Hartford Business Journal

12 Hartford Business Journal • April 4, 2016 www.HartfordBusiness.com for the task, he said. • Regionalizing and consoli- dating public safety answering points, or PSAPs, but he said police chiefs have raised legiti- mate concerns about prisoner handling if emergency dispatch stations are dark. Someone needs to watch inmates, he said, suggesting perhaps state judicial marshals could instead pick up and hold prisoners. • Consolidating the tracking of land records. Coventry, for example, joined other towns in bidding on a land-record system that was beneficial, he said. • Shifting voter registration from part-time registrars of vot- ers to town clerks, who already provide much of that function. • Examining state functions towns could assume. "We sell fishing licenses for the state …," he said. "What other things should towns maybe do?" Per- haps towns, already linked to the Department of Motor Vehi- cles, could assume some of its tasks and do them better. "What MORE needs to do is tell a story of success," Elsesser said. "We have to share the sto- ries of what's working and we're not good story-tellers." There's also a need for more good data to drive decisions, he said, adding "it can't be ad- hoc and it can't be sensitive to political and popular issues only. The time for hard deci- sion-making is here." State Rep. Jonathan Stein- berg (D-Westport), who is House chair of the MORE Commission, said there's been significant progress creating incentives and opportunities for municipalities to start collaborating. Many formerly skeptical municipal leaders see the benefits of col- laboration, but MORE must do a better job communicating and engaging Councils of Govern- ment, he said. "If we're going to move this for- ward, the COGs need to be effec- tive partners," Steinberg said. The more towns that col- laborate, the bigger the savings, he said. "So when you want to keep your mill rate down, you want to keep from raising taxes, you want to show to your citizenry that you're being as efficient as possible, now's the time to get on board because it will be easy to blame the state for failing to give you municipal aid going forward, but it's still going to be on municipalities to figure out how to balance their budgets," Steinberg said. n Savings MUNICIPAL SUMMIT REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK Numbers are ugly, status quo won't cut it House Speaker Brendan Sharkey (D-Hamden) shared alarming statistics from the state Office of Policy Man- agement contributing to the state's fiscal crisis. From 2004 to 2008, employment growth was steady at about 3.8 percent, but wages grew 17 percent, he said. After the depths of the recession, from 2011 to 2015, employment growth was similar, but wages only grew 5.6 percent. Too many high-paying jobs before the recession have been replaced with lower-paying jobs that produce less tax revenue, he said. State revenue growth projections going forward are in the range of 2 percent, a far cry from the annual 7 to 9 percent growth the state once saw. "We are not in the same cycle that we've always been in," he said. "It's a new day, it's a new world. We cannot afford to continue to do things the way we have done it in the past because people don't have the same amount of income that they used to have and therefore state revenues, income tax and capital gains taxes are not going to be at those same levels." Doctors, insurer collaborate to save money In a seminar titled, "Changing the Healthcare Land- scape: How one Insurer is Tightening Relationships with Providers to Improve Employee Health," Karen Possi- dente-Leibiger, vice president, account manager with Connecticare, shared how her organization is working with members' primary care physicians to improve care, lower hospital readmissions and ultimately save money. The Farmington insurer is like a back office to prima- ry care physicians, with Connecticare nurses working with physician office staff to ensure patients are getting preventive care and closing any gaps in care, she said. "We have a 15 percent higher use of primary care physician visits and we have 6 percent lower use of emer- gency rooms and 5 percent lower use of inpatient acute care bed days or hospital days, and so to us that's an incredible result," Possidente-Leibiger said. "We believe, and the providers believe, this is going to be the model that really helps mitigate the healthcare inflation trends." Provider collaboration arrangements are in place for 70 percent of Connecticare's members, she said. Jeff Cross, vice president of underwriting at Connecti- care said: "It's really a complementary care model where- as we spent the last 25 years sort of getting in the way of providers and putting up these rules and these barriers, and here this is a model of enabling them to give the right care at the right place at the right time and to offer the services that we have available in a complementary way." – John Stearns Karen Possidente-Leibiger, vice president, account manager with Connecticare, tells towns how to save money on health insurance. P H O T O | J . F I E R E C K P H O T O G R A P H Y

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