Our Actuarial Recruiters, Lauren Scalzo and Liz Ritchie, had an incredible experience at the Society of Actuaries Health meeting in Dallas, Texas. We attended some fantastic sessions that provided valuable insights, met many new people in the healthcare actuarial community, reconnected with familiar faces, and had a lot of fun throughout the event.
Keep reading for some highlights from the meeting sessions.
Better Together: Embracing Diversity and Inclusion
The opening session on diversity and inclusion provided insights into creating environments where everyone can show up as their whole selves and contribute meaningfully to the team. A striking statistic that resonated with all of us was learning that 20% of the global population identifies as neurodiverse—a reminder that different truly is normal.
The session highlighted five critical mistakes organizations commonly make when building inclusive teams.
- First, ineffective communication often stems from defaulting to our own communication style rather than recognizing that no single approach works for everyone.
- Second, inflexible work environments create unnecessary barriers through excessive rigidity.
- Third, focusing on people’s challenges rather than their strengths not only creates obstacles but also misses valuable opportunities for team members to contribute.
- Fourth, perpetuating stereotypes continues to limit potential, and finally, a lack of awareness about team members creates knowledge gaps that hinder collaboration.
To address these challenges, the presenters shared practical strategies for building more effective teams. The foundation lies in applying the 6 Cs of effective communication: clear, considerate, curious, concise, complete, and cohesive, with a bonus seventh C—calm. Additionally, recognizing and leveraging individual strengths through a framework of ask, align, celebrate, support, and create helps teams maximize their collective potential while maintaining flexible work environments.
We’re particularly excited about the practical tools mentioned, including the 6 Cs audit for leaders and team members, inclusive meeting checklists, and task-talent alignment matrices, which we’re working to implement in our own workflows.
Analyzing Healthcare Costs by Disease: Commercial versus Medicare Trends
The second session provided a deep dive into healthcare cost trends across three critical disease areas: diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and oncology. What immediately stood out was that oncology serves as the number one driver of healthcare spending across all lines of business and products.
The diabetes landscape revealed interesting patterns between commercial and Medicare populations. While physician services decreased for commercial plans, they increased for Medicare, with both populations seeing rises in outpatient, inpatient, and pharmacy spending. The discussion around GLP-1 medications was particularly eye-opening, as most plans appear to be losing money on these treatments. The session reinforced that diabetes rarely exists in isolation, typically accompanied by comorbidities like obesity and mental health conditions, affecting nearly half of the adult population when including prediabetes.
Cardiovascular disease trends showed similarities between commercial and Medicare populations, though Medicare experienced slight increases in spending on atrial fibrillation and heart failure with systolic dysfunction. Recent guideline changes have led to higher-cost drugs being used earlier in treatment protocols, significantly impacting overall healthcare expenditure. CVD remains a top driver of long-term healthcare spending, making it crucial for actuaries to understand these evolving patterns.
The oncology discussion was perhaps the most sobering, with drug costs rising dramatically as new treatments launch at higher price points than their predecessors. The shift from treating cancer as an acute condition to managing it as a chronic disease has extended therapy durations, while the move toward outpatient and home-based care has restructured cost distributions. With 140 agents and 240 new indications in the pipeline, and the practice of stacking multiple drugs increasing overall spend, oncology represents both tremendous medical advancement and significant financial challenges.
Implementing AI in Healthcare: Opportunities and Challenges
The final session explored the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence in healthcare. The technical complexity was immediately apparent—it takes 175 billion nodes to make ChatGPT function, highlighting the massive computational requirements behind AI systems.
However, the session also emphasized critical considerations, particularly around model overfitting leading to spurious correlations. This reminder about the importance of rigorous validation and testing resonated strongly with our actuarial mindset. The potential for improved patient outcomes through AI-enabled quality care and time savings presents exciting opportunities for the healthcare industry, though careful implementation remains essential.
Looking Forward
We’re already looking forward to the next SOA Health meeting, where we can continue these valuable conversations and learn from the latest developments in healthcare actuarial science. In the meantime, if you have questions about any of these topics or want to discuss how these insights might apply to your organization, don’t hesitate to contact our team.