RURAL HOSPITAL COALITION SUCCESS CONTINUES TO GROW
Never Going It Alone is Paying Big Dividends
(AUSTIN, TX, October 24, 2022) – Independent rural and community hospital leaders who have decided to never go it alone continue to take back control from big insurance companies.
As co-owners of the Community Hospital Insurance Coalition (CHIC), a medical stop-loss reinsurance company, a growing number of hospitals are paying less for their insurance, improving benefits program performance, and receiving their share of a significant annual surplus cash distribution.
“Every year since its inception in 2018, CHIC owners have received their share of a cash distribution,” says Brant Couch, president of HealthSure (the CHIC manager). “When we designed CHIC, we knew it could empower rural hospitals to take back ownership of their insurance… it is doing just that.”
This year’s total distribution of $ 1.625 being shared by 28 participating hospitals. The distribution since inception now totals $3.23million.
CHIC is designed exclusively for rural and community hospitals that are already self-funding their employee health benefit program. It provides protection against claims – typically large and unexpected claims – their self-funding is unable to cover. Instead of going it alone and individually paying a large carrier for stop-loss insurance, CHIC participants pool their risk in an insurance company of their own.
“As a new CEO, being able to collaborate with other more experienced rural hospital CEOs has been fantastic,” says Angela Amons, CEO of Clinch Memorial Hospital in Homerville, GA. “Being able to benchmark our performance against other hospitals validates the decisions I’ve made.”
“CHIC provides a financial and strategic platform empowering a broad range of collaboration between like-minded hospital leaders,” Couch says. “The financial benefits go beyond significant cash distributions; CHIC owners collaborate by sharing best practices for benefit program design and cost control, as well as employee well-being.”
“By far the biggest impact is the power of hospitals coming together and creating momentum around a powerful idea… which is to take back ownership of their risk to provide better benefits to their employees,” says John Henderson, the president of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals (TORCH).
Looking ahead, CHIC is actively seeking new owners within the rural and community hospital community. “The original 18 owners took a well-calculated risk that continues to pay off; they have turned their risk into an asset capable of delivering exceptional ROI,” says Couch.