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Creating connections is essential to building a community. It’s even more important when the people you’re trying to connect with aren’t in the same location. Businesses and companies have always found geographic distance to be a challenge to building a really great community-oriented culture. At Empowered Ventures, the same challenge holds true, which is why we decided to start Empowered Owners, the podcast that takes you inside Empowered Ventures.
In each episode, CEO Chris Fredericks will have a discussion with one of our employees to discover and highlight their distinct personalities, perspectives, and skills while also keeping you in the loop with exclusive news, updates on company performance, and a glimpse into the future plans of Empowered Ventures. Not only is this an opportunity for Chris to learn more about our amazing employee-owners, but it’s also an opportunity for you to hear regularly from Chris and others from within Empowered Ventures.
00;00;00;11 - 00;00;29;03
Chris Fredericks
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Empowered Owners, the community Building Podcast by and for the employee owners of Empowered Ventures. Join us as we take you inside the world of employee ownership, discovering the stories, insights, and sometimes surprising adventures in a family of businesses where everyone's an owner. Now let's dive in. I'm excited to be joined again by Kim Dinwiddie, my colleague here at Empowered Ventures who heads up HR for our enterprise.
00;00;29;03 - 00;00;45;06
Chris Fredericks
And Kim, there's been a lot of fun and interesting work with you. And we have been doing in the health care space. We have kind of a general program we call health care for us. So why don't we start there? Like, why don't you give our everyone a reminder? What is health care for us?
00;00;45;08 - 00;01;08;25
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah, well, that's actually an exciting thing to talk about because we've had health care for us around that. We've we've been calling it something, but I don't know that we've ever really dug in and said, here's our philosophy. Like here, here are the words, here's a language that we can use to talk about it. So we did recently just walk through and just talk about what does it mean for all of us and what what's our goal in it.
00;01;08;28 - 00;01;35;27
Kim Dinwiddie
And where we landed is our goal is to build a health care approach that is sustainable for our businesses and beneficial for the people. And we have really narrowed in to some priorities on that. And, you know, how does how does each of that those work. And just I think the top two are important to to just touch on a little bit, to be better stewards of health care and empower people to become better health care consumers.
00;01;36;00 - 00;01;43;10
Kim Dinwiddie
Because those are the really the two pronged approaches that touch on that sustainability for the businesses and, and all of our employee owners.
00;01;43;17 - 00;02;04;09
Chris Fredericks
Yeah, I love it. I love where, where it landed. It starts with an end, which is like you know, I think it's a really important thing to highlight is like, we're not saying we're not focused on one thing or the other. It's we care deeply about both the sustainability of of the plan for the businesses and also for the actual experience and care and health of our folks.
00;02;04;09 - 00;02;09;16
Chris Fredericks
So is that is that kind of what powers this philosophy for you as well?
00;02;09;19 - 00;02;31;18
Kim Dinwiddie
It is, and I think it's also important that we aren't too specific because health care changes, you know, whether it's just the industry or how we approach it, what tools and resources we have. And so it's important to be able to pivot when we need to. And if we're too specific in our approach, then we're kind of inside a box.
00;02;31;18 - 00;02;39;09
Kim Dinwiddie
And that's something I think definitely we don't want to be in. Yeah. You know, especially to to meet our priorities and our goals on the.
00;02;39;11 - 00;02;39;22
Chris Fredericks
Yeah.
00;02;39;29 - 00;02;40;27
Kim Dinwiddie
The platform.
00;02;40;29 - 00;03;01;25
Chris Fredericks
Makes sense. Yeah. So last time I think we talked we, we had already kicked off health care for us. I mean, maybe you had shared at the time that we were in the middle of kind of doing an RFP with like our providers and the people that who help us manage the our health benefits and stuff. And also, I think you had done a fair amount of we we asked for the input from everybody.
00;03;01;25 - 00;03;14;06
Chris Fredericks
I think we've done some surveying and gathered some insights from everybody. What has happened since then? Any big changes, anything to note over the last period of time? You know, since we last spoke?
00;03;14;08 - 00;03;35;02
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah. So one thing that did not change is that we stayed with our strategic partner, LHD. They've been with us for a few years and but it was, I will say like a reset conversation probably of like, okay, here's here's what our thoughts are on health care, where we think we're headed. And to make sure that we had that strong partner with us.
00;03;35;02 - 00;03;49;20
Kim Dinwiddie
And we ended up staying with LHD. And I feel like that that was a good decision to make. And the other thing, major thing I think that we changed was moving to self-funded. So I'll give a little bit of detail. What what what.
00;03;49;20 - 00;03;51;12
Chris Fredericks
Does that mean.
00;03;51;15 - 00;04;12;12
Kim Dinwiddie
So self-funding. Let me back up. Previously we were in an environment or a funding environment where we just paid a premium, much like if you had car insurance. Yeah. You know how much you're going to pay and you pay it no matter if you've had an accident or not. So our insurance premium, we just played a flat dollar amount.
00;04;12;14 - 00;04;19;19
Kim Dinwiddie
Well now we are self-funded which means we are paying specifically the claims that run through.
00;04;19;20 - 00;04;21;10
Chris Fredericks
So this is from the company level.
00;04;21;10 - 00;04;46;00
Kim Dinwiddie
Just so the company level. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if we are using the insurance, you know, we have those health care dollars, we're spending it. But if we're not well, we're not spending any money. We're not just giving it to our carriers to hold on to, if I guess. Yeah. And I think that if, if we need it now, we are truly paying those dollars that actually come in.
00;04;46;05 - 00;05;05;14
Kim Dinwiddie
But I think it's important to know that we also have what's called stop loss. And that's, we need a safety net. That's kind of how I like to think of it. If there are some really large claims that hit, we do have a specific dollar amount that we are protected against. Meaning we have an insurance policy that will kick in.
00;05;05;16 - 00;05;19;13
Kim Dinwiddie
So, you know, worst case scenario, you have like a $4 million claim or something like that. We have protections in place, but for the most part we are paying dollar for dollar for the claims that occur.
00;05;19;16 - 00;05;20;05
Chris Fredericks
So let's dig.
00;05;20;05 - 00;05;21;04
Kim Dinwiddie
Into the big change. That's a.
00;05;21;04 - 00;05;52;19
Chris Fredericks
Big change. And let's let's spend a little more time unpacking it because I think you you just shared a lot of really interesting and insightful or interesting components of it that were worth digging into a little further. So it's called self-funded. Could also probably be called self insured. Really. Right. So the company is self insuring the plan. But part of that is also that the plan participants, the them then sured the employees, they are continuing to experience it as a similar insurance plan.
00;05;52;20 - 00;05;58;06
Chris Fredericks
So it doesn't really change their direct experience in this in a certain sense. Is that right?
00;05;58;08 - 00;06;19;08
Kim Dinwiddie
That is right. And so people are probably like, well then how do you come up with the amount of money that I have to pay? How much is how do you calculate my premium? And that's something that our broker, helps. Do they have underwriters. So what they do is they run projections and estimate. Okay, here's what plans have looked like over the past 3 or 4 years.
00;06;19;11 - 00;06;51;17
Kim Dinwiddie
And here's what we think they're going to be or potentially could be. The interesting thing is though, what they also run through that model is that we'll talk about this in a minute. But when you change a carrier, well, they have different discounts and pricing. And so they run that through their model too. So you're truly doing a premium equivalent rate for the all our employee owners based on what our usage has been, but also based on what our current partner or carrier pricing levels are.
00;06;51;19 - 00;07;20;23
Chris Fredericks
Yeah. Yeah. So this gets really into some health care so deep and interesting and so many tentacles. But so the carrier being like, you know, Cigna or anthem or whoever. Really I think and I'm really a layman in the previous environment where we were fully insured, not self-insured, or mostly fully insured, pretty much the carrier provides a few different kind of services, really.
00;07;20;23 - 00;07;49;26
Chris Fredericks
They're providing they're kind of providing the insurance part, which is like if we'll cover anything that's over and above what you're paying us, like we pay them a premium and then if the costs are higher as well, that's the insurance company's problem essentially. That's one thing they do. But the other thing they do that is kind of not the same thing is they have this network of how do they approach pricing with all these, you know, health care providers.
00;07;49;26 - 00;08;05;27
Chris Fredericks
And so it may sound weird to folks like, well, why are you even working with a carrier if, if you don't need it, if you're self insuring. But so they're they're still giving us we're still using their a different service that a carrier provides not the insurance part. Is that right.
00;08;05;29 - 00;08;29;26
Kim Dinwiddie
That is right. So each carrier has discounted pricing. So they negotiate prices with providers. And a provider could have one amount that they've negotiated with, Cigna and another amount that they've negotiated with an anthem which is it's always been interesting to me, but that's that's how it works. And so we use the network in order to get their discount pricing essentially.
00;08;30;01 - 00;08;41;12
Chris Fredericks
Yeah. So that's why our folks still and you can maybe just mention like who are carrier is, but they still get a card and it's they still have the same experience because we're still using that that network essentially.
00;08;41;15 - 00;08;56;18
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah. So that's where it gets a little bit trickier this year too because going self-funded let's see. Let's start with the network first. So the network that we essentially you rent into or buy into is UnitedHealthCare.
00;08;56;23 - 00;09;00;10
Chris Fredericks
Yeah. So we switch from Cigna to United basically.
00;09;00;13 - 00;09;14;03
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah. But we have a third party administrator and that's really So that's the name that you see on your card. And you use their website and everything. But so you is the one that processes the claims.
00;09;14;06 - 00;09;38;09
Chris Fredericks
So you'll hear people will hear a TPA and that's third party administrator. They're doing the, the accounting really the bookkeeping for all the claims and everything. And in our case now we're we're working with them for that, with Umar, for that. But we're renting the United Network for the pricing and everything. Whereas previously Cigna did both segmented.
00;09;38;09 - 00;09;49;01
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah, both. But then there's also I mentioned early on the stop loss that safety net that we have. Yeah. So we have that through sun life. So that's another
00;09;49;03 - 00;10;08;13
Chris Fredericks
Which folks don't need to know are using. But it's probably good for them to know. I mean it's it's we've put a lot of thought into how we kind of structure the plan. And it's not us. It's I mean, it is us, but we're getting help to figure all this out. Yeah, but a lot of thought has been put in to kind of create our own self-funded approach.
00;10;08;13 - 00;10;21;17
Chris Fredericks
Correct. Because. And how would you describe I, I, we talked about this analogy at one point. I mean really we've taken, we've shifted from being in the back seat to being in the, in the driver's seat in many ways. And this is a big result of that. Ultimately.
00;10;21;20 - 00;10;48;13
Kim Dinwiddie
It really is. Yeah. Because before everything was really bundled with Cigna, Cigna, we gave Cigna our money. And you know they they did the third party administration of it. They did their you had their own prescription benefit manager and they had their own stop loss carrier. So truly everything was really run through Cigna. Well part of going self-funding, part of moving into the driver's seat was taking that apart, unbundling it all.
00;10;48;15 - 00;11;05;25
Kim Dinwiddie
So that way we can pick and choose who are the right partners for us. And so even our the pharmacy now that's through true our x so someone totally different also another one. So the unbundling piece is not everyone who goes self-funded does that.
00;11;05;28 - 00;11;13;18
Kim Dinwiddie
But in order to pick the best partners, I personally think you want to unbundle as much as you can the smart.
00;11;13;18 - 00;11;20;25
Chris Fredericks
What is some of the other benefits of how of going this approach other than being able to pick your different, different partners?
00;11;20;27 - 00;11;44;02
Kim Dinwiddie
Well, some of the cool things you can do an ad, you can do add ons. So right now we have what's called Teladoc. That's a pretty big new thing this year. You can get great quality care, and it cost our employee owner $0 out of their pocket. So the company also saves money though on those cost. Yeah. Reason being, whenever you do that that is a cheaper fee.
00;11;44;02 - 00;12;02;00
Kim Dinwiddie
We'll call it. Then maybe you're going to go to urgent care or an emergency room. And so Teladoc adding on some of these, I guess we'll call them just additions to the plan, is something that you have the flexibility to do when you start unbundling and you are in the driver's seat.
00;12;02;03 - 00;12;20;00
Chris Fredericks
That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, I can imagine Teladoc could be pretty significant in a given situation. Like if someone I'm thinking of a parent who's stuck at home with a bunch of kids and one of them gets sick and it's like, do I have to pile them on the car? And like, yeah, I mean, a true challenging situation to deal with.
00;12;20;00 - 00;12;27;07
Chris Fredericks
And yeah, this sounds like it could be a lot easier to get some help. A real doctor, you know, right there on on the computer maybe.
00;12;27;08 - 00;12;48;03
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah, it could be Saturday morning, 2 a.m., you know, what are you going to do? And also the great thing is that the Teladoc that experience, they'll share any notes of your visit with your primary care physician. Wow. If you have one, they can call in prescriptions. I think an A really added benefit is they also do mental health visits.
00;12;48;03 - 00;13;10;13
Kim Dinwiddie
That's great. Rheumatology. And so it's like a FaceTime. So if you have a rash and you're like what is happening? You could you just yeah go through the app and you're able to utilize that. So a lot of different resources. And if it's something they can't, you know, help you with, they'll obviously be like, you know, you need to either schedule an appointment with your own, physician or go to urgent care.
00;13;10;13 - 00;13;34;08
Chris Fredericks
Yeah, it's a peace of mind to some degree. Like do should I go to the the ER the emergent care right now. Is this a serious issue or is it is this something that I can wait till I can get into the doctor or whatever. So. Yeah. Super smart. What else. What else are you excited about with the the new approach and any other other benefits you're seeing for either the company or for, you know, the, the, the beneficiaries of the plan.
00;13;34;10 - 00;14;00;13
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah. I'll say I think for the beneficiaries of the plan, I think the customer service, I think the level of customer service that folks are able to get now is a lot better than it was before. I'll also say just from like the administrative side. So probably some of our HR folks out there, they can actually call and talk to someone at Umar, Cigna, it was just a customer service 800 number.
00;14;00;13 - 00;14;02;26
Kim Dinwiddie
We now have dedicated reps that know our plan.
00;14;02;28 - 00;14;07;08
Chris Fredericks
Come out of Cigna, leave us alone. But you know yeah.
00;14;07;11 - 00;14;25;06
Kim Dinwiddie
So we have you know we have people we have those resources. So that's on that side of it. Yeah. From the company's perspective, we have access now that we haven't had before. That I can see, you know before I would say that we would be talking about the plan, what changes to make. We were just guessing.
00;14;25;08 - 00;14;49;19
Kim Dinwiddie
I like change of vision, just a dartboard. And we were throwing darts and hoping it lands. Well. Well now we know if they are you know we can look and say okay, these prescriptions, there's a bundle of these prescriptions being filled at a higher cost pharmacy than a lower cost pharmacy. Yeah. Well, how that's important to us is because then we can just push back communication and education so people know.
00;14;49;26 - 00;15;06;11
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah. And also we just know, you know, maybe there were 30 emergency room visits that occurred that weren't necessarily critical and needed to be done. Okay. What we need to push out some education and information on how to choose when to use it.
00;15;06;14 - 00;15;16;02
Chris Fredericks
So to your point earlier about being able to provide the right kind of education to to help people become even better consumers of of this product.
00;15;16;07 - 00;15;33;03
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah, yeah. Because you don't know what you don't know. And especially when it's health care that time is sensitive and urgent. Typically you just do what you've always done. So pushing out that education just lets people know, oh, there are options now. And what are those options?
00;15;33;05 - 00;15;50;02
Chris Fredericks
Yeah. It's exciting. Honestly this is a big change. And it is really it's neat to see it come to fruition after some we've talked about it a couple of years, but yeah, hopefully as employee owners, how do you feel like everyone should feel about kind of the fact that we're in the driver's seat now?
00;15;50;05 - 00;16;12;02
Kim Dinwiddie
I, I'm hoping that they understand that they're in the driver's seat with us. This isn't just us at that every level doing this, we need that communication. We need to know what the experience is like. The exciting thing is, I think people are sharing that now with me and the others. H.R. Mainly at their companies, but we're all in the driver's seat together.
00;16;12;02 - 00;16;34;07
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah. And we need that constant communication just to know. Hey, do you have ideas? Have you heard of another group doing something that you're intrigued by? Share it with us. Yeah. Did you have a fantastic experience you'd like to share? I always like to throw that down because usually we only hear the bad ones. But, But I actually have been hearing some really good.
00;16;34;09 - 00;16;55;04
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah, stories about things too, though, too. But I think that as employee owners to know we're all in the driver's seat together. And I think before I had always said like health care was something that was done to us. And I'm hoping people are seeing okay, it's not that way we actually can affect this in a positive way.
00;16;55;11 - 00;17;06;29
Chris Fredericks
Yeah. That's amazing. What do you think in terms of how where we go from here, like this effort, this health care for us effort now that we've made a couple big changes, what do you see going forward?
00;17;07;01 - 00;17;27;21
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah. Well, I think first of all, it is a multi-year effort. I think people are like, okay, well we made a change. We're done. No it's not it's going to be an ongoing and really, when the hope whenever you move to self-funding self-insured, you have some good years and we're able to stabilize those premium increases. I mean, that's obviously the goal.
00;17;27;23 - 00;17;51;18
Kim Dinwiddie
And, offer great coverage for people, whatever they're looking for. So I think that's important to note, but also that we're constantly talking about it. You know, we just had our first strategy conversation for renewal. And it's just, you know, we just finished the first quarter of the calendar year, but there's some interesting initiatives out there. I think that could be potentials.
00;17;51;18 - 00;18;11;04
Kim Dinwiddie
And that's on our radar. And we're talking about it. And so I think that's what's important to know. It's a constant conversation that happens all year long. And I have to say, I think that's unique for us because I think sometimes people will meet around summer time to start talking about renewals, and at that point be looking like, oh, what's the plan been doing?
00;18;11;06 - 00;18;28;16
Kim Dinwiddie
Well, we're looking at what the plan has been doing every month. Like we're just taking a look and so we can pivot when we need to. Yeah. But always on the lookout for those, you know, just unique partnerships that may break away from that traditional environment that we're currently in.
00;18;28;18 - 00;18;51;21
Chris Fredericks
Yeah. That's exciting. So yeah, we're I mean really we're in a very different way than in the past. We're really monitoring kind of what a lot of the others are doing, what experiments even that are happening out there that might not be ready for prime time, but maybe when some, some approach is ready for prime time, like we'll be positioned to kind of adopted if we feel like it's going to benefit our, our team.
00;18;51;21 - 00;18;53;12
Chris Fredericks
So that's exciting.
00;18;53;14 - 00;19;09;16
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah, it is an exciting team. And I think it's also good to know that, you know, we'll also we're also keeping an eye out on maybe some people are starting to do something, but there could be some regulations that we know are going to be coming up with. Those are things we're not going to put in place and have to take away.
00;19;09;18 - 00;19;13;11
Kim Dinwiddie
So there's there's a lot of different angles that we we look at health care.
00;19;13;18 - 00;19;19;13
Chris Fredericks
Yeah that's exciting. All right Kim well anything else you'd want to share before we call it an episode?
00;19;19;18 - 00;19;35;28
Kim Dinwiddie
Yeah, I do just think it's all about communication. And as people, you know, are starting to think more hopefully about health care. Just share experiences. If you know, again, if you're getting a handwritten note, as one of our folks did from Trex.
00;19;35;28 - 00;19;36;29
Chris Fredericks
Yeah that's amazing.
00;19;36;29 - 00;19;41;11
Kim Dinwiddie
Find out about that and share share those positive experiences.
00;19;41;14 - 00;19;49;09
Chris Fredericks
Yeah. So reach out to you Kim. Should they just be great. You okay with that? That's okay. And your emails Kim at Empower Dot ventures.
00;19;49;09 - 00;19;50;20
Kim Dinwiddie
Right it is.
00;19;50;21 - 00;20;02;09
Chris Fredericks
Yeah. Okay. Well thank you so much, Kim, for coming on empowered owners and to talk about health care. I think you made it super interesting and fun topic which is not easy to do. So great job that.
00;20;02;11 - 00;20;03;11
Kim Dinwiddie
Thank you.
00;20;03;14 - 00;20;03;29
Chris Fredericks
Thanks again.