Aligning Cost and Care: A New Playbook for CFOs & CHROs

Speaker A: So when I came to Duncan Parnell, it was we had, um, you know, one HR person and then two finance people, and then we added Wendy into that kind of mix, and then it was kind of 2hr to finance. And as we have those discussions, we're talking about what's important to each of us. We're being intentional about meeting and talking about it without our broker, then we're meeting regularly with the broker. So, like, being intentional is really important, and you don't see that at every, you know, kind of business doing that. And some of that comes from me, but some of it comes from the relationship we had before I even joined Duncan Parnell, too.

Speaker B: Hi, and welcome to the captivating Health Insights podcast. Today we're talking about the collaboration between finance and benefit teams, and I'm excited to welcome our guests, Wendy Roy and Pete Krobach from Duncan Parnell. Welcome, Wendy. Welcome, Pete.

Speaker C: Thanks, Madison. We're glad to be here.

Speaker A: Yeah, very excited to be here, Madison.

Speaker B: I'm glad you guys are, too. And I'm excited to get into today's conversation. We are going to dig into more about Duncan Parnell and how you joined one of our captives and your experience going self funding and all the things. So I'm excited to have you here today. All right, so first thing, we're doing this new, uh, question for season two, and it's if we really knew you, what would we know? So we'll start with you, Wendy. If we really knew you, what would we know?

Speaker C: Um, I was circled by a shark.

Speaker B: Wow. Tell us more.

Speaker C: When I was in fourth grade, I was out on a big old tractor tire inner tube out in the ocean. My family had a beach house, and, um, my dad had gone up to get my brother lunch or something, and my sister and I were out there, and all of a sudden I see a fin come up. And so I get up on all fours on the big old tractor tire inner tube, because all I could think is, it's going to come up and bite me. And I'm like, yelling. All the people on the beach stop and stare. My sister thought I was joking, and then she saw the fin and ran out. And then I see my dad come running down the stairs, and he comes walking out there and pulls me in, and I was like, okay, more power to you. I was like, for three years, I did not go in the ocean again.

Speaker B: Wow. Yeah, that's funny.

Speaker C: Now I'll go, um, but there has to be other people with me. Um, I never told my kids about it until my sister Told them.

Speaker B: Cause I was like, you want to.

Speaker C: I don't want to scare them, but, yeah. Um, I am very, ah, shark aware.

Speaker B: So Wendy survived, but you survived.

Speaker C: I guess I wasn't that enticing after all.

Speaker B: You were saved that day. Well, good. Well, I'm glad. That's. That's a great. Not a lot of people have survived a shark circling, so that's awesome. What about you, Pete?

Speaker A: Well, mine is, um. My wife doesn't like this, but, like, I don't. I'm not a big fan of flying. I like flying because you get somewhere fast. But, like, I have my whole routine. So, like, if I'm flying somewhere, like we came up here to Chicago, I have to get to the airport, like, exactly two hours early. I have to go through my whole routine of getting prepared. And it drives my wife crazy because she'd rather show up, like, at an hour early and just get on the flight. But, like, I have to get mentally prepared for that in order to do it. So if I travel with, like, say, Wendy or someone else, like, I'm just getting there at this time. I'm going through my routine, and I'll see you when we're boarding.

Speaker B: I know. Hey, but you can fly. I mean, some people can't even fly at all because they just can't do it. So you got your routine, and you're good. That's, uh, awesome. Well, if we ever travel together now, I'll know the routine.

Speaker C: I don't love to fly either.

Speaker B: Okay, Wendy, we'll start with you. If you could just introduce yourself and kind of share with us today your role and how you got to where you are today.

Speaker C: All right, um, I'm Wendy Roy, and I work at Duncan Parnell, uh, leading the HR team now. But my background's a little bit unconventional for hr. I started out in finance and accounting, and, um, was responsible for budgeting, financial analysis, and, um, you know, monthly financials and all those kind of things. And took a little brief tour into recruiting and got a taste of the HR side of things. And, um, then when Duncan Parnell continued to grow, they needed help with the HR team. So I was like, well, I can do recruiting for you guys, and did that. And eventually Pete was like, hey, do you want to just take over the hr? And I'm like, sounds great. So kind of moved in that way. And, um, I enjoy the people side of things, so it was, uh, it was a good fit for me.

Speaker B: And how long have you been leading the HR function?

Speaker C: Now then, let's see I've been what, about two, three years?

Speaker A: I think about three years, yeah.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, I'm glad you're here today, Wendy. Thank you. Pete. What about you? How did you, uh, get to where you are today?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm the uh, cfo, Duncan Parnell. I've been here for a little over five years. Uh, prior to that I was at another, uh, privately held family owned business, um, in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. And uh, actually get to participate as the controller in the healthcare plan, which I think is a little unusual. But my boss was trying to groom me for his position as CFO at the time. So when I got to Duncan Parnell, you know, the CFO doesn't get to do just one thing there. I have finance, I have hr, I have purchasing it, a lot of different areas and we were a one person HR show when I showed up. And I got into the weeds with uh, Melanie, who has been with the company forever, uh, on our side. And I determined that uh, my skill set I gained in my last company helped us out. And it got to the point where I'm like, we need some help. And like Wendy said, she had a recruiting past. We got her into the recruiting side of things and then, um, we became a three person team working in hr. And it's been fantastic and it's evolved. And this is probably one of my favorite subjects that most CFOs probably don't always dive into.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. I think it is more rare for CFOs to have a true interest in the healthcare side and understand the complexities that come with it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think a lot of it too is like, I care about our people, I want to help our people develop. And they're the most important part of our workforce or our company. Right. Because they interact with our customers. Their good experience and interaction with the customer makes the whole customer experience better. And if we keep everybody healthy and in the kind of right spot, then the company should perform better.

Speaker B: Yep, exactly. Amen. And what kind of work does Duncan Parnell do? Just for those that aren't familiar, what kind of kind of population and work are we talk about?

Speaker A: So we have, um, we're around 300 people now. We've doubled in size in the past five years. Um, we primarily are a distribute like distribution company of technology for Trimble Products in the construction industry, uh, vertical and horizontal construction. But then we've also acquired some businesses that are in marine construction and also in the agriculture industry. So we've really diversified a lot and it's really a 20 minute elevator speech to kind of get into all of the needs of it. Um, Wendy can probably talk more to our population.

Speaker C: Yeah. And we have a signs and graphics division too, which has a whole different type of person because you're gonna have those in print production and you're gonna have installers who are out in the field installing signs and things like that in buildings. So you've got people in our corporate office that white collar type jobs, and then we've got the blue collar job. So we've got a little bit of everything and we're located all through the Southeast, so we've got a distributed workforce. So, you know, we've. It's a, it's a lot to manage, but it's, uh, you know, keeps things interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's amazing because it all evolved after World War II when Charlie Duncan set up the company as a traditional printmaker. Right. So we were like the printing presses, all that stuff through the 70s. And then as time has kind of moved on, that technology has changed and we've gotten into the surveyors and other architects and engineers that, you know, we worked with as a blueprinter in all these other areas of the business.

Speaker B: Wow. So this company's been around for a long time.

Speaker C: Yes, almost 80 years now.

Speaker B: Wow. It's amazing. Well, I'm really anxious to dig into this conversation because you all are newer to, uh, Captive Resources Captive. So would love to kind of hear about your journey, um, from, you know, original funding status to how you became interested in the captive, what that process looked like. And then now joining and being, um, new to one of our, our newer captives. So I'd love to kind of hear how that all unpacked for you all.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I guess I can start out a little bit because I've been with the company for about 10 years and when I started, we were fully insured, which, you know, you quickly learn you have no control over the costs. You know, whatever the insurance company says, you've got to pay. So we, um, knew we wanted to get to self funded, so we moved next to the level funded plan and then quickly moved to self funded, which again, self funded has its own risk because one or two big claims and it's a terrible year. Um, so we worked closely with our benefits advisor and Pete came on board around this time too. So I'll let Pete share a little more. Yeah.

Speaker A: So as we were evaluating relationships with our broker that we had moved over to, we put our roadmap together. We decided that joining a captive was the right thing to do. Right. So the first thing we did was we joined a pooled captive. And in that setting it was really good for us because we met other like minded peers. We were learning new cost containment strategies, but whenever we were performing well or saw the plan performing well, we didn't feel like we were winning. Right. So, um, it added the protection we were looking for in the renewal, but it wasn't really giving back to us at that point. So as we had some more discussions with cri, we determined that that was the right move for us was to join one of their captives. Because in there we, we had more ability to kind of meet like minded people like we were doing in the other one. But at the same time, um, if the plan was performing well, we were doing well. We had that opportunity to win.

Speaker B: Gotcha. So you were with a different captive, not necessarily reaping those rewards or as much as you anticipated. And now you've been in a captive resources captive for um, just about a year now and are really getting acclimated. What has been your kind of first impression of being in a captive resources captive and just all that comes along with that so far?

Speaker C: Um, well, so far I've really enjoyed that. You guys have, um, monthly webinars for all the members and I think it encourages engagement and keeps, um, trends at the forefront. So you're always thinking, what's next? Um, I know Pete went to one of the board meetings earlier this year and I can let him talk more about that.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So, um, I think in hindsight I wish I would have brought Wendy to the board meeting as well. But it's the first time we went, so I didn't realize that I could bring somebody else.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, so participating in the board meeting was really cool because I got to hear what everybody else was doing. Right. Everybody introduces themselves, their company, and it's talking about their initiatives that they have in place. But I also realized that this is a newer captive. Right. It's young in its first couple of years and there's a lot of people that joined and they don't have all those costs containment strategies in place. So it made me feel better about what we were doing. And at the same time, um, I met a lot of people that were interested in hearing what we were doing. They're sharing their ideas and it made me feel good with other like minded people.

Speaker C: Hm.

Speaker A: Um, and then at the same time when we're in these meetings, I'm like, how do I find more people that are doing what we are doing to come into this captive to help it perform as best as we can.

Speaker B: Right. Because it's a group of like minded individuals, but everyone is on their own journey. Some have been, you know, self funded for years and others are just kind of figuring out what, you know, this whole managing your healthcare strategy is all about. So it's great that you can all learn from each other and have those collaborations at the workshops and coordination.

Speaker A: I'm a big networker. I like to talk to other people and interact with them. Joining the captive, if you don't participate, I don't think you get the same value out of it. So I joined one of the, um, I think membership development committee. I'm trying to be part of that team recruiting other members. At the same time, when Wendy goes like, we need to be very intentional about talking to people, interacting with them and making sure that we're picking up new ideas or sharing our ideas with them too.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. The more that you put into those interactions, you'll definitely get more out for sure.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, let's talk about this evolution of your health care strategy. You mentioned you've already been doing a few things. So what has that evolution looked like from your fully insured days to now and what have you put in place?

Speaker C: Um, well, we, when we moved into the self insured, you know, we had a great partnership with our broker, as Pete mentioned, and that's key. If you don't have a broker that's invested as you are in cost containment and employee engagement, then I would suggest finding one that, uh, is.

Speaker B: Yeah, number one.

Speaker C: Yes. But you know, we partnered with our broker and got really intentional about setting up wellness for all our employees. And every year, um, you know, it's not very burdensome or anything. It's just they have to sign a wellness agreement online. They need to get an annual physical and upload their biometric data from the appointment. And then if our nurse advocates reach out to them, they have to return the call or email. Um, and if they meet all those requirements, they've met the wellness requirement. If not, the next year, their premiums go up by 30%, which, that is a meaningful hit, you know, and it says something. It tells the employees, hey, you know, we're serious about this and they don't

Speaker B: have to do it, but they are incentivized to do it with the premium incentive.

Speaker C: And it's not a difficult, uh, ask, in my opinion. And employees, really, there's not much pushback, which is good. Um, and then the employees that have had advocacy Reach out to them. Um, and they've gotten back with them. They've so appreciated the advice they've gotten. Because usually it's like, hey, do you know you can save money on prescription drugs? Or hey, you can save money on a procedure if you go to this facility versus that facility and things like that. So, um, that takes it to where the employee is, then actively reaching out to advocacy. If they have a question about a bill they receive or anything like that, or what provider should I do? So they're being proactive, reaching out versus waiting on advocacy to reach out to them. So it becomes a two way street.

Speaker B: So would you say that's kind of the hub then? Is that advocacy part because the wellness part is there, but then at the center is this.

Speaker A: It is, yeah. Because. So, um, it's funny, the advocacy program, uh, it's called advocacy. But our healthcare advocate that we put in place is geared towards helping our employees navigate the healthcare system.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: So a lot of the issues that we saw and we talked with our broker about was the first place an employee goes when you're on a self funded plan and it's not clear on their medical card who does what. And they're asking questions as to hr. And our HR team doesn't have all the healthcare data. They shouldn't have all the healthcare data on the employee. And we're like, how do we separate that? But still feel like an extension of our HR team. So it took our HR team some time to push people to that healthcare advocate program. And as they're working with it, they're then becoming more engaged with the plan. They're getting aligned with our other initiatives that we have, like direct primary care. They're going to the doctor regularly to get their physical. We're getting biometric data on everybody there. We can see kind of the, um, through the advocate program, what are our major issues or concerns we should have, right? Whether it's diabetes or something else. Um, and then we can actually do intentional reach outs through that advocate to the employees and say, hey, you know, you have diabetes, we see you're not going to the doctor or you're not taking your medications. Like, let's, let's work with you guys to make that better. And, and it takes HR out of the discussion. And we've seen a lot of value in that. And when people leave our company, right, whether they're terminated or they decide to move on to another opportunity, they call the advocate program and they can't talk to him anymore. So it's become a Pretty big benefit for the company that we offer this.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And another thing is if an employee gets a cancer, um, diagnosis or really any terrible diagnosis, it is so beneficial to have this nurse advocate program because they will reach out to the employee and walk that employee or their family member, whatever, through the diagnosis and all the care options and help them navigate the healthcare system, which, as you know, is so big and can be very overwhelming. And, you know, we have a few employees that, you know, thanked us profusely. Like, I'm so glad we have this. This made my, uh, life so much easier. It just eased the burden and, you know, helped my family through everything. So we feel like it's a great program for that as well. And our employees, you know, it's good to have them out there also encouraging other employees. Hey, you know, they're like, this is a great thing. Look what it did for me, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah. The word of mouth components.

Speaker C: So it's not just. Yeah. And the nurse advocate program, it's an actual email from a person or a phone call from a person. It's not an automated message or something

Speaker B: on an app, which is huge these days.

Speaker C: Yeah. And you really get true engagement.

Speaker A: Yeah. So the personal touch was our biggest thing. Like, how do we keep this simple? Like there, you know, there's apps you can use. We've used some of the apps when I've been in other companies. Like, it's not as engaging. It's hard to get the employee to use it. But actually talking to a person, based on how our demographics were five years ago, it was really important. Our age has come down some now, I think average age. Um, but people still like talking to somebody when they're in these kind of scenarios.

Speaker B: Yes. Health care is so personal, especially if it is a big diagnosis or, um, just a problem you're trying to solve and figure out what's going on. That personal touch is huge.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think the moral of the story is, is, like, you. Maybe our tool doesn't work for other companies, but, like, we found a tool that really works for our HR team, our employees, and has helped the plan performance.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Well, anything else you'd want to share about any of, like, the strategy or changes or the response you've gotten on anything else with the plan?

Speaker C: Well, we did also add direct primary care, which is a great benefit. Um, I personally use it, but we started out, like, with our major hubs, like, and those are Charlotte, Raleigh and Charleston and the Nurse advocate group. They went in and contracted with local direct Primary care providers. And if an employee chooses to sign up for the program, Duncan Parnell will pay their um, monthly fee for that and that encourages a relationship with your preferred provider.

Speaker B: So it's no cost to access the direct primary care physician.

Speaker C: So that's huge.

Speaker A: From my seat you're like how is this going to work? And then how are we going to show that it works? Right. Because it's a multi year plan. Like the first year people go into DPC you're not going to see how much cost you avoided or see the benefits right away. And even five years in you may not see that either. Right. Because there's a lot of um, the doctors that join the dpc, they don't want to have to do all the reporting and everything else that the hospitals do. So a lot of that information is kind of with them and you don't see what the employees are doing. But one of ours, um, the DPCs we work with is tied to our TPA. So we do get a lot of good data from that TPA because they're tied into the doctor. So in there we're able to see what are the employees doing there that they would have went somewhere else to do that would have cost them money. And then it kind of helps us extrapolate that across the population and I think our participation now I don't remember how many people are on the plan. We have pretty close to 100 people in a DPC relationship throughout all of our locations. And we have 23 locations like Wendy said. So we have um, our consulting partner and like the advocate program have to help us find DPC when one person wants it in an area that may not be a major hub.

Speaker B: Wow. And we have huge.

Speaker C: Yes, we have moved out to outside the three hubs because you've just hired to. Well and if an employee says they're interested our um, benefits advisor in the nurse Advocate group, they'll go out and like Pete said, try to find a good DPC in their area.

Speaker B: That's wonderful. So it's all connected. The advocacy, the dpc, the wellness incentive and you're kind of structuring it to kind of build off of each other.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker A: And then one of the cool things that we do, um, this is more of like an accounting thing but basically every year you look and you know, you get your evaluation or we do from our broker that says this is how we expect your plan to perform. Right. Basically kind of an actuarial study M. So we accrue to that maximum cost that we believe the plan will perform to. So we get monthly reporting every month that shows where we're at and if we are trending better than what the actual maximum is. So let's say we're 70% of plan. We then decide to do a healthcare holiday and we celebrate that with the employees. So for basically two or three paychecks, we'll say, hey, guys, our plan has been performing well. We're waiving all the premiums for the next three paychecks.

Speaker B: Oh, I love that.

Speaker A: And now they're getting to participate in some of the reward. Right. So that's a pretty cool thing. We're celebrating that they're participating. We're reminding them that they're going to the Advocate program or the DPC or whatever initiative we have going on.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Have you got what's the response been to those premium holidays?

Speaker C: Everyone is very appreciative. You get the email, thank you so much, or Stacey in the hall, thank you. We really appreciate this. And it goes from our ownership. You know, he. He's very generous. The family's very generous with the employees. Like, hey, we're saving money. We want you guys to share in it.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's huge though, because you're showing them, like, hey, when we perform well, like, you were all part of this together, like, your choices impact all of us, and we're gonna return that to you. So that's awesome.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, I think that's a good segue because, Pete, I wanted to dig into the, like, your role as a cfo. How has that impacted how you view benefits? And, you know, what would you say to kind of other CFOs out there that are maybe just kind of getting into this and understanding captives and self funding and benefit management?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think with my financial background and also that I've participated in kind of these healthcare discussions for, you know, probably a decade or more now. A lot of it comes down to, like, again, like, the dpc, you can't see necessarily what the cost or reward is. You always see the upfront cost and you're trying to guess what that is down the road. So I rely a lot on working with our benefit consultant on pulling data for me to see where we're at. So if we're looking at where we are versus, like the maximum kind of actuarial study for the plan and like, how we're doing, that's like one metric I'm looking at to say, okay, we're outperforming what they thought we should do. Right. So that's good for us. At the same time, you know, with Duncan Parnell, we look back at a five year history. We haven't raised premiums in five years to employees. When we originally started, we were kind of high on what our employees were

Speaker B: paying as compared to the benchmark.

Speaker A: As compared to the benchmark. So now I'm like, how do I get that lower? I can't just cut that down immediately. So like all these cost containment initiatives we put in place are working because every year we are not sitting there worrying about raising the price to the employees. Like, man, the plan's performing well. We can hold where we're at right now. Maybe at some point we can reduce the cost. So then as we're looking at where our stop loss renewals are and other things compared to how the industry is or how inflation is, you know, medical by far outpaces normal inflation.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: 7, 8%. So when we're looking at how our um, stop loss premiums have gone over the last few years, they have not trended at that 7 or 8%. They've actually beat that. So we're getting a lot of good reporting from our um, broker that helps us show that. And then two is like they have a whole book of business. They're showing us where we are compared to them too. So I'm getting to see a lot of good information there. So I'm not having to do this myself. I have a good partner that I trust and that we've worked together now for more than my time at Duncan Parnell. It's probably been six years or so. Um, and that has helped me a lot. But again, it's having a trusted partner that I'm working with and I can use my knowledge to kind of pair that together to make sure we're doing the right things.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's huge. And I get the trusted partner is huge. And also it's an investment like you're saying you're not seeing those savings right away. It's a long term strategy to improve health and improve, uh, the system.

Speaker A: Yeah. In understanding the roi, at what point is it coming? Right. Like I think for DPC, when you put it in, it's probably a 2, 3, 4 year ROI until everybody really gets rolling and participating in it. And then once you look at what you've avoided your employees going and doing somewhere else, like you see some pretty big savings. I did a study recently, I don't remember what it was, but like it was a couple hundred thousand dollars we were saving A year from having all these people into dpc and then like we've made some PBM changes as well. Right. Where you do see those a little more quickly when you make a PBM change and finding the right partner for your people. But again, your people have to participate in some of the stuff that they do. So whose programs are easier for them to participate in? And then the ROI can come a little bit faster.

Speaker C: Yeah. Because if you're going to a direct primary care doctor, uh, you're not going to the urgent care, you're not going for a sick visit. You know, you think about all those claims you're avoiding because it's covered in your monthly fee. Mhm.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's hard sometimes when you can't measure those. But like you said, you can look back and you can see, okay, what we're doing is having an impact. You just can't always, you know, see the heart attack that didn't happen or.

Speaker C: Right, yes.

Speaker A: And we've had to work with our broker a lot of this too. Right. Like it's like, okay, we have this advocate program. It costs X dollars per person.

Speaker B: Right. That's an investment.

Speaker A: Sorry. All right, great. We put that in place, it costs us this much money. Well, are they keeping track of what they're doing to redirect somebody to use the, um, outsourced, you know, pharmacy product that, you know, we pay a smaller fee and the employee pays nothing. All right, how many times did they do that? How many times did, did that happen? Okay, now we have some info on that. Or an employee called in, or they reached out to an employee about a knee surgery and they were going to go to the highest, most expensive facility in Charlotte, but then they moved them to somewhere else. That's half the cost. So now there's a lot of cost avoidance that, you know, we need them to show us information in order to see what that return.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And a lot of times they pay for themselves, you know, pretty quickly. You know, avoiding a couple major expenses can cover the whole year of the cost of the program.

Speaker B: Yeah. That's why it's important to evaluate all of those pieces so you know, what's working and how it adds up.

Speaker A: And it goes back to again, like having the relationship where you're, you don't have to meet monthly, but like we talk pretty much quarterly and then monthly we get reporting and we can see where we're at and we can ask questions, poke holes and you know, it's made us feel better about where we're at.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: That's help us with our compliance, uh, reporting and all that too, which is a huge weight off of the HR team's shoulders.

Speaker B: Oh, yes, I'm sure I know the fun part. Yeah, everyone's favorite part. Well, shifting to you, Wendy, how do you balance, since you lead the HR function, balance this cost management that all employers are focused on with employee engagement and retention at the same time?

Speaker C: Um, well, since I do have a background in finance, I at least understand where Pete and others are coming from. You know, you definitely want what's best for the company, bottom line, but you also need to show that you care about your employees and encourage that engagement. And like I mentioned before, um, we have advocacy. We have, um, the direct primary care, um, and then like to educate employees like we've added to our onboarding process. Um, my HR generalist, he's amazing. He goes and sits down with, um, each new employee and walks them through the benefits, shows them, you know, he helps them log on to our TPA's website to make sure they know how to do that. He will, um, show them the direct primary care, like, hey, this is an option for you if you're interested, and give them the little benefits of that. And, um, and show them how to contact advocacy as well and say, hey, if you have a question about a bill or if you get a diagnosis that you need more information on. So he's really good about just walking people through the process.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker C: Yeah. And then at open enrollment, we also, again, talk through everything we do offer in person and virtual open enrollments. And, um, we tend to bring in our direct primary care doctor that is affiliated with our tpa, um, to the live one in Charlotte, which is nice. And, um, just have them available for questions. And we have employees that may get up and tell their story. Like, I used advocacy to help me with my cancer diagnosis. And, you know, it's very impactful to have that as well. But we try to show all the employees the, the people engagement and, you know, hey, we care about you. Um, and then we get to share and the cost savings when they participate.

Speaker B: Yeah. With the healthcare holidays.

Speaker A: And I think you heard Wendy say another name, right? Taylor. So, um, we now have three people on our HR team. So in five years, we went from one to three.

Speaker C: Awesome.

Speaker A: Uh, um, so, like, that's investing in our people, our businesses to support the people.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: That's always a question, like, why do we need another person? But, like, you heard Wendy talking about, like, the value that that extra person has added in sitting down and educating. Talking to our employees, building relationship.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That helps with them, um, participate further in the program.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think that's such a great point, because you don't always think about, like, creating that personal connection and helping that employee really understand how much more likely they are to use it.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: And employee engagement is always the hardest part. Like, we have all these tools and all these things, but how do we get employees to actually use them? And so it's great to hear, like, that's a part of your strategy, like that personalization piece to help them understand.

Speaker A: And this is all a journey for us, right?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, we don't know what we didn't know five years ago. Like, adding in the new person to participate in onboarding and talking about all this at onboarding is like a new thing in the last six months.

Speaker C: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: Well, that's amazing. Then you saw a gap, and then you filled it.

Speaker A: So you talk about that. It took years to get to that point. Right. Because, you know, I have to help them sell that to our owners, that this is part of what we need to add to our budget.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So as a cfo, working together well is, like, important in order for them to meet what their strategic goals are.

Speaker B: I think that's so huge. I mean, it's obvious that you guys work really well together, collaborate in all these initiatives. What advice would you give to, you know, just the average employer there that maybe just they are a little bit more siloed for whatever reason, they don't maybe have this collaboration. Yeah. What advice would you give to them?

Speaker C: I really think you have to look at it as a team approach. You know, you can't. You got to get out of that siloed mentality. You can't think that way for it to be successful. Um, because employees won't adopt anything if they don't feel encouragement. And it's not easy for them to engage. You know, if it's too difficult, they're going to ignore it. And, you know, the HR team, they need to be sensitive to costs and understand that. So I think, you know, just meeting regularly and whether it's, you know, having a benefits team or whatever, that's finance and hr, whatever needs to be to happen to get everybody on the same page. But it's key.

Speaker B: Yep. You got to figure it out somehow. Yeah.

Speaker A: In both of my experiences, too, like my last company, we had, uh, kind of a healthcare committee. It was two HR people, two finance people. Right. Which I think is kind of unusual to have two finance people in it. But it actually worked out well for me as we kind of transitioned. So when I came to Duncan Parnell, it was, we had, uh, you know, one HR person and then two finance people. And then we added Wendy into that kind of mix. And then it was kind of 2 hr, 2 finance. And as we have those discussions, we're talking about what's important to each of us. We're being intentional about meeting and talking about it without our broker. Then we're meeting regularly with the broker. So like, being intentional is really important. And you don't see that at every kind of business doing that. And some of that comes from me, but some of it comes from the relationship we had before I even joined Duncan Parnell too.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: Yeah, that intentionality, that proactivity, uh, and we all have so many things to do, but you guys have definitely prioritized collaborating and evolving your strategy to manage your health care claims. And it's, it's showing if you haven't increased premiums in five years and you're giving premium holidays, like, it's obviously, you know, paying off. So that's awesome. All right, well, we've talked about so much today and it's been so great hearing about your journey. What is next for 2026 and beyond? How are you continuing to evolve this strategy?

Speaker C: I, um, think, you know, we really want to continue to encourage participation with the nurse advocate program with, um, direct primary care and also the pharmacy benefits management. You know, just all the different tools out there that we've already put in place, you know, where we can make them more robust, we'll do it. Um, but we work closely with our benefits advisor in that. And I know Pete's got some other ideas.

Speaker B: Um, okay.

Speaker A: Yeah, so, I mean, it's been pretty popular, all these weight loss drugs that have been popping up and like, they're very expensive and one of our, I guess, strategies has kind of been like, we're not doing that. But now as you look through at like what some of the benefits are coming up from some of these, it's like, okay, how do we find a way to get these into our program? Because there's a lot of good stuff happening with them outside of, you know, the weight loss or outside of, um, some things you don't expect. Right. Like it suppresses your eating. It also suppresses people from drinking. Like, there's a lot of different problems that are being solved. So I think my, um, kind of goal, strategy wise is, is how do we find maybe, maybe it's not the big name products but maybe there's some other products we can put in at a reasonable cost that our employees can use and take advantage of that's going to help their lifestyle and improve it. So that's probably the first one. The second one is um, I really want to find more like minded members to join our CRI Captive. Mhm. And it's like how do I find more people to join that? It's going to be a slow process. Right. It's a sales process to some extent. But the more people we have in the Captive, the better we can perform as a company and the better the Captive can perform as well. So those are kind of my top two initiatives.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think those are so great. That is going back to the GLP1s. It is just wild how it's all Alzheimer's.

Speaker C: Cardiovascular.

Speaker B: Cardiovascular, yes. And then like you said, um, alcohol, alcoholism. It's just wild. The um, you know, what they're finding that GLP1s can be used for. So I think that's so great. It's like how do we offer this but do it in a responsible way and not only managing the cost but helping, you know, obviously so it gets to the right people in the right manner. So that's great.

Speaker A: And I think we have the right tool in place too with our advocate program.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: That we can kind of control how this works and make sure we put it in the way that serves our employee base the best.

Speaker B: Right, right. And the second one, what do they say? Rising tides lift all boats. So yes, let's get more like minded people sharing ideas, you know, controlling what they can control and you know, we just all get better every time. So. Yeah, that'd be great too.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, as we kind of close out here, what is one piece of advice or sort of closing thought that you might leave our listeners based on all we talked about today, your strategy, collabor, anything you kind of want to leave with.

Speaker C: Just make sure you have the right benefits advisor, um, that person or group can help you navigate um, the landscape of all the healthcare field and if they have a good team, they can give you the data to show where you need to go and what's working and what's not and you know, just having a real partner.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: That's key.

Speaker B: 100%. Yep.

Speaker A: And I'll kind of pair on that Like I came out of the CPA firm world right. Where you know, clients put you out for bid every three years. So a lot of privately held companies don't look at reevaluating their relationships every few years. So even though we have a relationship we really, really like, every few years, you should be going out and looking at other options, other people, or putting that RFP out there. And it should challenge your current relationship. But you might also pick up some new stuff that you can bring back as well. So I would say don't fall into kind of the pattern of, uh, just keeping doing the same as last year. Make sure you're actually out there working as a group together to find, um, the best consultant for you, but make sure you're challenging them a little bit as well.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think that due diligence process is huge, and I think you touched on something a lot of people might not think about, that you learn something every time you do that process that you probably had no idea was out there in the world. So you can always learn something. That's great. Well, thank you for making, for flying and, uh, coming here and having this conversation. I hope that it was well worth it. It was so great to hear about your story and your journey, and I really think it's going to help other Captive members too, just, you know, hearing how you guys came into the Captive and how it's evolved. So thank you so much for being here today.

Speaker C: Thanks for having us.

Speaker A: Yeah, we appreciate it. It's been fun.