Becoming Canada's First Integrated Health Organisation DIGITAL REPORT 2021
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Becoming Canada's First Integrated Health Organisation
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GREEN SHIELD CANADA
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Green Shield Canada tells us about becoming Canada's first health insurer to integrate health services, all with a strong social mission at its core
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reen Shield Canada (GSC) is best known as one of the country's largest health and dental benefits providers, and in the six decades since it was established has maintained its social mission at its core. Bill Wilkinson, a pharmacist from Windsor in Ontario, decided to start the company after a young mother visited his store and was faced with having to choose between paying for her daughter’s prescription or her own. This led Wilkinson, along with four other pharmacists, to create North America’s first pre-paid drug plan, a concept that is widely in use today. CEO and President Zahid Salman explains that GSC today remains committed to its structure as a not for profit, social enterprise whose business earnings are used to fund its social impact priorities. "Our business activities, community investment and health system advocacy work all support better health outcomes in our communities,” he says. "In the end, we operate for the purpose of making it easier for people to live their healthiest lives, and our mission is delivering meaningful solutions to improve health and wellbeing. Our purpose and our mission are what guides our business and social impact priorities." To better serve its customers, GSC is currently repositioning itself, from being solely a health and dental benefits carrier to being Canada's only integrated health greenshield.ca
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"We're moving to radically enhanced CRM capabilities, new data and analytics platforms, and develop an increased cloud posture" DAVID WILLOWS
EVP INNOVATION AND MARKETING
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services organisation with capability across health insurance, pharmacy benefits management, health and benefits administration, and health services delivery. Salman says this expansion will in turn help increase the company's social impact. It will generate greater funding and provide new service capabilities that can be deployed in local communities. This has led to the current focus on digital transformation at the company, which will be crucial as GSC enters new markets and deploys new services. "A key component of the broader business transformation we are undergoing will be digital, as the vision for our future business models is digitalfirst," Salman says. "While GSC has always been strong from a technology perspective,
GREEN SHIELD CANADA
ZAHID SALMAN TITLE: CEO AND PRESIDENT
as evidenced by our proprietary Advantage claims and pharmacy benefits management platform being used by other providers in the market, being digital-first across our business lines will need to be enabled by things like increased agility, having greater customer insight, delivering improved analytics to our plan sponsors to support their decision making, and by better leveraging the cloud." The company recently took its first step along this journey by launching “GSC everywhere”, a web and mobile portal that serves existing plan members, and that was co-designed with their input. "The aim was to be modern and flexible and ease navigation for the basics – claim submission and eligibility checks" David Willows, EVP
EXECUTIVE BIO
COMPANY: GREEN SHIELD CANADA Zahid Salman joined Green Shield Canada as CEO and President in September 2018. Prior to this he spent several years in executive roles at various global HR services and wellbeing organisations. He says that what drew him to the position at GSC was the focus on its social mission, and being able to expand its social impact. Salman describes his management style as "results oriented, but client and people focused. That fits nicely with our organisational values, which are putting client's needs first, positioning people for success, and committing to a culture of excellence. I think my style has definitely evolved over the years based not just on what I've experienced and learned, but also based on the attributes needed to lead today. The workforce has vastly different expectations compared to 30 years ago."
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Accenture and GSC: Building a prosperous relationship Paulo Salomao of Accenture tells us how they are helping Green Shield Canada to digitally transform their business. Paulo Salomao is a Managing Director for Financial Services at Accenture Canada, where he has overall responsibility for the company’s insurance business in the country. He is also responsible for the day-to-day partnership with Green Shield Canada (GSC), one of the country’s largest health and dental benefits providers. Salomao explains that the partnership formed when GSC was looking for a lead partner to help drive their ambitious digital transformation program. “They wanted to both introduce a new digital health business, as well as drive a step change in the performance of the legacy group benefits business” he says. Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security across 40 industries. The firm offers Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services—all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. “We have around 10,000 strategists globally, which is on a par with the largest strategy firms around the world. We also have
around 50,000 professionals who help our clients bring transformation to life through people, technology, and change efforts” Salomao explains. The company is also the largest digital marketing agency in the world, with more than 60,000 data and analytics professionals. Salomao says that partnerships such as the one with GSC are at the heart of Accenture’s business. “It’s very difficult to unlock substantial value for our clients through one-off efforts, so the primary focus of our organisation is to develop partnerships with clients like GSC. We go out of our way to ensure these are win-win, and they create value for all of those involved.” The partnership is still in its early days, and Salomao says their key objective is to become the partner that will help them achieve their broader digital transformation aspiration in a way that is both cost efficient and market-relevant. This will involve three main things: taking GSC’s existing capabilities and complementing them with new cloud, CRM, data and analytics technologies; futureproofing the legacy business so GSC can quickly react to changes in the operating environment; and bringing together the legacy business and the new digital health business, so GSC can continue to be a market leader. “When we successfully do that, then I think we’re going to have a very prosperous partnership with GSC for many years to come” he says.
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GREEN SHIELD CANADA
GSC: becoming Canada's first integrated health organisation
for Digital, Innovation and Brand Experience explains. "Of course, it being 2021, we put in lots of API layers too, in order to allow our partners to plug in and bring added health services to our customers – all part of our vision of evolving into an integrated health services company.” The platform took existing legacy software and modernised it, and Willows explains they are planning to ramp up their digital capabilities. "We're moving to radically enhanced CRM capabilities, new data and analytics platforms, and developing an increased cloud posture. This is a much longer term initiative, over three to five years, and it will certainly be more complex for the organisation, but it will serve our commercial goal of moving from core health and dental benefits administration to an integrated healthcare company." Willows says that GSC's digital strategy was profoundly impacted by COVID-19, particularly in terms of delivering care 10
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"We operate for the purpose of making it easier for people to live their healthiest lives" ZAHID SALMAN
PRESIDENT AND CEO
DAVID WILLOWS TITLE: EVP INNOVATION AND MARKETING
EXECUTIVE BIO
COMPANY: GREEN SHIELD CANADA David Willows has worked at GSC for 10 years, during which time he has primarily worked in product innovation and branding. Like Salman, he also worked at AON where he spent four years as senior vice president. Before that, he had focused on driving innovation into Life and Disability management at Canadian insurers in senior leadership positions. "I look back and feel I've had some tremendous leaders who have mentored me and opened my eyes to what works and possibly what doesn't," he says. "I love to surround myself with very capable, smart people who are creative as well. Once those people are with you, you trust them to use the skills that they bring to bear, and empower them to do the work.
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"Our digital transformation will deliver digital services and help patients more effectively navigate care" ZAHID SALMAN
PRESIDENT AND CEO
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virtually. "I look back at 2018 and 2019 when we were starting to strike our first investments in virtual care, and displaying these new capabilities to Canadian employers, and by extension, their plan members. There was interest, but I'd say their thinking was that they didn't want to commit new or existing funding to it. "That changed quickly in March last year," he adds. "All of our data suggests that the attitude of plan sponsors and plan members has changed quickly. Namely, by living through a life of lockdown and not having access to traditional services, digital health services were more front of mind. The response has been universally positive, both with the customer experience and satisfaction with health outcomes. Now we have a landscape where we can expand these offerings." GSC's partnership with Accenture is enabling the company to add new capabilities it hasn't had before. "We just built the new GSC everywhere platform, and historically we had built and managed these platforms on our own. We were confident upgrading such offerings on our own," Willows says. "But when we are talking about introducing vastly increased CRM capabilities, changing and adding data and analytics platforms, and increasing our cloud posture, a lot of this will be new to the organisation. We're able to say that for this next generation work we need to enhance our team with additional subject matter experts and certainly Accenture is a company that has done this with organisations small, medium, and large many times before." Having a strong partner ecosystem will be vital to this digital mission. "It was a really critical topic even before we contemplated some of the specific aspects of our digital
GREEN SHIELD CANADA
1957
Year Founded
Health Benefits and Services Industry
1200
Number of Employees
$800M Revenue
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transformation," Willows says. "People are doing good work in digital health in Canada… they're ahead of the curve and in the market already. As a company of 1200 people, we're not going to build everything from scratch. Early on we made strong connections in the technology and virtual health communities, and have curated, we think, offerings on the virtual health side that are the best of the breed. We certainly will not be able to deliver on our vision without having very strong, mutually beneficial ties with both technology and virtual health partners." Ultimately, Salman says that the priorities of GSC's digital journey are driven by the needs of customers. "They're looking for convenient, seamless services that can 14
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"We're focused on repositioning Green Shield as an integrated health services organisation. By doing this we'll help improve the health and wellbeing of Canadians across the country" ZAHID SALMAN
PRESIDENT AND CEO
GREEN SHIELD CANADA
be accessed whenever they want, from wherever they want. From a services perspective their needs have evolved rapidly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now they're increasingly focused on things like mental health, faster and easier access to physicians, and more cost-effective procurement of prescription drugs. "The pandemic has shown everyone the great potential solutions like digital mental health, telemedicine and e-pharmacy have to improve the patient experience. The digital transformation we're contemplating will enhance our ability to not only deliver digital services like these, but also connect them where relevant, and help patients more effectively navigate care."
There are also benefits to the workforce, as things like automation will add speed and efficiency to routine tasks. "This will enable GSC to better focus on helping people, which is the reason people choose to work here," Salman says. Looking ahead, GSC has several projects in line with its social mission. One is the Green Door Project, launched in 2020 with the University of Toronto to establish a new dental clinic providing free care to underserved populations, alongside conducting a five-year research programme. "This is actually the largest single donation to dental public health research in Canadian history," Salman says. "We'll also be launching a signature women’s mental health programme later in 2021. Recognising the adverse impacts COVID-19 has had on female participation rates in the workforce, our aim is to provide necessary supports to reverse that trend, with a particular view to facilitating women’s movement into leadership roles, recognising both historic underrepresentation as well as the ways the pandemic has further exacerbated this. We think this is a very important programme that we'll expand over the next three to five years. "From a business perspective, we'll remain focused on our multi-year business and digital transformations, with the goal of repositioning Green Shield as an integrated health services organisation. By doing this we believe we will help improve the health and wellbeing of Canadians right across the country."
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8677 Anchor Drive Windsor, Ontario N9A 6W1
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