Our Work is of Interest and Value to Everyone
Third Party Administrators & Benefits Consultants
To remain competitive with the national carriers, TPAs must collaborate and harness the power they wield as managers of benefit plans for 40+ million Americans. The changes occurring in medicine and health care challenge the stability of those who are slow to adapt. These changes involve adopting new technologies and even novel ways of conducting business TPAs — along with their broker and consultant partners — are typically held responsible for not only identifying, evaluating and assessing new innovations, but also putting them into practice in a way that satisfices ERISA's requirements.
The Research Consortium was purpose-built to help TPAs and professional benefits advisors remain at the forefront of change, a hallmark of the industry our founders helped to pioneer several decades ago. As a byproduct of this effort, participating TPAs not only facilitate the early vetting of new technologies, they meaningfully contribute to the advancement of medical research and improved patient care.
Plan Sponsors & Plan Participants
Healthcare plans are a key factor in the employment equation as they help to attract and retain employees. Today, sponsoring a health plan is much more difficult than ever before, especially as it regards assessing and evaluating new, expensive and often unproven medical technologies and health innovations to include in a plan. At the same time, Plan Participants are more involved with the management of their healthcare, for good reason: technology enables them to do so, from the comfort of their home, on a smartphone. We want to leverage blockchain, genomics and AI to take this to the next level.
We created the Research Consortium to be an industry-wide collaboration aimed at harnessing the power of the self-funded community to perform real-world translational research and get proven medical technologies and innovations into widespread clinical use faster. Ultimately, we intend to do this with the HERO Voluntary Healthcare Research Benefit: a no-cost plan option that will provide Plan Participants with an opportunity help assess new medical technologies and health innovations; enroll in a clinical-research-as-a-care-option program to focus more resources on their care; and accelerate medical research by contributing health data to medical researchers...all while earning funds and rewards to apply to deductibles, coinsurance, bills, etc.
Stop-Loss Carriers & Commercial Health Insurers
The frequency and severity of high-cost medical claims continue to increase; for reasons that often elude the best and the brightest. Today, it is imperative that expensive medical treatments and technologies be vetted to identify both best value options and low-clinical value treatments. This is best done by a trusted, unbiased source that is well-versed in self-funding, employer stop loss, ERISA and regulatory compliance...ergo, the Research Consortium.
Our studies — conducted in conjunction with researchers from leading academic and medical institutions — focus on topics of interest to payers: ROI, value (vs the standard of care), medical outcomes, comparative effectiveness, quality of care and patient satisfaction. We are conduct research and provide unbiased, impartial guidance at no cost to payers owing to a novel sustainability model that benefits third party researchers and advances medical research.
Healthcare Providers & At-Risk Health Systems
Clinicians benefit from our real world studies which assess the value of new medical technologies and health innovations. In the future, we hope to be able to facilitate clinical-research-as-a care-options. In these arrangements, participating in clinical research is a no-cost healthplan covered care option to be made available alongside traditional care and providers: the intent being to integrate clinical research care into a patient’s overall continuum of care.
Medical Researchers, Entrepreneurs & Innovators
Medical researchers desperately need clinical trial participants, better and more meaningful healthcare data, and a less costly and more efficient way to conduct research. A goal of the Research Consortium is to provide scientists and medical researchers with access to the estimated 40 million Americans who are covered under self-funded benefit arrangements — healthcare plans that are largely managed by a few dozen commercial companies, and operated on a handful of technology platforms — attributes that can be leveraged to advance research in an efficient, effective and expedient manner.
Investors, Financiers & Benefactors
In the normal course of our work, it is not surprisingly that we become aware of new medical technologies and healthcare innovations that are in various stages of development and deployment. When we are able, we welcome the opportunity to connect innovators, founders and entrepreneurs with investors, corporate benefactors, family offices and those who award research grants and stipends. We do this without the expectation of compensation.