Scott Flannery, CEO, Employer & Individual Plans of Texas & Oklahoma, UnitedHealthcare
In an interview with Invest:, Scott Flannery, CEO, for UnitedHealthcare’s Employer & Individual Plans of Texas and Oklahoma, talked about the opportunities and challenges that population growth in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex brings for the company, while also addressing new products and investing in employees.
What were the most important achievements for UnitedHealthcare in the past year?
The continued adoption of our Surest health plan is a big highlight for us. Surest aims to drive a better experience for consumers and employers. The Surest health plan improves access to care and helps lower costs by eliminating deductibles and coinsurance entirely.
Surest is a copay-driven plan that encourages consumers to make decisions that are best for them by empowering them with the information they need to shop for health care services. Surest allows consumers to know the price of a treatment or service ahead of time so that they can make educated decisions that are right for them. Additionally, Surest helps drive down overall health care costs and improves quality, while leading to better Net Promoter Scores (NPS), a key measure of consumer satisfaction.
How do UnitedHealthcare’s products differentiate from other healthcare plans in the market?
The high-deductible plans were supposed to drive better consumer decisions, but that did not work. Chronically ill people hit their out-of-pocket maximum every year, so they may not be as worried about making good consumer decisions. When they reach those $5,000 or $10,000 maximums, there is little incentive for them to make keen decisions or to be more engaged.
Using the Surest app or website, consumers can consider the cost of their care options in advance and review variable copays, which may help people select high-value care providers and facilities. This upfront pricing also helps avoid billing surprises that, with a traditional health plan, might show up weeks or months after a service or procedure.
The result is that members may be able to pay 54% less out of pocket with improved access to care and better health outcomes for individuals across age groups, demographics, and with a wide range of chronic health conditions.
How is UnitedHealthcare working to advance public health in Texas and Oklahoma?
One way we help advance public health is through our investments in social determinants of health, particularly in housing. Consider this: when basic needs, such as having a place to call home, are not met, creating a path to health or wellness can be challenging. It may be hard for someone who is chronically ill to get or maintain a job when they lack a permanent address. So investing in affordable housing makes sense for us, and UnitedHealth Group has made tremendous investments in that area, investing over $1 billion in affordable housing across the United States.
Specifically in Texas, UnitedHealth Group has made five investments totaling $70 million in affordable housing in Austin, Harlingen, Tulia, Wharton, and Dallas. For Dallas, we invested $32 million in 269 homes. We are proud of that because housing is a core social determinant of health.
What are the most important drivers of growth for UnitedHealthcare in North Texas?
Innovative solutions and offerings like the Surest health plan have supported our growth. I can say firsthand that Surest comes up in nearly every meeting with brokers, customers, or prospective customers.
We also have expanded our footprint outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and into rural communities. Moreover, we continue to invest in our people to help them build their careers. UnitedHealthcare is committed to empowering our people to be successful and placing them in the right position to succeed. We are proud of the work our team members put to stewarding relationships and representing us with our customers and brokers. That has led to our growth as much as our product portfolio or any other factor.
What is the strategy of UnitedHealthcare to attract and retain both talent and partners?
We have a multifaceted strategy to get and keep good people here for a long time. One strategy we implement in Texas and specifically in North Texas is investing in our internship programs to bring in new and diverse talent. For instance, we recently offered our summer intern a full-time position so that he joins our team immediately after graduation. Reaching them at this early stage of their careers helps build a strong pipeline. To support this, I speak at various universities to raise awareness of our industry among graduating students or those about to enter the workforce. Additionally, United Health Foundation launched a 10-year, $100 million commitment to provide scholarships and support to current and future health professionals from diverse backgrounds.
Once here, UnitedHealthcare does a great job of creating a career path for our employees. We ask them where they see themselves in three and five years – not because it is a standard interview question, but because we want to help them build the roadmap to get there. Everyone in our leadership team started in an entry-level position and worked their way up. In terms of talent retention, the key to keeping employees is offering them a career vision and career growth, which may mean changing roles or teams. We have team members who celebrated 20 to 25+ years here. Creating that mobility to allow people to see their future if they stay at UnitedHealth Group is what created that tenure.
What are the key factors that make the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex a great place for UnitedHealthcare to do business?
It’s the same things that make it the right place for all the businesses that are moving here. The DFW area is a great place to raise a family and create opportunity. Additionally, the metroplex offers a high quality of living for individuals at an affordable cost.
What is the best way to tackle the challenges that the health care sector faces?
There is not a single way to fix health care because consumers will want to experience health care in different ways in order to meet their individual needs. We work to improve access and create better experiences for a vast array of individuals. There is no silver bullet, but we have a big mission to help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone. We are working towards that mission every day with a wide range of partners.,
We need to align incentives for providers with the interest of the employers and consumers to get quality care at the best cost.
UnitedHealthcare offers a program called Level2, which offers an innovative program designed to help people with type 2 diabetes manage and potentially improve their condition.
Grounded in metabolic and behavioral science, Level2 equips eligible participants with continuous glucose monitors (CGM) and personalized support from a care team to help encourage healthier lifestyle decisions, like food choices, exercise and sleep patterns.
Level2 aims to help reduce eligible employers’ overall cost of care by improving health outcomes and avoiding costly complications. Through the Level2 Assured Value Program, eligible employers with more than 125 covered employees with type 2 diabetes will have 100% of program fees reconciled against actual medical and pharmacy claims savings. If actual value generated is less than paid program fees, Level2 gives back the difference to eligible employers.
What are the top priorities of UnitedHealthcare in North Texas for the next two to three years?
Our top priority is the confidence or commitment of our customer base, which we measure using NPS that showcases how likely consumers are to recommend UnitedHealthcare. A close second priority is our people. We need to know if they find it to be a good place to work, whether they would recommend their friends and family to work here, whether they stick around, and for how long. If you take care of both customers and your people, the business becomes easy, so we prioritize making our customers and employees happy.
