Things I learned at the Oliver Wyman Health Insurance Summit
I thought I would share a little about a truly amazing conference from which I have just returned. Given the timing, you’re likely thinking InsureTech Connect which is also a great conference.
But that’s not it.
I had the pleasure to attend the tenth annual Oliver Wyman Health Insurance Summit. It was amazing! The team at Oliver Wyman did a simply incredible job, starting with the venue. Large enough for all the meetings and small enough to be more intimate. Intimate is not a word you would use for InsureTech Connect. The conference essentially took over the entire hotel.
Even more impactful was the attendees. A simply stellar group of people from both the payer (insurer) side and the provider side. The payers were all sizes, from smaller Blues plans, to giant national plans. The providers were as well, including a number of large hospital systems.
Which leads me to the content. Wow. Yes, I used wow in a blog post. I can’t possibly recap all of the conference, but thought I’d share some insightful snippets from a few sessions that I attended.
An early session was A Crisis of Connection led by Lippincott partner Amit Sabharwal. The focus was on the crisis of isolation which was compounded by the pandemic. He shared surprising statistics on how few true connections we all have with others. I admit, it provided a little soul searching for me. We spend so much of our lives making play dates for our kids and going to their soccer games that we often neglect our own interactions.
I’m going to work on that.
Amit shared a particularly startling statistic as well. In 1985, most people had 3 close relationships. Just three. It seems so small.
In 2022, the modal number of close relationships is zero. Think about that. More people had zero connections than any other count.
Yes, zero. That’s shocking to me but maybe unsurprising.
Let me top that, or more accurately, let’s have Amit top that. Establishing an emotional connection, not just a transactional one, results in a 40% improvement in adherence and a 10% reduction in service costs. Think about that in a healthcare environment. What is one of the biggest challenges in helping patients return to health? Adherence. Think of the diabetic that loves ice cream or the heart patient that still smokes. That’s not adherence to a care plan.
Amit was a powerful speaker and really kicked off a string of amazing sessions.
Following Amit was The Changing Basis of Trust presented by Justin Blake, the Executive Director of the Trust Institute. Justin shared a lot of detailed statistics based on interviews with over 36,000 people across 32 countries with a minimum of 1,000 in each country. Yes, 36,000 people.
Let me cut to the chase. People are not trusting. He shared trust levels for four types of organizations: Businesses, Non-government entities (NGO - think non-profits), Government, and the Media. Before he did, I mentally put them in order. My order, for me, was Media, NGO, Business, Government. It felt right. Reputable media sources are trustworthy.
But are not viewed that way. The actual order is Business, NGO, Government, Media.
The government beat the media. Now I suppose I can see that, particularly in the US, given the number of media outlets that are, shall we say, at the extremes, but last place? I won’t go through the entire presentation but one more statistic was shared that is relevant here, but did not come from Justin. It is a quote from Sam Glick, the Oliver Wyman Global Leader for Health and Life Sciences.
One in five people in the world believes that COVID is a hoax. A complete hoax. Didn’t happen.
Kind of a scary thought, isn’t it?
Since you’re still reading, I’ll share one more. The topic was Eliminating AIDS by 2030. Certainly an ambitious goal. In this session, the aforementioned Sam Glick had a conversation with Anne Aslett, the Executive Director of the Elton John AIDS foundation. To give you an idea of their impact, the foundation has raised over half billion dollars for AIDS research. Billion with a B. While the entire conversation was fascinating, there were two nuggets that leaped out at me. The first is that AIDS in the US started out on the coasts. East coast and West coast. That honestly doesn’t surprise me. What did surprise me is that the depth of the AIDS challenge in the US is now in the South. I don’t know if it is a lack of education on the topic, or an unwillingness to seek treatment, or various other reasons, but it is a firestorm that needs to be better addressed.
Which leads me to the next nugget. The foundation has partnered with Walmart. More specifically Walmart’s 18,000 pharmacists. You can now do a HIV screening at the Walmart pharmacy. Think this through. HIV has a stigma associated with it, right or wrong, and many may be wary of getting tested for fear of being exposed. Now they can quietly get tested at their neighborhood Walmart. That’s out of the box thinking at its finest.
I could go on and on. And on. Speaker after speaker. That’s not even counting the people that I met and with whom I connected. What a fantastic opportunity.
As some of you may know, Celent has recently added a dedicated Health practice. What an opportunity this was for me personally, as the leader of that practice.
If this topic resonates with you, please reach out. I’d love to talk to you more.
Tom Scales
Health Practice Lead
Celent
A business of Oliver Wyman