In Review

Posted by Sutton McGraw 
on May 12, 2016
 
The greeters at the May 12 Rotary Club of Edina meeting were Rick Carlson, John Buttolph and Katie Smith. Les Jones helped at the front desk and Alan Mogck lead us in the invocation, Pledge of Allegiance and Four-Way Test. His invocation focused on the diversity of our club and different religious backgrounds

Terry Stevens introduced guests:
 
  • Wooj Buyn introduced Brandon Azbill, a real estate agent and on his fourth meeting visit
  • Tom Cook had guests including his wife, Britton Cook, a history and science teacher; and his daughter, Candice Cook, a hockey star
  • Jennifer Bennerotte welcomed Beth Landers, business development at Brookdale Senior Living
Hugh Hadlund kindly reminded our club about the upcoming Rotary Family Picnic. Sign-up sheets were at our tables and the event will be Tuesday, June 14, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the pavilion at Bryant Lake Park in Eden Prairie. We are in need of volunteers to help with the picnic. 
 
Sue Spalding, The Rotary Foundation director for our club, introduced Paul Harris Fellows:
  • John Solberg—PHF+1
  • Axel Steuer—PHF+1
  • Greg Yoch—PHF+1
  • Bill Milota—PHF+2
  • Sonja Tenjdin—PHF+2
  • Josh Sprague—PHF+3
  • Tom Bach—PHF+6
Jim Ryman, who is on the Community Service—Local Funding Committee, introduced Patricia Harmon, Executive Director of CornerHouse. Jim presented a $4,600 grant check from the Edina Rotary Foundation to CornerHouse. Patricia spoke to our group, thanking Edina Rotary Foundation for the grant, and mentioning Edina Rotarian Ed Padilla as a former board member for the organization. CornerHouse helps physically abused, sexually abused and those who have witnessed a violent crime. Some of the support CornerHouse provides is training for people under stress and family support services such as therapy and home visits. To date they have trained an impressive 30,000 people. The biggest service that is critically important comes from their forensic team. They provide the medical care and in-depth heath examinations, which their clients need. 
 
Next Brad Hepp, a past president of our club, came up and introduced the newest member of our Rotary Club, Tom Cook. David Clynes is Tom’s sponsor. We learned that Tom's father was a past Rotarian in Florida, and was the past president and a Paul Harris Fellow, which has inspired Tom to get involved with Rotary. Tom is currently the Senior Priest of Saint Stevens Church in Edina. His classification will be Clergy. 
 
Dan Hare introduced our speaker, Dirk McMahon with UnitedHealth Group. Dirk started out speaking about UHG’s  mission statement, which guides their company. UnitedHealth Group’s mission is to help people live healthier lives and to help make the health system work better for everyone. They try to carry out their mission by concentrating on: 
  1. Enhancing the performance of the health system and improve the overall health and well-being of the people they serve within their communities.
  2. Work with healthcare professionals and other key partners to expand access to quality health care so people get the care they need at an affordable price.   
  3. Support the physician/patient relationship and empower people with the information, guidance and tools they need to make personal health choices and decisions.  
Dirk then spoke about UnitedHealth Care’s core values:
  1. Integrity—honor commitments and never compromise ethics.
  2. Compassion—walk in the shoes of people we serve and those with whom we work.
  3. Relationships—build trust through collaboration.
  4. Innovation (improvements & efficiencies)—invent the future, learn from the past.
  5. Performance—demonstrate excellence in everything we do.
UHG’s corporate headquarters is in Minnetonka. They employ 13,000 individuals within the Twin Cities and a total of 16,000 individuals within the state of Minnesota. The corporation is a Fortune 15 company. The company believes in giving back and does so by sponsoring the Twin Cities Heart Walk, that took place at Target Field May 14. This year they raised a whopping $2,027,127. This is an annual walk, and UHG partners with the American Heart Association. 
    
The corporation is divided into two sections—Heath Services and Health Benefits. 
 
There are four subsidiaries of the Health Services division:
  1. OptumHealth—this service is provided locally within four to five hospitals and covers 300 health plans. 
  2. OptumInsight—a subsidiary concentrating on the overall analytics within the organization. The goal is to help better decisions made within heathcare system. 
  3. Optum Care—focuses on health intervention and prevention by designing and implementing custom information technology systems, and offers management consulting in the healthcare industry nationwide. 
  4. OptumRX—focuses on pharmacy benefits and lowering medication costs. Optum recently bought Catamaran RX for $14 billion. The company is similar to express scripts and CVS. They bought this so they could better service their plan sponsors for pharmacy benefits.
In 2015, Optum bought Med Express. Med Express is similar to an urgent care that we have here in the midwest. They purchased 170 stores that were located in the mid-Atlantic states. They felt this was a good step as it was brining a retail feel to health care. The current average visit at one of these clinics is 55 minutes and performs 90 percent of the services that an ER would, but that is cost effective, faster and has a nicer atmosphere than a hospital.
 
The following is under Health Benefits:
 
UnitedHeath Group’s benefit company is called UnitedHeath Care. There are 320 million people in the United States and UHG wanted to concentrate on how to better service individuals and companies through benefits. They currently provide commercial insurance, work with Medicare Retirement Services, Medicaid and Tri-care. Tri-care is a division of UnitedHeath Care that focuses on helping veterans and their families. 

Dirk also let us know that UnitedHealth Group recently created a company called Amil in Brazil. Amil is Brazil’s largest healthcare company, providing a wide range of medical and dental benefits, hospital and clinical services and advanced care management. Amil’s products and services range from free-choice comprehensive insurance coverage to more affordable products that cater to customers and consumers with a broad range of incomes and healthcare needs.
 
Dirk went on to say that out of the 320 million people living in the United States, 30 million people are not covered under the current Obama Care act. 
 
UnitedHeath Group’s stresses the importance of partnering with doctor and nurses so they provide good data to their medical team and individuals hoping to optimize the healthcare practice. UnitedHeath Group strongly believes in the importance of technology. They spent $3 billion in technology last year. They processed 2 million claims in 2015. The money and technology has been invested in administrative, clinical efficiency and technology that helps individuals pick out their healthcare costs. 

One of the programs that help individuals look at their healthcare coverage is called Link. Link helps providers talk and work better. An example is prior authorizations from doctors online. This helps with overall efficiencies and consumers. And ultimately, Link provides better outcomes and lowers costs.

Ross Peterson thanked Dirk. We donated an e-book to Edina High School in the speaker's honor.