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This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast, and we are recording live at the
payer issues roundtable.
I'm joined right now by Harlan Pickett. He
was the president of Eagle Care Health Solutions.
Harlan, thanks for being here. We'd love to
have you briefly introduce yourself to start us
off. Absolutely. It is my pleasure to be
here. It has been an absolutely extraordinary event
thus far.
Once again, my name is Harlan Pickett. I
am the founder and president of Eagle Care
Health Solutions.
We are a disruptor, I guess, is the
best way to say it. Innovative in the
way that we build plans for employers
and, in some cases, individuals
that really are outside the norm and provide
people, crazy enough, Grace,
0
cost
health care.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for being here. Excited
to hear more about this.
Let's start our conversation
though with growth goals. So from improving member
experience and expanding value based care to controlling
costs, payer executives have ambitious growth goals for
the rest of the year and looking into
2025.
So in your role, what is your top
priority, and how are you planning to get
there?
It's very interesting to think about growth goals
from our perspective because
we have to meet folks where they are.
And not everyone is ready to embrace
some of the
different things that we do. So we meet
them where they are. And that starts with
a
crazy innovative thing called asking the employer what
your benefits
should look like. What would you like? We
even talk to the employees
and ask them what is important to them.
And
that's part of our growth model because it
helps us better understand
the folks we're working with.
And we do have growth goals, but it's
interesting enough, it's more about
adding the right fit.
We will turn folks away because they're not
ready or we will
even introduce them to other folks and say,
Hey, you know what? I know someone over
at Scentivo.
You might be a better fit for Scentivo
right now. We'd love to stay in contact
with you, collect some data and see if
we can help you in the future.
But
the growth that we focus on
is a growth of people having better access
to health care.
Sometimes that means that EagleCare is a solution.
Sometimes that means something else is a solution.
But if we give them better access to
health care, then our growth
model has been achieved.
Absolutely.
And going off of that at an industry
level, how would you describe the biggest barriers
to effectively serving and engaging your members?
What opportunities do you see for large scale
improvements, and how are you implementing that in
your current strategy? Yeah. That that's a interesting
question because we face a very
strange barrier. And that is,
what do you mean
that the plan is
30% less than what I have right now,
but all of the health care is free
to the employees?
That's not possible. It sounds too good to
be true. What's the catch?
Why haven't I heard this before?
It's a very interesting thing to have to
discuss with someone. Right? The first thing they
think of is, okay, well, this must be
some type of HMO model where there's all
these hoops you gotta jump through to get
any care. So it's not really anything different.
But you have to explain to them what
we're really doing, the steps that we're taking
to provide access to healthcare. And once you
really are able to get down and explain
to them what's happening, and you kinda remove
that
this is a term that I heard recently
that I really like. You remove that reek
of gatekeeper
from them because that's a terrifying thing for
people. Oh, I can't do anything without a
gatekeeper. When you remove that
and they see that what you're really doing
is value
and evidence based medicine and providing
true access to health care, reestablishing
that
doctor patient relationship
and what's possible there,
that changes the game. And the light switches
and especially if you're talking to people in
my generation, a little bit older, they're like,
you mean, like, back when I was a
kid? You mean back to kind of access
to care we had when you get caught
up the phone and actually talk to your
doctor?
That that care right there. That's what we're
bringing back. Wonderful.
And shifting gears just slightly toward,
advice that you have for leadership.
Keeping pace in today's dynamic health care landscape
is challenging. So I'd love to know what
advice you would share with peer leaders who
are looking to grow businesses while keeping members
top of mind. Yeah.
The member experience
and the focus on the member. Yeah. Too
many times,
I think our plans
get misaligned.
Our senate our incentives are not aligned. If
your plan is not aligned on the member
experience and the member access to health care,
then your members are probably not going to
be happy in the future. I was blessed
to be on a panel about consumerism
during this event. And one of the things
I think that struck me is the fact
of how different people think consumerism is. What
does that look like?
The consumers are expecting
more and more.
As we are deep, deep in this digital
age, they expect to have access to things
on their phone. They expect their wearable devices
to let them know if their blood pressure
is up or if, their little monitor is
telling them that their blood sugar is up
or down or all of those things. They
expect to have access to all this. So
if we're not incorporating these things or at
least preparing
to incorporate these things in our health plans,
we're gonna be falling behind. And someone else
is gonna take that place.
And good luck surviving those times whenever you're
not ready. And we're really not even talking
about AI here. I mean, that's a whole
another ballgame. We could go down that pathway
on the AI. But you've got to embrace
these things.
At least start the process now.
Because if you don't, you're gonna be so
far behind by the time
you look up and say,
it's too late. And I wanted to make
a little side note there because I think
this is funny. This is something that I
had to personally deal with.
I grew up in the Terminator age. And
so everything with AI is a Terminator. Right?
So I've gotta get over my fear of
the Terminator so that I can embrace AI.
It's it's kind of a funny little thing.
I've had a few talks about that, that
it is a different thing from our generation
to because AI has a different thing than,
say, someone in your generation
that the Terminator movies were gonna be terrible
by then.
So I like that analogy.
Well, as we are wrapping up our conversation
today, are there any closing remarks remarks you'd
like to share on the podcast?
I really would. I I think that there
is a lot of things that people can
do,
but
telemedicine is something
that I I love and hate. I mean,
I'm gonna tell you I love it because
I think it gives some accessibility to people
that don't have it. But I will tell
you, this is a very interesting thing that
dynamic me. And I wanna share this because
I think it's very important to get this
out. Behavioral health has become such a big
deal. Right? So no one debates that. It's
become big, big issue, behavioral health.
But we expect that having a virtual
or a tele
counseling service is going to be easy or
accessible for some people.
I will say that it's not. There are
people in some cases, it may be an
unsafe place to have that conversation, even if
it's digital,
even if it is
voice.
And if you don't provide them a place,
you can still have that digital. But if
you don't provide them a
place to have that conversation,
there's no chance that they'll have it and
there's no chance they're going to get better
grace.
We offer one of the things we offer
is in office, in primary care office
access to that even if it's digital. You
can speak to a psychiatrist
under the guise
of a primary care visit because it can
be in a clinical setting without someone knowing
you're talking to that kind of physician because
that person may not want you to be
there.
So it's just opening up those opportunities and
meeting clients in a position where they can
actually share
what's happening with them and feel comfortable doing
that and not have the fear of the
repercussions that could happen. Because behavioral health, I
mean, it it's it's a big deal, and
we need to make sure that we're taking
care of folks.
Absolutely. Well, thank you for sharing your insights
today on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. Again, we
are live at the 2024 fall payer issues
roundtable.