What I learned week 15

This week, unfortunately Beth Schively was not able to attend Tuesdays session. Luckily though she rescheduled for next Thursday. We did have the presence though of talking with Carolyn Cary who works at Aetna. I know from the beginning I had several questions for Carolyn. For one, since I’m from Connecticut, I was curious if she could shed some light on why Aetna decided to leave Hartford. And for obvious reasons, New York city has more talent and technology. But New York will also provide Aetna with nearly $10 million worth of incentives in the forms of property and sales tax credits, among other benefits. In addition, I know other classmates of mine, as well as myself, had questions about the recent merge Aetna had with CVS. Just a week ago, CVS Caremark bought out Aetna, and Carolyn is excited for the change. Katelyn asked the question, “Will we see more mergers and acquisitions going forward, is this the new trend for companies?” and Carolyn said yes. Companies are looking for breakthrough, and unique ways to better the lives of their patients. One out of the box partnership I thought was very clever was the partnership between Cigna and Uber. Before I elaborate on this partnership, let me start with this. Aetna has a 24/7 1-800 number for its customers for any questions, issues, or concerns. Some people, mainly elderly, call every day. The reason being, because they are lonely. But, instead of shooing them off the phone, the call center at Aetna is trained to stay on the phone with them and talk. There are “frequent fliers” Carolyn said that call every day and even have friendships with the call center workers. The workers may ask, “what’re you up to today?”, “How are the grandchildren?” etc. The reason they stay on the phone with them is because science proves that the elderly deteriorates faster (Dementia, depression, Alzheimer’s) if they are not around constant human engagement, face to face visits, communication, etc. Aetna is keeping their customers healthier by talking to them on the phone, in turn saving themselves money. Because, a $12 phone call costs a heck of a lot less than a couple thousand-dollar depression medication. So back to the Uber and Cigna example. Cigna is essentially doing the same thing, they are investing in Uber to keep their customers healthy. Cigna sends Ubers out to patients houses every so often to pick the customer up, (usually elderly because they can no longer drive) and drive them to their local community center, or a friend’s house, grocery store, etc. for that human engagement. Because again, a $10 Uber ride is far less expensive than those depression meds. Aetna is looking to partner with Uber as well in the future. For now, they currently do this thing called home assessment visits. This is when nurses going to the members homes, and evaluate their surroundings. It’s a chance to see if they’re routinely taking their medication, seeing how they organize their medication whether they be organized in a pill box or kept in their pillboxes scattered on the table. They can also check if they have any risks in their house, a loose floor board, a slippery rug that could both turn into tripping hazards. This would be another opportunity for Aetna to evaluate the members human engagement. If the nurse notices that the member didn’t get out of the house too much, they were no longer able to drive, and they didn’t receive too many visits from friends and family; they could provide the Uber service. Carolyn then went in a little further about the acquisition with CVS. There were some questions from the class on how the acquisition would change Aetna, and what changes would they expect to see. She mentioned that their hope with merging the two companies is to be more accessible for patients to answer questions in CVS locations. She also mentioned that she ideally would like to see Aetna employees at the CVS locations to be there to answer any member questions about their plans, like what is covered by their plan, advice, etc. Another change in the works is having Aetna kiosks in all CVS stores. These kiosks would provide the same services that the personnel would provide, but the members could have access to talk to their nurse, or other healthcare professional through skype or another sort of video chat software. The result is to better the care and quality for the member, and that means answer their questions on the spot and as accurately as possible. Carolyn went a lot into what she did for Aetna and how much she loved it. Carolyn and her team work for the data analytics department for Aetna. Many of the times, her team searches through databases for key words that reflect a negative association. She found through research that, “you people” is usually associated with a bad experience. Carolyn mainly focuses on grievance work, and predict problems so her team can contact the member before the problem occurs. With this solution, the organization has a 35% success rate in determining members who could have an issue in the near future and acting on that potential issue before it becomes an serious problem. This department forecast, and analyzes member data from thousands of databases. Most of the data they find, they format into Tableau documents which the team can then visualize and further analyze. Carolyn advised that Tableau is a great free tool for their tram, and us as young business students. She even said when interviewing prospective employees, she asks the interviewee to provide an example of something they made in Tableau. Carolyn also gave us some other great advice to take with us while we career search. The first piece of advice is to keep learning. Carolyn is obtaining her second master’s degree because she loves learning that much. She advised to read, read, read. Read books, articles, magazines, especially topics relating to your field because you need to stay current and know what’s going on. Another quote I remembered from Carolyn was, “You get to do what you raise your hand for.” In the business world, you have endless opportunities to do something different and beneficial like new projects, shadowing, helping other departments. But the catch is, you can only do these things if you show initiative. And lastly, Carolyn suggested to always throw your ideas out there. Sometimes you’re going to get rejected, but most of the time not. You never know, which is why you should always speak up. And in some cases, even if your idea is rejected, you have the chance to build from the first idea to create a better one that is accepted from the company.