iPMI Magazine Speaks With Reg Allatt, CEO, Global Excel Management Inc

MAYFAIR, U.K. - April 26, 2018 - PRLog -- Please introduce yourself and background in the international medical insurance market:

My name is Reg Allatt and I'm the CEO of Global Excel. I've been in this business now for over 30 years. My family started in the travel health insurance product side in Canada in 1984 and our organization has since evolved into the largest international healthcare risk manager specializing in the U.S. market. I've been with the company since its inception.

Global Excel has been managing health care cases, claims and costs for more than 20 years. How has the business changed in that time?

In one sense it's evolved but in another sense it's stayed very much the same.

There is no question that healthcare costs remain a very significant concern for our clients. There was a time when the USA was constantly flagged for having the most expensive healthcare costs in the world. It's still the most costly healthcare system in general, but relative price increases have actually slowed to their lowest point in years. Unfortunately the issue is that even a modest inflation rate in the USA translates into pretty significant hard dollar increases just because the prices are so high to begin with.

Internationally we're seeing much higher relative increases in costs in other locations around the world. Today we're noticing the same double-digit increases in certain areas which we saw in the USA in the early 2000s. To a certain extent this may be caused by certain providers looking to the U.S. as their benchmark for pricing but there's no question that there is no 'downward' trend out there.

Certainly we've seen an evolution in the primary cost drivers. In the USA pharmaceutical costs, provider pricing practices, over-utilization, healthcare technology, M&A activity, etc. are all fuelling rising costs. It's also a well-known fact that the USA is primarily a 'fee-for-service' system when the more a provider does, the more they get. However in the USA we can say that domestic patients (and their insurers) face the exact same issues as international patients (and their insurers) and it's expensive for everyone. The system is uniformly bad in this regard. The big difference in the USA is the strategies international insurers use to manage their costs versus those used by domestic payers.

Outside of the USA some of these same cost drivers apply, but perhaps to a lesser extent. Certainly we've seen providers in Canada and Mexico (as well as other parts of the world) look at the U.S. price structure and ask "why can't I charge that much as well?" So we are seeing specific international healthcare providers charge USA-level prices but then not offer the accompanying discount methodologies. And of course you have tourist areas in the rest of the world where a provider will have multiple price lists depending on the patient's status. So internationally pricing discrimination is much more overt.

Unfortunately when we look at the 'solution' side of the equation there's been very little change. Many of the tools traditionally used to manage that risk have stayed the same as they were 20 years ago. So while the need for a more comprehensive healthcare risk management approach has actually increased, the industry hasn't responded as quickly. Global Excel is changing that.

Can you walk us through the suite of cost containment solutions on offer from Global Excel?

I think it's important to step back and look at the actual definition of 'cost containment'. For most people, they continue to use the old, traditional definition: obtaining a discount from a medical provider's billed charges. That's fine, it's been the definition used since the mid-nineties when the whole managed care concept evolved in the USA and we started to see hyperinflation on hospital prices.

But we need to change our way of thinking. Discounting or repricing bills AFTER the services have been rendered is a pure 'reactive' approach. The damage has already been done and you're simply trying to make the best of a bad situation. Healthcare cost inflation has always outpaced general inflation rates by a factor of 2 or 3 – sometimes more. If all you're doing is repricing bills after the fact I guarantee you're playing a losing game.

New solutions and new approaches to managing healthcare risk are needed and it is essential to start looking at the whole customer experience much more than we do now. We have to transform our way of thinking.

Global Excel is revolutionizing that traditional 'cost containment' paradigm. We are convinced the only way to truly manage healthcare risk is to intervene much earlier in the process. We need to engage the customer from the very start. We want to improve that member's journey by helping to find the appropriate level of care and the right price and in the right location and throughout the process, avoiding unnecessary.. Read the complete interview for free here: https://ipmimagazine.com/medical-health-insurance/en/insu...