Building Bridges Between Startups and Employers in Healthcare with Ryan Koo, Employee Benefits Consultant at Marsh McLennan Agency

[00:00:01] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.

[00:00:33] Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Expanding Access, recorded live here at the Behavioral Health Tech Conference in Arizona. I've got the privilege of hosting Ryan Koo today. He is an Employee Benefits Consultant at Marsh McLennan Agency and just a huge fan of moving the ecosystem forward in the mental health space. Ryan, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. True pleasure.

[00:00:59] And so, look, I always want to understand what brings people to the conference. Why are you here? Yeah, first and foremost, I love the community that Salome's brought together. So a lot of the things that we do at Marsh McLennan and why I'm here is just to expand and broaden the community, help people connect the dots of how we can improve healthcare in our country. I love it. You know, the role you play is critical.

[00:01:26] And for the people that may not know how Marsh and McLennan Agency works and what your focus areas are, help them understand. What do you guys do and why do you do it? Yeah. So first, Marsh McLennan Agency and Marsh is one of the largest brokerage firms in the global aid. Where I sit under Marsh McLennan Agency is the emerging to bid market arm. I also help lead our digital health practice where we focus on working with these vendors as employers.

[00:01:54] And so I think one of the things that I help with in this space is understanding if one of these vendors is trying to sell to an employer, how do they actually think about being an employer themselves and maybe just flipping the script a little bit so that they can ultimately think about what challenges employers do face when they are trying to sell to someone else. I love that. And that perspective is critical, especially in this space. What challenges are you seeing that employers are faced with today mostly?

[00:02:24] Yeah, I think certainly coming out of COVID and then with the macroeconomic environment with inflation and shortages with physicians, I think employers by and large are still facing the same challenges that they have over the past few years, which is how do you curb health care costs? How do you still improve access?

[00:02:43] And how do you encourage your employees and population to maintain health and really take a proactive approach on how you're thinking about your own health? Yeah, no, for sure. And mental health is a big one in this space as well. What trends are you seeing in health care in general? Yeah, I mean, we actually just released our trends report recently and mental health is still a big issue in the U.S.

[00:03:11] I think quality access and affordability remains still top of mind for a lot of employers. And we as brokers and consultants are really at the forefront to be able to help our employers think through what that looks like. So I like to think that I speak as a translator between HR and finance, where we're also helping build culture and being able to really meet that bottom line for our employers that are trying to look at costs in a very meaningful way.

[00:03:40] Yeah. And Ryan, what are you seeing work well lately? Yeah, I see a lot of things working well. One of the things in particular are these mental health vendors that are solving for acute and severe chronic needs. Things like eating disorders, things like severe anxiety, depression.

[00:03:59] Any instance where you can ultimately steer care out of inpatient and into other modalities of care certainly have a better and broader impact to the whole ecosystem. That's great. Some great examples there. What are some things that the startups you mentioned, they should be looking to understand about selling to employers?

[00:04:21] Yeah, I think when you're selling to an employer, it's really important to understand that each employer is different and everybody is acting rationally within their own organization. So I think it's also important to not only have solid relationships from national level, but really good, strong relationship from a local level. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, when you're selling to an employer and you're trying to get engagement, it's really important to be in the room when you're not actually in the room.

[00:04:50] So how can you do that by essentially getting the marketing and the messaging out so that broker consultants like me, when the time arises, bring you to the table? Yeah, and that's interesting too, right? I know I've, you know, I talked to a lot of startups and many of them don't really understand how those relationships work and how the selling works. What tips would you give them? Like, when should they reach out to you and how can they work with you? What are you seeing as good practices in my respect?

[00:05:18] I would say they can reach out to me at any time, but ultimately you would want to understand what are you solving for? What are you trying to replace? And know what the market looks like. If you can distill that within a 10 second pitch, it's really easy for me to help them navigate on maybe what the next step is. It could be connecting them to the broader ecosystem. It could just be helping them think through what a go-to-market might be.

[00:05:48] It could be thinking through what partnerships look like too. So I think different stages, different challenges. Love it. Great tips there, Ryan, that I think our viewers and listeners will be able to benefit from. As we wrap up today, what closing thought do you want to leave our viewers and listeners with? And where can they reach out to you and the company? Yeah, they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. My name is Ryan Koo, R-I-N-K-O-O. I love just kind of building community, but I feel like my closing thought would be keep innovating.

[00:06:18] Keep thinking through what integration looks like because at the end of the day, we are all trying to collectively improve access care affordability. And knowing who the players are and what really are driving their decisions is going to matter most. Love that. Great call to action there and something for all of us to be thinking about. Ryan Koo, employee benefits consultant at Marsh McLennan Agency with us, sharing some massive value around how to make things work in this space.

[00:06:48] Thank you all for tuning in. And Ryan, thanks for being with us. Thank you. This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency.

[00:07:13] Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945. Thank you. Thank you.