Michael Treash Takes Helm at Health New England

A Time to Re-energize

“This is complicated, but it’s not that complex.”

That’s how Michael Treash chose to describe the challenges he faces as he takes the helm at Health New England, and there are many of them, including those common to all health plans — everything from the rising cost of healthcare to the poor image of this industry to integrating technology (and paying for it).

But his most immediate challenge involves re-energizing a company that was due to be sold by its parent, Baystate Health, before that sale was terminated, and creating a growth plan for the short and long terms. And here’s where it’s not that complex, he told BusinessWest.

“We’re going to have to focus on growth and on opportunities,” he said, noting that the vast majority of these lie within Medicare and with small-business groups. “We can focus on a handful of things, most of them quality-driven, where we can change the narrative and change the game.”

Elaborating, he said doing this comes down to listening, responding, and providing value to members, and Treash firmly believes that provider-based health plans, like Health New England, are uniquely positioned to create needed trust and generate value for members.

“The beauty of provider-based health plans, the integrated system, is that we can work with our clinical partners to craft messages,” he went on. “Let’s be honest — when you list what industries you trust the most, rarely do you see health insurers on this list; we’re just above tobacco companies, usually. People trust their physician and their pharmacist more than they trust us. We can craft a really meaningful message, and that is our opportunity; that’s how we transfer power to the consumer.”

Treash most recently served as chief operating officer and senior vice president at Health Alliance Plan in Detroit, and his previous leadership roles include vice president of Enterprise Operations at Priority Health in Grand Rapids, Mich., interim CEO of Missouri Health Care Cooperative, COO of the Outsource Group, and executive vice president and COO at Mercy Health Plans in Chesterfield, Mo.

“You can actually work with physicians and nurses and people who are on the front lines, and not many people who work with insurers can say that. That’s what attracts me. It’s a unique space — I can stay close to the customer; I can stay close to the clinician. That’s how you innovate; that’s how you influence the customer experience. I wouldn’t give up this space for anything.”

Treash’s appointment comes just a few months after that planned sale of Health New England to Point32Health was effectively terminated. When asked if the company lost momentum, in all its various forms — from workforce morale to making needed investments in technology — during the lengthy sale process, and how much, Treash didn’t answer that question directly, opting instead to focus on what will happen next, and also what happened at Health Alliance Plan.

“I got there right after an acquisition didn’t go through. The organization needed an energy boost, and it needed to get re-engaged with its parent, similar to where we’re at,” he explained. “Eight years later, we were an organization where people wanted to come to work for us, we were making money while the rest of the insurers in the state were losing money, and we were growing.

“We can do it here,” he went on, adding that he intends to draw on his vast experience with provider-based plans to generate growth, as he did at Priority Health, which is in many ways similar to Health New England and served a region comparable to this one.

“It was owned by a large provider system, it’s a mid-sized city, the competitive landscape is pretty darned similar,” he explained. “When I was there, we had incredible growth; we went from 700,000 members to 1.1 million, and we did that by focusing on Medicare, we focused on quality, we focused on the customer experience.”

The plan will be to do the same at Health New England, where there will be a hard focus on Medicare and certain segments within it amid the ongoing open enrollment period.

“Age 65 — that is our sweet spot because they’re new to Medicare and they’re making decisions,” he said, while explaining one example of broad and emerging strategies to grow membership, currently at about 164,000. “We have to get in front of them and illustrate that we can offer a different experience.”

“There’s an adage in this industry … if you just do the basics well, you can really get ahead,” he went on. “I believe that, but things are changing; I don’t think doing the basics well is good enough anymore — we really have to use our data assets and use our collective insights into the patient experience, and we need to morph that into something which is tangible.”

“When I say, ‘this is where we’re going to head,’ so far, what I’ve heard is, ‘that’s great; how fast can we go?’”

For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Treash about his plans for re-energizing the company and achieving the kind of growth he’s generated elsewhere.

Making Connections

Treash said he has spent almost his entire career with provider-based health plans and described this as a “unique space,” one he enjoys working within.

“You can actually work with physicians and nurses and people who are on the front lines, and not many people who work with insurers can say that,” he explained. “That’s what attracts me. It’s a unique space — I can stay close to the customer; I can stay close to the clinician. That’s how you innovate; that’s how you influence the customer experience. I wouldn’t give up this space for anything.

“The provider space itself … we’re constantly in marriage counseling between the two of us; when we’re aligned, it is remarkable what we can accomplish,” he went on. “I’ve been with provider-based health plans in competitive markets such as Detroit and St. Louis, and I’ve also been in smaller cities and rural areas in Texas and West Michigan. It’s different challenges; in competitive markets, like Boston, it’s a challenge — you have competitive health systems; you have competitive health plans. It’s very different in a market like this, where you have a unique opportunity to connect with the community, and part of our challenge here is that we are — and we can be more of — a driver of the local economy.”

Treash arrived in Springfield in mid-October and immediately commenced what he called a comprehensive listening tour, one that will continue for some time and involve a number of constituencies, including local officials, business leaders, those in the healthcare community, and, especially, his own employees, who have been through a challenging time for the company and the industry.

“They’ve been through the ringer, and right now, they want direction,” he explained. “I’m getting good responses, though. When I say, ‘this is where we’re going to head,’ so far, what I’ve heard is, ‘that’s great; how fast can we go?’”

As noted earlier, he didn’t want to talk about the sale that was terminated and what was lost during that process. “If I had a time machine, I’d go back and try to change that narrative, but I can’t do that right now — the only thing I can speak to is where we go from here.

“Right now, we’ve got to get energized, and where we can get energized is by focusing on Medicare, because we have opportunities there to change the experience of Medicare. We have opportunity to grow; we have opportunity to recapture revenue which is leaving Western Mass. — these are things I can change.”

“And right now, we’ve got to get energized, and where we can get energized is by focusing on Medicare, because we have opportunities there to change the experience of Medicare. We have opportunity to grow; we have opportunity to recapture revenue which is leaving Western Mass. — these are things I can change.”

Assessing the current landscape for providers, Treash acknowledged the obvious — “in this business, scale is our enemy.”

“We have to do the same things that United does, Aetna does, Cigna does, Blue Cross of Massachusetts does, but we don’t have 5 million members to spread those fixed costs across,” he explained, adding that, despite this size disadvantage, the company can compete by making full and effective use of technology and data.

“We’re at an inflection point in this industry right now,” he said. “The game is about data and insights, using your combined data assets to drive insights, and that’s not very capital-intensive; that’s about training your leaders and asking your leaders, mid-career, to shift and enter the gray area.

“Most of my folks, if you ask them — and if you go to any insurer and ask the people who have fancy titles — ‘on your résumé, do you have anything about how you use data to grow the business, improve the business, and improve the customer experience?’ you will not see a single hand go up.

“Then, if you ask them, ‘do you think you need to add that to your résumé to advance your career in the next decade?’ every hand would go up; they get it,” he continued. “That is the equalizer for us. We’ll use our data assets to create a new way to compete through customer experience.”

Healthy Discussions

As he talked about where he wants to take the company, Treash related a recent experience at Austin Airport and Southwest Airlines.

“There was this big digital board, and they’ve got, ‘Gate A13 — Better Hurry Up.’ ‘Gate A14 — You Have Time for a Cup of Coffee.’ ‘Gate A15 — You Can Grab Breakfast.’ I thought, ‘that’s great because that’s what I really wanted to know.’ They thought ahead to what the consumer was thinking.

“That’s our opportunity,” he went on. “Our opportunity is to see craziness and the things that go off the rails before you do and get in front of it. And if something does go off the rails, acknowledge it; I don’t want to make you have to call me.”

Such thinking will help drive the growth strategy for Health New England, the blueprint for which will emerge in the months to come, he said, emphasizing that the opportunities are in Medicare and small-employer groups.

With the latter, he acknowledged that small businesses are certainly the mainstay of the regional economy, and thus there is obvious potential for growth.

But there is also considerable competition for that segment of the market, he said, adding that he faces a learning curve when it comes to this specific market and its needs, as well as the broker community that plays a vital role in this process.

With Medicare, the basic strategy calls for segmenting the market and responding to the needs of the various segments, he explained.

“That creates real opportunities when we engage with providers because now we look at Medicare differently,” Treash noted. “As an insurer, we need to have a mix — we need to have folks out there who are going to supplement the folks who are sick, and you need to have those people who have a lot going on in their lives healthcare-wise, because we’re a nonprofit organization, and we have a fiduciary responsibility to serve everyone; you have to balance it out.”

As an example of these segments, he mentioned younger seniors new to Medicare.

“It takes us a couple of years to get them engaged and get them to the point where we have a meaningful, engaged relationship,” he noted. “If we lose them in that first two years, we’ve lost a lot of effort. We have to get people to year two, which means engaging them on a personal level, reminding them why they enrolled in Health New England and getting their physician partners involved and doing outreach.

“If we get them to year two, they become more comfortable with us because it’s a very price-sensitive market, and price elasticity is sky-high,” he continued. “Once we get them to year two, we’ve done our job engaging them in a meaningful manner, the price elasticity goes down, and we’ve created that stickiness.”

Meanwhile, within all segments, the company must work hard to understand how to meet and communicate with them, Treash told BusinessWest.

“How you connect with someone who’s going through cancer is very different from how you connect with someone dealing with pulmonary disease and learning how to live with that on an ongoing basis,” he said. “We have to figure out how we message those individuals and where we message them. We don’t want to see providers texting people with a cancer diagnosis, but there are certain things you want to hear from your provider on your time.

“The folks aging into Medicare right now are digital junkies,” he went on. “If you are not present with them both on an individual basis — taking their phone calls and being willing to have one-on-ones with them — and if you’re not willing to meet them on their iPad, you’re falling down.”

Rather than fall down, Treash wants Health New England to move up, grow membership, become an employer of choice, and broaden its overall impact in the community.

And as he said, the path to get there is complicated, but not that complex.