Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com • October 5, 2020 • Hartford Business Journal 11 You can count on us! Our flexible lending solutions and experienced team may be just what your business needs. Visit chelseagroton.com/growthatbusiness or call 860-448-4203 Quality Construction + Butler Manufacturing = Repeat Customers www.borghesibuilding.com © 2011 BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. All rights reserved. Butler Manufacturing™ is a division of BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. 2155 East Main Street • Torrington, Connecticut 06790 Wittmann Battenfeld, Torrington, CT | 2000 | 37,000 sq. ft. • 2006 | Addition — 14,400 sq. ft. • 2013 | Addition — 18,900 sq. ft. Contact us at 860-482-7613 or visit us on the web. crucial the situation not lead to patients receiving inflated surprise out-of-network bills, and after they hung up, she directed her staff to alert the Connecticut Association of Health Plans, which then briefed its other member carriers about Nu- vance's situation. Murphy was able to bring in his doctors quickly. "That phone call reminded me of the old days where a handshake was all you needed to secure a transac- tion," Murphy said. "She was as good as her word and we didn't have to sweat out a month-long con- tract process." Hummel said she prided herself on being accessible for such calls. "Most hospital presidents or the leaders of most large physician groups will tell you that I might be that one health plan president whose cell phone number they have," she said. "And not only do they have it — they've used it." Expanding government business State Comptroller Kevin Lembo oversees a state employee and re- tiree health plan that includes more than 200,000 lives. That puts him in a position to make some demands. "It's a big book of business and [insurers] want it," Lembo said. Lembo wanted the state to have access to and ownership of its plan's claims data, and he wanted the state, not just the insurer administering the plan, to negotiate reimbursement terms with hospitals and other pro- viders. So he put the state employee health plan contract out to bid last year. Insurers were taken aback. "The heads blew off some folks," Lembo said. "Some of it was their technological capabilities, but more often than not the response was 'we don't do that. We don't let our cus- tomers negotiate their own deals.' " Anthem was an exception, and its willingness to be flexible about the new demands won it the entire con- tract, which in the past had been split among several insurers. "Jill, I think, figured out that the old way of doing business never lasts and that they need to change with the needs of customers," Lembo said. Hummel further solidified Anthem's relationship with state government by maintaining the insurer's participation in the Access Health CT exchange. Anthem — along with Farming- ton-based ConnectiCare — has offered plans on the exchange every year since it first launched in 2013, while other insurers, including UnitedHealthcare, dropped out. Lembo said that's an example of an insurer putting its money where its mouth is. "I think it's easy to talk 'community support,' right? But here's a situa- tion where the need is great and the challenges are likewise great, and you get to see who's really committed," Lembo said. Kevin Lembo, State Comptroller Dr. John Murphy, CEO of Nuvance Health, said Anthem's Jill Hummel is a tough negotiator and someone who "knew how to deliver something other than the traditional vanilla insurance product." PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED

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