GUAA Risk Review

GUAA Risk Review, Fall 2002

Dental Committee Review

By Kim Reese
Fortis Benefits

The nation's capitol served as a wonderful backdrop to the June GUAA session at the Hyatt Regency. Although late June in Washington DC is hot and sticky, the accommodations were superb and our proximity to the National Mall, Smithsonian, White House, Capitol Building et al was great. This was the freshman session for the recently [re-formed] dental committee and we enjoyed a good turnout for the three dental workshops that were held.

Bill Wade and Jim O'Connell, both of Ameritas, and Jennifer Kyle of Fortis Benefits were part of a panel that discussed large dental case underwriting and the formal RFP process. The presentation showed actual experience-rating calculations and the resulting rating as related to the amount of detail information received on the front end. There was a valuable exchange of thoughts and perspective from various attendees on specific pieces of the calculation. Jennifer discussed the formal RFP process from a large case standpoint and the expectations and pitfalls for carriers bidding on this type of business.

Kim Reese moderated the popular Let's Talk Shop Dental session. The topics varied from issues related to PEO's, to organizational structure in underwriting areas represented, and partnering with other carriers for dual choice business. There was a collective agreement that we would like to hear more from specific carriers not in attendance and that the committee would work on soliciting their participation. We also conducted a general survey of the 16 participants to assess their involvement with dental specifically, the GUAA, and what future topics they wou .ike to see covered. Of our participants, 81% have been attending GUAA less than 5 years and just over half of the group is focused on dental only for the GUAA workshops.

Dr. Jim Barrett, M.S., DMD of Fortis Benefits gave a presentation on the dental managed care world. He gave a comprehensive view of the past, present, and future of recruiting and maintaining managed care networks - - both on PPO and prepaid business. He gave perspectives as a former practicing dentist as well as statistics related to the demographics of the current dental provider community. Dr.Barrett quantified the recruiting costs and management differential between PPO and prepaid networks as well.

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