Health insurance agents and brokers are spending more time on each application than ever; they’re getting paid less; and clients continue to experience frustration and confusion as to whether or not their doctors participate in their health insurance plan.
This is the issue that a new online service called PlanCompass Pro, officially introduced to the market on Aug. 25 by Vericred, Inc., is specifically designed to address.
PlanCompass Pro is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application utilizing doctor-centric search to show which of a client’s doctors are in and out of every available plan’s network (on and off marketplace), right next to the costs and benefits of those plans.
Michael W. Levin, co-founder and CEO of New York City-basedVericred, says PlanCompass Pro helps a broker accomplish in minutes what would otherwise take hours of searching doctor directories and compiling information. It estimates subsidies, allows for plan filtering and sorting and generates side-by-side plan comparisons, including doctor participation, which can then be printed and/or saved as a PDF for easy e-mailing to a client.
According to a 2015 survey of Health Insurance Marketplace Assister Programs and Brokers by the Kaiser Family Foundation, since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation 83% of brokers are spending more time on each policy while 80% report earning less revenue per policy. The same report goes on to say that more than half of individuals seeking post-enrollment help were doing so because their provider was not in-network or they felt they picked the wrong plan.
“In an increasingly complex health insurance environment where insurance carriers are offering more health plans, but fewer with out-of-network coverage, and where provider networks are getting narrower and narrower, brokers, agents, assisters and navigators, and their clients, are ill-served by today’s decision support tools,” says Levin. “PlanCompass Pro substantially boosts productivity while helping identify the best plan for their clients, including those with their client’s doctors.”
Levin told Insurance Forums he thinks PlanCompass Pro is going to save brokers a lot of time and clients a lot of headaches, as they can be confident that their doctors participate in the plan they are considering. It stands to eliminate those “Why isn’t my doctor in the network?” phone calls after the fact.
“It takes two-to-three minutes to actually run through the process, capture the information, filter down to a couple of plans that make sense for a particular client and do a side-by-side comparison,” Levin says. “We believe that that, 1) drives up productivity at the broker level, and 2) improves the quality of the plan selection process for the client.”
Vericred is partnering with Ritter Insurance Marketing, a Harrisburg, Pa.-based, national insurance field marketing organization specializing in senior life and health insurance products. Ritter Insurance Marketing will market PlanCompass Pro to more than 100,000 health insurance agents, brokers, navigators and assisters across the country.
“PlanCompass Pro is absolutely a must-have product for agents who value their time and who want to make the best plan recommendations. Given the compressed enrollment timeframes, it’s more important than ever for agents, brokers and navigators to equip themselves with best in class decision tools,” says Craig Ritter, CEO of Ritter Insurance Marketing. “Determining which plans a client’s doctors participate in has been a time-consuming effort limiting the productivity of agents. PlanCompass Pro makes it easy for agents to do their jobs so they can help more clients navigate the ACA with better quality outcomes.”
PlanCompass Pro is an extension of Vericred’s free PlanCompass consumer service launched late in 2014 and which earned Vericred a slot as a finalist in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/U.S. Health and Human Services Provider Network Challenge.
PlanCompass Pro subscriptions start at $24.99 per month per agent for unlimited individual quotes and one small group quote per month. Additional subscription levels are available based on higher monthly small group volumes.
PlanCompass Pro is live in 14 states, representing over 40% of the U.S. population and is expected to be available in all 50 states by the beginning of open enrollment. The launch states include California, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut and New Hampshire.
Brokers and agents seeking more information on PlanCompass Pro or to sign up for the service can visitwww.plancompasspro.com.
About Vericred: Vericred, Inc. is a digital health startup with a mission to be the trusted source for accurate, complete and accessible healthcare provider data. Healthcare provider data is central to a variety of insurance, patient safety, risk management, compliance and regulatory functions. However, the collection and verification of this information is highly fragmented, costly and inefficient. Vericred’s solutions enable healthcare providers, facilities and insurers to improve healthcare delivery while reducing administrative burden and cost.
About Ritter Insurance Marketing: Ritter Insurance Marketing is a national Field Marketing Organization for Insurance Productsand sales technology including an on-exchange enrollment tool,www.ebrokersoftware.com. With more than 100 employees in six offices covering the nation and 15,000 actively appointed agents, Ritter solves the distribution needs of more than 80 insurance companies.
