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Chuck Slater's customers want more from him. His vendors do, too. And it doesn't look like it's going to get easier any time soon.
The president of 2,000-employee Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Ohio faces new entries in the health insurance marketplace using cutthroat pricing to get a foothold and competition from the very hospitals and doctors that are service providers to his health plans. On the other side, his customers want more in exchange for the ever-increasing premium dollars they're doling out.
Stater isn't facing much that his counterparts at other health plans aren't confronting; the difference is that instead of simply relying on grabbing membership, Anthem is using innovative methods to control costs, especially among its most costly cases. While Slater sees a place and potential for costparing schemes such as health savings accounts and high-deductible plans, they're no panacea, he says.
"There's more to it than offering high-deductible health plans and giving people options and educating them," Slater says. "There's a whole segment of very, very sick people you're not going to reach with those things."
He says helping the sickest members - many of whom have chronic conditions - control their illnesses can reduce overall costs more effectively. Far from a pie-in-the-sky proposal, Anthem has demonstrated that intensive case management efforts and other measures can, indeed, reduce costs while delivering quality care.
Slater spoke with Smart Business about being in the market for the long haul, where the costs are and the opportunities to reduce them, and the tough choices ahead.
Q: How do you manage an organization that interfaces with customers and providers of every size?
I pay a lot of attention to the people and the numbers. At my level, I can't sit in on every meeting, I can't make every decision, so I spend a lot of time on having a very qualified team of people who report to me.
The difference between our model versus the competitors' is that any decision in the state of Ohio can be made by me. I don't have to go to underwriters in Minneapolis or Hartford or anywhere else.
I have the absolute full authority, where with some of my competitors ... the underwriting is done in another...