by member health plans and industry experts, all designed to reveal new ideas for differentiating your brand and growing profitably.

In the Network and Access session, we heard how increasing virtual care options, reducing prior approval requirements, sharing risk and fostering patient/provider partnerships can improve your members' access to quality care.

Plans shared novel approaches to coverage like providing association health plans, leveraging data to identify new markets for entry, and unique community partnership opportunities in the Market Penetration and Expansion session.

We learned how one plan partnered with a vendor to offer MSK products that reduced utilization and improved member engagement, and we heard how offering a total cost of care guarantee demonstrated the value of the integrated delivery system in the Product Design session.

During the Data and Analytics session, we heard how you can leverage SDOH indices to evaluate the directional impact of population change in your membership and learned it's possible to segment members based on utilization, risk adjustment, and experience to develop targeted marketing outreach.

Finally, in the Sales and Channel session, we learned about the importance of branding and marketing that showcases your plan's community involvement and how incentive credits can improve risk and turn around your book of business while intentionally losing membership.

So many resources were shared today -- make sure to download a copy of all of them through the meeting page

We hope those of you that joined us in Scottsdale took home new ideas to try at your organization as well as valuable connections, old and new, that you can lean on for support. Please know you can always reach out to any Alliance staff if you have ideas or needs. We are here to help.

 

What's next

  • Download all the session resources from the documents tab on the meeting page
  • The next Marketing Executives call is on June 12. Register now.
  • The next meeting of the ASO Workgroup is on June 25. Register now.

 

Thank you to our meeting sponsors