Employee Benefit Trust Minutes - 04/08/2010City of Wichita Falls
Employee Benefits ,crust Board N inutes
April 8`h, 2010
The meeting was held i►u the City Council Conference Room, 1300 Seventh Street, Wichita
Falls, TX 76301.
Present: Lanham Lyne, City Mayor
Darron Leiker, City Manager
Jim Dockery, Asst. City Manager /CFO
Miles Risley, City Attorney
Tammy Guerra, Human Resources Manager
Becky Chapman, Employee Benefits Coordinator
Agenda Items:
i. Call to Order- Meeting was called to order at 2:OOpm.
ii. Approval of Minutes- Motion was made by Miles Risley to approve the
March minutes, second by Jim Dockery. The motion carried
unanimously.
iii. Consideration and discussion of retaining a benefits consulting firm-
1. Gabriel, Roeder, Smith & Company:
Becky Chapman introduced GRS representatives, Jim Shaefer and
Amy Cohen and they started off the presentation with their services
and pricing. The pricing presented was the retainer price of $42,000
Which includes the construction of a data warehouse. GRS constructs
the data warehouse from a monthly claim data drop that comes directly
from BCBS. Its purpose is to generate reports that will help identity
plan design changes or other cost saving measures. Over a reasonable
period of time, GRS can balance the friction between organizational
tension and the cost reduction targets (plan design, contributions,
vendor management and eligibility provision). GRS analyzed our
current plan options and recommended that we consider a HSA option
(portable and absence of "use it or loose it" feature) for the core plan,
decrease the co -pay and increase the maximum benefit allowance.
They also suggested introducing an urgent care benefit.
2. Holmes itfurph y and Associates:
Holmes Murphy and Associates representatives are Jarrad Wills and
Melissa Paxton. Jarrad started out the presentation by giving a history
of the company. Holmes Murphy and Associates lleadqua.rters are
located in Des Moines, Iowa and in 1989 it expanded to Texas and
they have been in business over 75 years. Holmes Murphy has
experience in clinical process integration, chronic condition
management, executive benefits, underwriting and actuarial services.
They also have a call center with four bilingual representatives to
provide back up assistance. Holmes Murphy has concluded that the
way to lower health expenses in the long -term is to improve the health
of the employee population. They have what they call it plan change
model which takes our experience, participation, premiums and any
information related to our plans and roll it up to actuarial or dynamic
modeling tool which will provide information that will help them
decide to improve our plans.
3. IPS Advisr i-s
IPS representatives, Randy Martell, Brent Weegar and Paige Bublik,
started their presentation with a brief summary on IPS's history. IPS
was started 30 years ago in Dallas. It has 65 full time employees in
Dallas /Austin /Fort Worth offices. They are partners of the National
Financial Partners which gives them a footprint nationally. They are
part of 188 offices and approximately 1,500 benefit professionals
nationwide assisting around 30,000 clients. A large part of their
clientele is municipalities, so they have the experience in this type of
industry. Part of their services include... preparing employee
communications and assisting with COBRA /HIPAA compliance
related questions. They also provide third party claim audit services in
which they negotiate additional discounts for out of network and
secondary network physicians. They have found that this resulted in
an additional 30% discount for having the claim auditing service in
place. In addition, IPS performs a pharmacy re- pricing analysis to
maximize client savings. They will assist the city in negotiating and
drafting contracts with providers and they will assess our wellness
program and on -site clinic operations.
IPS will complete an evaluation on our current benefits program by
reviewing five years of benefits history and they will then use that
information for benehmarking and gap analysis. In addition, they will
complete a historical financial funding analysis, network provider
discount analysis, and comprehensive compliance audit and develop
reports and recommendations. The next step will be to develop a
2010 -2015 benefits plan strategy to review the plan objectives and
goals for the city. Within the strategy, IPS likes to complete all
employee survey to get feedback from the employees that will be
impacted and in some cases conduct focus group meetings. The third
step is to coordinate a competitive purchasing process. To do this, they
advise and assist in the RFP process with all of our benefits providers.
In conclusion, the EBT Board members requested time to review the
presentation packages and they will schedule another EBT meeting to
approve the final decision.
iv. Consideration and possible approval of allowing retirees that are riot oil
the City's insurance plan to use the on -site clinic for a fee- Use of the
on -site clinic for the retirees that are not on the City's insurance plan
will be charged $25.00 per visit. Motion was made to approve the
changes by Darron L,eiker. second by Jim Dockery. The motion carried
unanimously.
v. Consideration and disCLISSiorl of the recent contract termination between
Titanium Emergency Group and Blue Cross Blue Shield- Tammy
Guerra explained that Becky Chapman prepared a packet of information
discussing the changes TEG made to their contract with BOBS to be
distributed to those employees that are covered on the City's healtli plan.
Included in the packet was a memo explaining the changes and copies of
the benefit structure for both the Core and Enhanced plan. Darron
suggested getting something in writing from TEG and BCBS on our
concerns and what they are doing to work out the situation.
vi. Open Session
vii. Adjourn at 4:39pnr
Submitted by:
Becky Chapman
Employee Benefits Coordinator
7.
ilex Risley, C irman
94te