PRESS RELEASE – Women of Self Insurance, Celebrates Successful Launch
KENNESAW, GA – Women of Self Insurance (WSI) officially launched the first-ever women’s initiate for the self-funding insurance industry. The Be Inspired! Networking & Launch Event was held during the SIIA National Educational Conference on September 24, 2018 welcoming a wonderful gathering of women and men, with memento keys in hand, to “unlock the possibilities” for women in the industry.
The launch event included food, mingling, an engaging presentation, raffle prizes and a wonderful panel discussion featuring Dr. Stacy Borans, Founder/Chief Medical Officer, Advanced Medical Strategies; Denise Doyle, President, Stop Loss Insurance Brokers; Heather Wilson, Chief Operating Officer, Health Moxy and Beata Madey, Senior Vice President, Accident & Health, Tokio Marine HCC.
These women shared inspiration and insight into their journey as leaders in the industry. Co-founders Patricia Harrington and Tanya Bolden were overjoyed to receive such incredible participation and support to move the mission and goals of WSI forward within the industry.
The event would not have been possible without the wonderful sponsorship of 11 outstanding companies: 6 Degrees Health, DC Risk Solutions, Golden Triangle, Health Moxy, Health Payer Consortium, Law Office of Bryan B. Davenport, P.C., Medliminal, NBAS, Penfield, Tokio Marine HCC and Zelis.
About Women of Self Insurance (WSI)
The goal of WSI is to provide a platform for women in the self-funding insurance industry to network, recognize achievement, encourage professional growth, share industry education, champion change, participate in conference events and expand presence within the industry. WSI is a stand-alone initiative that is not associated with any specific company. Their mission is to support the advancement of women throughout the industry. Their goal of inclusivity is to encourage women and men alike to take part and work side-by-side on behalf of advancement and betterment of the industry.
If you would like more information or to learn ways in which you can be a part of WSI, please email to [email protected] and visit www.womenofselfinsurance.com
PRESS RELEASE – Teladoc Health Launches Teladoc Global Care Services
PURCHASE, NY, September 20, 2018 –Teladoc Health (NYSE: TDOC), the global leader in virtual care, announced today the launch of Teladoc Global Care, the first virtual care offering of its kind to uniquely meet the needs of globally mobile individuals in need of general medical care. The addition of Teladoc Global Care services enables multinational organizations to provide expats and travelers with a single solution for convenient and easy-to-navigate access to quality care, regardless of geographic location.
With more than $1.33 trillion in global business travel spending and more than 66.2 million expatriate workers worldwide, the trend of globally mobile workforces is on the rise. As such, multinational companies are increasingly focused on supporting these employees and their dependents to assure engagement, retention and productivity, with better access to healthcare an increasingly important consideration.
“Navigating an unfamiliar health system while traveling heightens uncertainty and stress for employees and can result in higher costs for plan sponsors,” explained Dan Trencher, senior vice president of product and corporate strategy, Teladoc Health. “With the introduction of Global Care, Teladoc Health is transforming how people access and experience healthcare around the world, and successfully accelerating the pace of innovation with truly differentiated virtual care offerings.”
Delivered within the Teladoc mobile app experience, Global Care makes it easy to talk with a doctor who not only speaks the individual’s language, but has the experience and training to listen to the unique health situation with cultural sensitivity and guide the individual through the local health system as needed. The 24×7, non-emergency service can be utilized worldwide and care is delivered in more than 20 languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Hungarian, Polish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Malay, Hindi, Japanese and Arabic.
“Regardless of their location, when an individual is seeking care for themselves or for a family member, they need to have complete confidence in the medical decisions being made,” said Lew Levy, chief medical officer, Teladoc Health. “With our global physician network, Teladoc Health can uniquely provide the comfort and clinical expertise for members whether they are home or thousands of miles away from home. We’re reducing stress, we’re lowering costs, and we’re improving care around the globe.”
Teladoc Global Care is now commercially available for large multinational employers and insurers.
For more information, click here.
About Teladoc Health
A mission-driven organization, Teladoc Health, Inc. is successfully transforming how people access and experience healthcare, with a focus on high quality, lower costs, and improved outcomes around the world. The company’s award-winning, integrated clinical solutions are inclusive of telehealth, expert medical services, AI and analytics, and licensable platform services. With more than 2,000 employees, the organization delivers care in 125 countries and in more than 20 languages, partnering with employers, hospitals and health systems, and insurers to transform care delivery. For more information, please visit www.teladochealth.com or follow @TeladocHealth on Twitter.
Jack Stoddard Tapped to be COO of Amazon-Berkshire-JP Morgan Health Venture
By: Heather Landi
Healthcare-Informatics.com – The still-unnamed health venture being launched by Amazon, JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has hired healthcare executive Jack Stoddard as its chief operating officer.
According to a statement from the health venture, Stoddard started his new role on Tuesday. Stoddard will work with Atul Gawande, M.D., a well-known surgeon, writer and public health innovator, who was named CEO of the initiative back in June. Gawande practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. He is also the founding executive director of the health systems innovation center, Ariadne Labs.
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced Jan. 30 that they were launching an initiative to improve satisfaction and reduce costs for their companies’ employees. “The three companies, which bring their scale and complementary expertise to this long-term effort, will pursue this objective through an independent company that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints. The initial focus of the new company will be on technology solutions that will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost,” the companies said in the announcement.
The news of Stoddard’s hiring as COO was first reported by CNBC on Tuesday. The healthcare executive most recently served as general manager for digital health at Comcast. He also was on the founding team of Accolade, a Comcast Ventures and Accretive-backed health technology and services company. He also was an executive at UnitedHealth Group for three years where he worked on the Optum unit.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Stoddard is a “senior operating leader with over two decades of experience applying technology, data, science, people, and design thinking to improve the healthcare consumer experience, elevate clinical quality and lower the total cost of care. He has proven leadership experience in understanding the market, setting growth strategy, and scaling transformational healthcare companies, including: Accolade, Optum, Health Dialog, and The Advisory Board.”
Stoddard is involved with a number of digital health startups, including serving on the board of directors at NovaSom, a health technology and services business moving care to the home and Carrot Inc., a digital health company backed by Khosla Ventures focused on smoking cessation. He also serves as an advisor for BehaveCare, a technology-enabled services company partnering with Medicaid managed care organizations to improved outcomes and reduce costs.
As noted by Politico, citing an August 31 New York Times article, Stoddard’s previous employer, Comcast, is one company that has made progress in reinventing health benefits and the company reports it has kept health care costs flat for the past five years. Comcast’s low growth in health care costs is due, in part, to its work with digital health startups and the company’s ability to leverage technology, according to the New York Times article.
According to a Bloomberg article, the leaders of the three companies have warned it will take time for the effort to meet its goal of improving care for their workers.
“We’re not in a hurry,” Berkshire Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffett said in an interview last week on Bloomberg TV, the article stated. “We’d like to be in a hurry but we’re not going to try and do something faster than it can be done.”
To view the original article, click here.
CMS: Innovative new payment models are coming – and some will be mandatory
By: Susan Morse
HealthcareFinanceNews.com – In the ongoing push toward value-based care and reducing costs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will be releasing new payment models, according to CMS Administrator Seema Verma.
“You’re going to see more models from us,” Verma said during a meeting of the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee meeting this month.
Some may even be mandatory, according to Alex Azar, secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services.
“We need strategies and models that provide better care at a lower price, not just new models for the sake of new models and not
new systems of payment for old systems that aren’t open to real change,” Azar said at PTAC. “In some cases that’s going to mean mandatory models from CMMI and other mandatory reforms.”
To view the original article, click here.
Activist employers are a ‘wake-up call’ for the next generation of insurers
By: Evan Sweeney
FierceHealthcare.com– With two monster vertical healthcare mergers nearing completion, the next generation of managed care companies is likely to face increased pressure from self-funded employers looking to bend the cost curve on their own.
The potential for large, self-insured employers and new employer coalitions to cut into the profits of insurers should be a “wake-up call” for organizations like CVS-Aetna, Cigna-Express Scripts, UnitedHealth and Humana, Leerink analysts Ana Gupte, Ph.D., and Daniel Grosslight wrote (PDF) in a note to investors Friday.
To view the original article, click here.