Education, communication and collaboration

If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know there is a new era of solutions taking hold in the industry. If you haven’t been paying attention, well, you need to get up to speed, and fast:

Direct primary care – Contracting with a primary care physician outside of a network arrangement.

Transparent medical market – One fixed, all-in cost covers all of the care needed for services ranging from specific conditions to specific treatments.

Reference-based pricing – Pretend discounts are replaced with an approach that starts at a base price and adds in a reasonable profit for the provider.

Partial self-funding – This old idea gets to the root of how insurance should work: a financial safety net, not the first-dollar benefits we have come to expect.

Through a combination of these types of solutions, employers are enjoying unprecedented results. We are on the cusp of addressing one of the most challenging issues facing our country and economy today.

Related: Young brokers get to the heart of the issues facing today’s industry

For you to play your role, you will have to commit to education, communication, and collaboration at levels you’ve likely never been challenged to do before.

Education

When you think about everything you need to learn in order to bring these new strategies to your clients, it can be a bit intimidating. But you’ve already proven your ability to take on a task like this.

Think back 10 years and imagine someone had told you that you were going to have to study a 15,000-page piece of legislation and know it well enough to counsel clients.

Then ACA came along and you knew you had no choice. You knew your clients were going to depend on you; you knew your survival depended on your ability to deliver that advice and counsel. The situation with these creative solutions and strategies is no different.

Communication

In order to successfully integrate these solutions/strategies into your value proposition, you are going to have to build them into every aspect of agency operations.

Obviously, you need to build them into your sales conversation. But you have to first build them into your marketing. To effectively prepare prospects/clients for these ideas, they must be a focal point on your website. You have to be writing about them regularly, sharing on social media and participating in discussions.

Collaboration

For us to have the critical mass of direct-contract providers these solutions require, providers of care will have to collaborate with one another to create the framework. You are going to have to collaborate, too, with other advisors. I believe in healthy competition; it makes us stronger. But to ensure you are tapped into your creative side, you have to push through discomfort that might keep you from collaborating.

The future of this industry is anything but assured. We have to first do the hard work, together, in order to ensure it survives. With a newfound stability, we can focus on increased levels of success.

When we collaborate for the greater good, it’s like the rising tide that raises all ships. We all win.

Are you in?