The ShiftShapers Podcast

In today’s environment, employers look to their advisors for more compliance information than ever before. This week’s guest believes that when it comes to the subject of compliance, many employers “have their heads in the sand” – and that presents an opportunity for advisors to differentiate and deliver value. We recently attended the North Carolina Association of Health Underwriters Symposium an...

Dr. Keith Smith believes that health care pricing in the United States is “a scam” that he was determined to change. Continuing with our 2-part series on transparency, we thought it would be interesting to talk to someone who has a few years’ experience in taking transparency and is putting it into effect.  Keith is the medical director and managing partner of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma. While...

Perhaps more than any other single topic, transparency has the potential to be transformational to every aspect of health and health insurance. With that in mind, we are doing our first ever 2-part episode. This week, on part one, we’re excited to welcome Ralph Weber, President and CEO of MediBid. Ralph is a passionate subject matter expert and serves as a member of NAHU’s Healthcare Cost and Qual...

We’ve waited a long time to find exactly the right person to talk to about the ever-increasing portion of our overall spend – pharmacy. Our today’s guest, Tery Baskin, founder, president and CEO of RxResults has been in the pharmacy field for over 30 years.  He’s owned 3 community pharmacies, worked in a tertiary care hospital before he got involved in the managed care side of things. Today, Tery...

Commission compression is causing advisors to rethink their business model – especially looking a few years out. One option is to shift to a more consultative fee-based motif. Our guests, Mike Grinnell and Kirsten Tudman of CPI-HR, are among the handful of advisors at the forefront of this shift. They join us today to discuss the impetus for the change as well as some lessons learned along the way...

In this episode, we explore some of the most common questions advisors ask about self funding and discuss concerns ranging from minimum group size to tools and techniques. Our guest on this episode of ShiftShapers is Adam Russo, Esq., co-founder and CEO of The Phia Group, as well as the founding and managing partner at a law firm, Russo & Minchoff. He believes that, in light of the healthcare...

Our guest this week believes that to it is time to reinvent the sales cycle. If we look at the employee benefits distribution process over the past fifty years, we’ll discover that it has not changed much and is still very manual, inefficient, and time consuming. Matthew Wood, VP of Sales & Technology at Lidac, believes that technology and an end-to-end managed sales cycle is the answer for ad...

In today’s market, employers expect their benefit advisors to bring them new ideas to control costs. Our today’s guest, Christopher Fisher, Founder & President of BenefitsAlly, finds companies that are doing unique things that can take employers beyond the traditional method of increased employee responsibility. We discuss the three hallmarks of “intelligent health care solutions”. Chris belie...

ACA and its blizzard of ever-changing regulations has created a challenging environment for even the most proficient advisors. We asked Arthur Tacchino, Chief Innovation Officer & Principal of Sync-Stream Solutions, to discuss those challenges and to examine some of the ways advisors can master and profit from providing their clients with expert and timely advice. Arthur is a lawyer by educati...

Healthcare costs are rising and as we discussed in episode 48, most employers are still using cost shifting as a hedge. Ryan Day, our guest in this episode, believes that a better – and more sustainable – solution is Reference Based Pricing (RBP).  We discuss the growing interest in reference based pricing and how it can put a serious dent in health care costs in the post-ACA environment. Ryan is...

Today, we discuss the crossover between the often separate worlds of property and casualty and employee benefits. Our guest Frank Pennachio is partner & co-founder of Oceanus Partners. Frank believes that the overlap in these two areas provides some challenges for employers and opportunities for advisors who can bridge the gap. In this wide-ranging discussion, we begin by exploring workers com...

A recent survey provided a glimpse into what employers want from their benefit advisors. The results offer a roadmap for savvy advisors to tailor their services to match up to those market expectations. What tools and techniques are needed to bridge that gap? That’s the question we asked Michelle Jackson, Senior Product Director at Zywave. Michelle is a subject matter expert whose role at her comp...

On this episode of ShiftShapers , we are stepping out of the realm of employee benefits, insurance and financial planning to discuss the ultimate differentiator for all businesses – customer service. Peter Shankman is the author of a new book, Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabin Fans . As an international consultant, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, corporate speaker, founder...

Today on The ShiftShapers Podcast , the founder and CEO of MiEdge, Mark Smith, returns to the show to continue our conversation about Big Data. In this episode, Mark focuses on the use of retirement plan data to create opportunities and deliver value to prospects and clients. Mark describes new ways that benefit advisors can easily visualize potential prospect relationships from massive amounts of...

For many advisors, revenue is down and client expectations are up. The good news is that there are creative ways to become more productive while also delivering a higher level of service to your clients. On this episode of ShiftShapers Podcast , we invited Julian Lago, Sr. VP of CareOne Advocates to discuss those post-ACA dual challenges. As Regional VP for NAHU, Julian travels extensively and hea...

On this episode of ShiftShapers podcast, we’re excited to have David Lindsey, founder and CEO of MyHealthPass. David has been in the health insurance field for over 30 years and has been an industry pioneer and a leader in the field of telemedicine. We invited David to talk about the history of telemedicine and how ACA has accelerated the need for advisors to understand this area and be able to di...

Our guest on today’s program is Thomas O’Connor, M.D., a Connecticut internist who believes that ACA is the driving force behind the unprecedented growth in the Concierge Medicine practice model. A second-career doctor, Tom originally decided to become a traditional primary care physician. As he focused on building a practice that offered more personalized care, he inadvertently became a pioneer i...

When your client is diagnosed with a critical illness, will they have ready access to a lump sum of money needed to cover the ever-increasing personal responsibility of their benefit plan? How would you advise them to pay for costs that aren’t covered by their medical coverage? Critical Illness (CI) insurance offers a solution. In this episode, subject matter expert Ken Smith helps us to understan...

On previous episodes we’ve talked about the different tools and pieces of technology that advisors can use in their practices. But, according to a study conducted by this week’s guest, before we deploy the tools we need to assure that our strategies and tactics are aligned with the four basic types of employers. Today, we welcome Eric Rentsch, Founder and CEO of CodeSixFour, an online resource cen...

In today’s on-demand market, clients are looking for progressively faster solutions to their problems. So how do we, as benefit advisors, keep up with the times? Our guest on this episode has just the solution. Ryan Pinney is VP of Sales & Marketing at Pinney Insurance Center. He is an innovator and expert at using technology to drive insurance business and shorten sale cycles. We invited Ryan...

Advisors doing more and earning less need new tools to deal with today’s benefits environment. Unfortunately, according to our guest, our industry is behind the curve in the convergence of market change and technology. Michael Lujan President and Co-founder of LimeLight Health and is also serving as President-elect of the California Association of Health Underwriters. Michael, a long time technolo...

In this episode we are speaking with Chris Hobbs, CFO at MediBid. As a Canadian who immigrated to the United States, Chris brings an interesting perspective on healthcare delivery – mainly the payment for healthcare. He believes that the Traditional PPO model is broken and that consumers need to know more than whether or not their provider is in-network before making provider and treatment choices...

Today on ShiftShapers podcast, we welcome Peter Schaub, president and CEO of NeoCertified. Peter is our go-to subject matter expert for learning about email encryption and security solutions. With the news of last week’s hack attack on Sony it is a great time for your practice to take some simple steps that secure your email communications. We discuss the tools and techniques used by all sizes of...

On this episode of ShiftShapers podcast, we’re very excited to welcome Tobe Gerard, the owner of Tobe Gerard Insurance. After 20 years in the industry she started her own agency, deciding to specialize exclusively in long-term care insurance. For the past 15 years she has been doing just that, but with a few unique practice parameters that have made the agency highly efficient, effective and succe...

On this episode of ShiftShapers podcast, we welcome Craig Scurato, founder and managing member at Simplifi Benefits. Post ACA, Craig has crafted some tools and techniques that make the process of writing group insurance a lot less painful for employers. Included in his strategy is a unique approach to crafting and deploying direct pay primary care networks by working with physicians eager to find...