Description: Through the sponsorship of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Society of Actuaries partnered with Wakely to use their health care data to study the effects of COVID-19 on overall health care claims for individuals with a COVID-19 diagnosis. The conclusion of the study is that individuals with COVID-19 claims had significant increases in health care costs leading up to their months of diagnosis, as well as in the months following their diagnosis. These effects were more pronounced for individuals who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 as well as for individuals with prior co-morbidities. Finally, the overall health care costs of these members plateaued at significantly higher levels than their pre-COVID baselines. In fact, all the main membership cohorts experienced claim levels that were at least 20% higher than their pre-COVID starting points.

Description: Every patient leaving the hospital has personal life-context circumstances that impact their chances of successful recovery and complications can be costly. Complex care management impacts over 50 percent of health care spend, with the admitted commercial population driving 37 percent of spend or $177M per 100,000 lives and the Medicare population driving 53 percent of spend or $600 million per 100,000 lives. The stakes are high, but existing care management solutions are mostly clinical and navigation call centers provide fragmented and outdated patient management systems, and do not address individual life-context. Discharged patients therefore remain underengaged and undercompliant, leading to costly complications. Innovative technology can help enable and integrate systems and existing infrastructure to leverage evidence-based contextualized care that will enhance care management, improve efficiency, and drive a better experience and outcomes for patients. This technology helps codifies life context, dynamically stratifying and engaging members digitally and telephonically helping virtual care teams to be more effective and efficient. In a recent randomized clinical trial, this technology and approach has shown a 50 percent reduction in the total cost of care, cutting the average and total cost of readmission, increasing virtual care team impact and member engagement and trust.

Description: Health care has changed rapidly over the past couple of years. The pandemic has shifted consumer behavior in how and where they receive health care as well as consumer attitudes toward health care. Payers continue to design innovative solutions in responses to their patient’s needs and expectations. These changes in consumer behaviors and the responses by payers are expected to impact both health care cost and utilization. Discuss changes in health care that have emerged due to the pandemic and how they are expected to influence actuarial assumptions. Explore epidemiological models commonly used in the industry, the considerations when using these models, as well as the challenges with regards to gathering and interpreting relevant experience data. By attending this session, you will be able to: Identify shifts in consumer behavior that have emerged from the pandemic and describe how payers are responding to new patient expectations. Discuss how these post-pandemic changes by consumers and payers influence medical spending. Determine which actuarial assumptions are impacted and how and if the impact is expected to be temporary or permanent. Discuss considerations taken by actuaries and challenges faced when modelling actuarial assumptions post pandemic.

Description: This article provides an overview of critical illness insurance: history, product description, and the three primary ways to offer critical illness coverage in the United States. This article also contains an illustration of an issue age premium rate calculation, as well as product features and rating applications specific to the various types of critical illness coverage.

Description: Data requirements for the Society of Actuaries cancer experience study, for those submitting exposure and claim information.

Description: This session will bring together public health care leaders in COVID-10 vaccine delivery from both the U.S. and the UK to discuss and compare operational implications of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in their countries, and how those programs ultimately affected hospitalization utilization and mortality rates for members of their communities.

Description: The Society of Actuaries SoA developed this research project to repeat and expand upon its “Group Medical Insurance Large Claims Database Collection and Analysis” study, which was published as a monograph in August of 1997. The general purpose of these studies is to discover and analyze factors affecting claim incidence rates and the distribution of claim sizes. This is the report for the database. Please see the SOA website experience studies for Group Health for the databases themselves.

Description: Focus on how innovative health care organizations develop their value proposition for their intended buyers. Presenters will share information about their specific solution and the methods used to derive credible savings estimates, ROI, and performance guarantees. Learn about data utilized, the methods deployed, advantages, disadvantages, and buyers' reaction. This session is expected to be technical, highly informative, and interactive with audience members.

Description: In late 2021, U.S. Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CCA), which requires group health plans and health insurers to submit information regarding the costs of prescription drug costs and other health care services each year to the federal government. Learn how this data can be useful to anyone responsible for forecasting and budgeting.

Description: With the mandated health plan transparency files, health plans and providers are now able to substantially enhance their provider contracting efforts. Although the files are large and cumbersome they are market disruptors and provide new insights for provider contracting efforts. Explore a demonstration on the type of information now available and how it can be used to enhance this from both a health plan and health care provider perspective.