The Granite List Live

Solutions in Mental Crisis Care, Diminished Tasting Abilities, and Getting a Baseline in Your Health

Sally was live on the floor of thINc360 in the Innovation Station for this episode. She had interviews featuring three guests they found to have helpful and interesting products and services. Join her for this 12-minute episode featuring:

Malcolm Frank, Technical Account Manager, Whill
Whill provides personal mobility devices globally.
https://whill.inc/us/

Dr. Jordan Duval-Arnould, CEO, Readyworks Health, Inc.
Readyworks Health is a workforce capacity optimization company. They replace any sort of paper-based tool that's being used by doctors, nurses, and clinical staff in a hospital.
https://readyworkshealth.com 

Jeremy Lovelace, CEO and founder of HFX training
HFX Training is focused on simulation-based executive training.
www.hfxtraining.com/healthcare-management 

Leigh and Sally asked their guest, RD Whitney, what community means to him. He says, “Community is a home for an area that doesn't have a home. It's a sense of belonging.” This corporate internal community building is becoming very popular for nonprofits, associations, corporations, brands, and media event companies. It was substantially accelerated by the pandemic it's been around for quite a while. QuickBooks is used by a lot of accountants around the world. Their users got together because they can share best practices. The company that created QuickBooks and owns it to it, encourages that, and that community is stronger because people share. Think about a consumer community centering on a product - InstaPot - the most successful one-day launch on Amazon. Think of all of the loyalty and offshoots from the initial recipe community. Join us for this episode of The Granite List Live, “Communities Being Built In the Spirit of InstaPot and Quickbooks.”

About Leigh and Sally’s Guest:

RD Whitney is the Chief Community Officer at Chief Executive Group (CEG) and the Chief Operating Officer for the CFO Leadership Council (a CEG Community). 

For over 30 years RD has focused on creating b2b communities that connect buyers and sellers through the gravity of professional training, events, peer learning, and data. He has successfully developed media businesses in multiple sectors through conferences, trade shows, online training, virtual events, industry award programs, SAAS businesses, research, databases, validation, publishing, peer learning, online marketplaces, certification programs, and sponsored/membership businesses. RD has an impressive track record of building and growing b2b community assets and recurring revenue businesses to quickly realize new value for members, vendors and investors.

As the tax season comes to a close, we've all got two things on our minds; "Did I file those right? It felt too easy" and "What kind of returns are we looking at this year?" Leigh and Sally are joined by Amanda Foley to discuss the complicated importance of Employee Retention Tax Credit, and what this new stimulus program that Covid brought us means for you and your business. Lots of money was lost when the pandemic shut down capitalism in a sense, and this year you should know how to get paid back. Find out who is eligible, and for how much, in this episode of The Granite List Live, with special guest Amanda Foley.

About Leigh and Sally's guest - Amanda Foley

Today employer health plans, are focusing on self-funded, fully insured, level-funded, and all of the above options. But if you can look at different cash-pay opportunities, prepaid opportunities, having telehealth there, where people aren't just immediately going to urgent care and emergency rooms, you will come out ahead as a company people want to work for and your staff will be better served. Our guests from Medxoom are putting everything in the hand of the member. Leigh and Sally’s guests are Matt Smith and Jeff Toewe from Medxoom. They tell us why cookie-cutter groups aren’t a fit for them because they don’t create enough value for their client base. They want to understand what you're trying to do, the solutions you're trying to utilize to solve, to improve that member experience, and drive down that healthcare spend. Join us for this episode of The Granite List Live, “A unifying experience for plan members is the only way to bring true value.”

About our guests:

Matt Smith - Enterprise Sales, Medxoom

Matt spent the better part of the last decade helping employer groups tackle the challenges of building and executing their employee benefits plans. His focus to balance the needs of employers to avoid increases in benefit costs with the need to reduce the cost burden of the employee led him to his current role working with the Medxoom team as they are continuing to build on their vision of uncomplicating healthcare. Matt draws upon his experience with working with self-funded employer groups, TPAs, Captives, and other digital solutions to help bring best in breed partnerships to his clients as they look for innovative ways to help improve the cost and accessibility hurdles of purchasing healthcare. Matt has a passion for helping to make healthcare the focus rather than the current focus of health insurance for his clients and partners. Matt firmly believes that with healthcare at the center of the purchasing decision rather than health insurance, the power to improve the cost curve is greatly improved through the improved health of employees when they aren’t worried about where to go and how to pay for a doctor’s visit. Working with the team at Medxoom has empowered Matt to be able to help shift that focus back to how to purchase healthcare instead of just health insurance. 

Jeff Toewe - Co-Founder and CEO, Medxoom

As a tech start-up veteran with extensive tech aptitude and experience, Mr. Toewe has demonstrated success in strategy, solution design & execution. He has founded and led multiple Digital, Mobile and FinTech companies, achieving multiple successful exits. Recent deals include Cinergy International in the UK, which provides sophisticated point-of-purchase decision systems to mobile telecoms; M-Dot Network, which led the definition of digital coupon standards, won #1 Amazon Startup of the Year and today is used by nearly 20,000 retail stores; and DoubleBeam/GoPago, a payments solutions provider that is now a leading Tablet POS solution. Deeply active in the tech startup community, Mr. Toewe serves as an advisor and participant to multiple tech companies and enjoys mentoring startups. He has been featured and interviewed for Google #StartupGrind and has been a panelist and speaker for CTIA #LetsTalkPayments. 

Mr. Toewe earned a BA in Politics from Saint Joseph’s University and an MSIS (Master of Science in Information Systems) from Drexel University. He has also completed Open Courseware in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Now, Mr. Toewe, Co-Founder and CEO, is tackling the task of “Uncomplicating Healthcare” through this Medxoom platform. Medxoom optimizes the healthcare benefits experience for employers and their plan members through its mobile benefits integration platform.

Leigh and Sally sit down with two renowned thought leaders in the benefits space to discuss what’s new and what’s next for plan design. Allison DePaoli was awarded Top Women in Benefit Advising in 2019 and Ed Ligonde was named 2021 Broker of the Year by BenefitsPro. Here, they share their passion for bringing the right solutions at the right time to fit the growing challenges employers are facing. 

About our guests:

Allison DePaoli

Allison DePaoli is a business consultant working with employers who know they have a healthcare problem.

As the daughter and granddaughter of entrepreneurs – manufacturers, car and heavy equipment dealers, insurance! – Allison had a front-row seat on what it takes to run a business and manage risk. She routinely advises employers on how to both control their healthcare budgets and turn their benefit plans into recruiting and retention magnets.

She is also a sought-after speaker and the host of Raising The Bar with Allison De Paoli, a podcast designed to help CEOs and Executive Teams learn and leverage what their peers are doing successfully into their own businesses.

In 2017 Allison was a contributing author to the Amazon Best Seller Breaking Through the Status Quo and is a regular contributor to Employee Benefits News

Edwige Ligonde

Edwige (Ed) Ligonde assists in finding creative ways to blend plan design and cost, enhancing both employer and employee lives. 

Named 2021 Broker of the Year by BenefitsPRO, Ed's journey to success in the benefits space has been used as a model for others. He holds a deep belief in the value of personal connections and leveraging technology for the benefit of humans, rather than replacing them. 

Ed strives towards the goal that healthcare does not have to be what it has in the past, and by making collaborative partnerships we can change the benefits space for the better. In that world, we build businesses that are true partners and advocates for clients rather than having reactive, transactional relationships. 

The computers at Benefits Claims Intelligence (BCI) never get tired. Their goal is to discover ongoing waste, fraud, and abuse not detected after the TPAs or Third Party Administrators have reviewed the data. They work WITH the brokers and count on them to help their clients discover double and triple bills, upbills, and other errors in insurance claims, then take steps to recover those costs. Sally and Leigh's guests from BCI - Edward Cotler and Donald Hutson. Join them for this episode, "Waste, Fraud, Abuse and Level Five Papercuts."

Think of nurse advocacy as a way to connect with all solutions for the plan member. Leigh and Sally's guest, Lauren Roberson Head of Nurse Advocacy for CHC says, "We sit in the middle of the circle to reach all the solutions so that plan members can get access to the things they need at the time to achieve the best outcomes helping them stay at work, feeling better, healthy, and feeling better at home." The question she answers is why would a company that has access to a nurse hotline want to pay for an additional nurse advocacy service? Learn how 30 minutes of true listening has saved lives in this episode of The Granite List Live, "Predication of Health Problems Through Nurse Advocacy".

About our guest:

After working in the fields of patience-centered home care and on the front lines of contracted nurse lines for some of the largest employers in the country, Lauren shifted her career to change the dialog – literally. She brings her deep nursing knowledge to the job each day, leading the nurse advocacy team at CHC. In her role, she helps connect the vendors that have been brought into the health plan by the broker, and steers employee engagement to ensure that plan members use the right resource at the right time for the best care possible.

Corporate athletes are those that haul, lift, push, reach as part of their day-to-day required tasks on the job. Why would you wait until they are injured to treat them? Why not prevent the injuries by having onsite care, as you would for professional sports athletes? If you are already familiar with the term VP of Environment, this episode is for you. If you have regular workers’ compensation claims due to musculoskeletal issues, this is for you too. Your employees want to work, you need them to work, and you need them to be safe and smart with how they work. Join us for this episode of The Granite List Live where Sally and Leigh visit with Nic Patee, CEO of Work Right, "Preventing Workplace Injuries of Your Corporate Athletes."