Description: Is your development team or IT staff growing tired of last-minute requests to include additional functionality? Have you strained to explain challenging actuarial topics to non-actuarial staff for implementation? Do your teams find themselves revisiting deadlines & timelines when building solutions? During this interactive panel discussion, three technologists (two software engineering managers and one data scientist) along with three actuaries will discuss real world problems and approaches using experience from previous projects. Although the challenge of running efficient software teams is not unique to actuarial science, this webcast will discuss best practices on how to organize teams to reduce friction and context switching. Presenters will also explore unique actuarial challenges and concepts including how to address standards on data quality when building software, how to build intuitive software that meets actuarial standards and how test-driven development makes it easier to meet actuarial standards of practice.

Description: Level funded products often target the small group market (2-50) and can result in many manual and tedious processes for underwriting to perform risk assessment. Learn how a carrier used technology to help automate risk assessment without the need for paper medical questionnaires, and exposed a risk engine for broker quoting to enable near real-time of pricing for risk-based products. The approach reduced labor and allowed underwriting to focus solely on fallout cases while also improving pricing consistency. Discuss broader trends in the health market for risk assessment, including new machine learning cost predictions that can be used for automation and better predictions of future costs. Discussion topics will include underwriting guidelines, business rules, risk scores, and machine learning. By attending this session, you will have a better idea of new trends in risk assessment for small groups where no claims experience is available. And, better understand business rules that are common in underwriting for flags for review as well as how risk scores and machine learning can be used during the underwriting process.

Description: Planning for retirement is at the top of many minds. How do I save? When is the right time? What are my plans? But what are the impacts of your health on retirement? Learn more about the effects of a healthy lifestyle on retirement in order to maximize life span. Review more in-depth findings from a recent report sponsored by the SOA Research Institute’s Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program and conducted by the Vitality Group, as well as other expert insights.

Description: Watch as presenters highlight the SOA's work on an updated Medicaid underwriting margin model. This research project includes the model along with a set of instructions and a paper describing the key components of underwriting margin, including cost of capital and risk margin. The model was created as a tool for Medicaid actuaries representing both MCO and state principals to determine appropriate underwriting margin components within Medicaid managed care rates. In addition, explore a brief description of the motivation for an underlying theory behind the model. Walk through different model inputs and run through some realistic scenarios that Medicaid actuaries may encounter in states where they operate.

Description: This session includes a new idea based on dynamic treatment regime work (OWL) and integrating cost into this work. This will enable identifying the best treatment for a patient based on both outcomes and cost. This is novel for actuaries because in previous analysis we have used cost only in the after-analysis, whereas here we use it in the actual analysis and treatment identification. Moreover, this analysis provides a way to consider multiple treatments for a patient (including the no treatment option) and choosing among those multiple treatments, for both outcomes and cost. This session will share the background theory and set up a case study. The case study will parallel what is in the analysis in the book by Ian Duncan 'Predicting Hospital Readmission with Case Management Recommendation.' This analysis will then go further to compare a situation where there are multiple potential case managers. Also, this will potentially explore care pathways and choosing the best care pathway for a patient based on health outcomes and cost combined.

Description: This session will give an update on the latest in SOA Health Research. The session will also provide an overview of the health research process with additional information on upcoming SOA volunteer opportunities in Health Research. There will be a presentation on one or more SOA Health Research Projects recently published or soon to be published.

Description: Learn about the innovations of life and health products around the world. Expect to focus on: 1. Product development and pricing innovation in APAC region. 2. The Insurtech ecosystem creating new products by applying new technology and distribution channels in Latin America and Europe. 3. Products designed to supplement public sector offerings to close health protection gaps for underserved communities in the Middle East Africa and Asia Pacific region.

Description: For this session, we will explore difference in Medicare products from Traditional Medicare to Medicare Advantage. It will clarify different parts of the benefits and the role of Medigap plans. We will then discuss the impending changes in Medicare Part D due to the Inflation Reduction Act, highlighting redesigned benefits, stakeholder impacts, & potential risks. This informative session aims to demystify Medicare, providing insights into existing structures and forthcoming alterations.

Description: This webcast will walk through several statistical methods for imputing race and ethnicity from U.S. datasets, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, talking about how to use them and evaluating their accuracy, and telling you where you can get code packages as well as a free dataset to try the methods out.

Description: Patients with chronic conditions such as musculoskeletal pain, diabetes, and hypertension impact 50% of the US healthcare population, consume more than 85% of healthcare costs, and often require a higher volume of care, expensive imaging, testing, and emergency procedures, and long-term high-cost drugs. Managing these conditions through innovative digital health interventions provides a significant opportunity for higher-touch and more-effective management that will result in lower costs.