Health Insurance Market Intelligence Tips – Part 3

Stay Current

It is incredibly easy to become complacent in your intelligence gathering.  It is unacceptable to assume your data will always be relevant and useful.

Keeping your health insurance market intelligence data current allows you to keep your data in context.  This context will assist you in making high-level decisions based on preceding events.

• What happened before?
• How did we react then?
• What were the results of that reaction?

The important questions then become:

• How can I keep so much information up to date?
• How will this help me stay ahead of the competition?

How can I keep so much information up to date?  The software programs mentioned in Part 2 can be scheduled to run as often as you'd like. Since most health insurance companies update their data once a month, I would recommend gathering data just as often. Rates and coverage are constantly changing, which is why it is so important to keep current.

How will this help me stay ahead of the competition?  The data and information gained from health insurance market intelligence software can often be used however you wish. The departments listed in the introduction can each use the information uniquely, and all of them will assist in making more informed decisions about how to maximize value and ultimately gain market share. It can also be used for long term tracking to determine how volatile specific individual plans are to certain changes in the market.

For example, the pre-existing condition change in the health care legislation might have a greater impact on one company and/or plan when compared to another.  And tracking changes that occurred with you and your competitors when that provision went active will show you how they dealt with that challenge.

Knowing how your competitors react to certain changes in the market is important to understand.  This knowledge will allow you to gain more insight into how to position your company for maximum growth potential and minimizing the risks incurred to achieve that growth. The more you know, the better your position will be.

To put this all into perspective, please stand by for the last installment which will be the summary and conclusion.