June 11, 2015

Hello CT Broker Team,

I hope you all are well and that you survived all the snow we had this winter. Unless you are snowmobiler, I’m not sure that anyone enjoys that amount of snow. We are finally in the mist of Summer, and I for one, am thankful for the warm weather.

Enough about the weather though, I’d like to share some Health New England news with all of you. Please take a few minutes to read on, so you can see what Health New England’s been up to and what’s coming for this year’s AEP 2015-2016 season.

Service Area News:  Health New England received conditional approval from CMS to expand our service area to Tolland County, CT. Approval is contingent on Health New England’s bid being approved in August, but so far…everything looks good. We are excited about this expansion as Tolland County has several towns that border Massachusetts. We feel our products, services, and access to Massachusetts providers will be a great fit for some of the Medicare beneficiaries in Tolland County, CT.

With Health New England’s expansion into Tolland County; I do not anticipate recruiting additional brokers. We have a great group of brokers and I’m hoping many of you already sell in Tolland County. Please let me know if you have business/sell in Tolland County, CT by June 19, 2015. This will help me determine if I need to recruit additional brokers for the Tolland County Expansion. If additional brokers are required, we prefer to receive referrals from you. If you have recommendations of reputable brokers with a Medicare book of business; please don’t hesitate to let me know.

BID News: Health New England successfully submitted its 2016 BID on June 1, 2015. Thank you so much for the valuable feedback you gave us post AEP. We took all of your thoughts, concerns, and recommendations into mind when evaluating benefits for 2016; also considering the price of the plans. We will be sharing benefits once the bid is approved, most likely in early September during training.

Community News: The Health New England Sales team has been out and about in the Hartford Community. Listed below are some of the events we have supported:

• We worked with Enfield Senior Center to purchase outdoor fitness equipment for their outdoor walking trail. The ribbon cutting event took place last week and the equipment will be used by many residents in the community.
• We’ve also brought our bone density machine and a leafy greens cooking class to the Enfield Senior Center.
• We participated in the West Hartford Senior Center Health Fair
• We committed to the Ellington Senior Center Health Fair in October and will also be bringing our bone density machine for use at the fair.

Supporting the community we serve is a top priority for Health New England and it sure does keep us busy outside of AEP.

Preparing for AEP: Health New England, like most other Medicare Advantage plans, is starting to prepare for AEP. We are planning our upcoming informational session schedule and hope to be in either Tolland or Hartford County, CT at least once a week during the Fall. Similar to last year, if you would like to hold dedicated Health New England community meetings – we will allow this. We will advertise these dates in our direct mailers, online, and in our newspaper advertisements. Please let me know, no later than July 15, 2015 if you plan on holding AEP sessions. I will need to know all the logistics by August 1, 2015, so I can upload into the HPMS system.

Network News: We are actively working on our provider network by focusing on closing gaps in the Hartford Healthcare/ICP Network, to ensure we have all of their physicians contracted. We are also focused on the list of providers that you submitted throughout AEP, and are reaching out to each of these groups. There are lots of discussions going on with many providers in CT; our Contracting team has been busy.

Materials: We’ve also started to look at our materials. If there are materials that you wish we had, would like to see changed etc., please let me know as soon as possible. We are happy to take your suggestions and feedback, as we want to ensure our materials are simple to use and clear to understand.

In closing, I want to say thank you! Thank you for coming out to learn about Health New England last summer, going through the Health New England specific training/licensing, and becoming an appointed broker in our network. As a new plan to the CT market place, we appreciate your continued support and patience as we continue to build our product, brand and network in CT. I envision good things to come with Health New England’s expansion into Connecticut.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me with any questions. Now that AEP is fast approaching, you can be sure that you will be hearing from me more and more.

Have a great summer!

Sarah Fernandes
Health New England Medicare Sales Manager