Canada's health insurers, providers and public health system run alongside each other with little coordination, and a new conference in Toronto is designed to put them in the same room.
The first Health Insurance Conference of Canada (HICC) takes place at The Ritz-Carlton in Toronto on November 23. Nevina Kishun (pictured right), CEO of MSA Research, which is hosting the event, and Puneet Chattree (pictured left), managing director and insurance industry lead at Accenture Canada and a member of its advisory committee, told Insurance Business that the aim is to turn a long-running disconnect into shared action. Accenture Canada also helped MSA Research to establish HICC.
Kishun said private health insurance is built over public healthcare, and the public system runs province by province, with different rules and jurisdictions. Federally regulated life and health insurers face a further set of rules from the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), she said.
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"You're operating within so many different systems that don't talk to each other. They're not connected," Kishun said. "It's very frustrating to go through the innovation cycle."
Chattree said conversations across the sector kept returning to the same complaints. Insurers say the public sector limits what they can do, while the public sector says it needs more access to the private sector to innovate. Academic research rarely makes its way into the design of plans and products, and health tech and insurtech start-ups that begin in Canada often move south for greater access to capital, he said.
He pointed to the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia, where he said public and private players collaborate on health agendas.
"This is happening," Chattree said. "And it is not happening here."
Kishun said the industry keeps asking how to keep Canadian ideas in Canada, and that the answer requires money.
"How do we unlock capital? How do we get our system feeding Canadian ideas?" she said.
She said life and health insurers have invested $191 billion in corporate investments within Canada (i.e. corporate bonds, equity preferred shares, equity common shares), and that only about 2% of that reached healthcare. When she asks why, she said, a common response is that if OSFI asked them to do more, they would.
"That's unbelievable," Chattree said of the figure.
The organizers say the day is built to produce action. Kishun said it is the first time they believe leaders from across the space are being brought together, and that the program runs with everyone in one room instead of breakout sessions.
"We said this conference will not be about complaining. It's solution-oriented," Kishun said.
She pointed to the care clinics and injection services that Shoppers Drug Mart rolled out across Canada as an example of what can be done in the current system.
"They did it. What lessons can we take away to encourage other companies to do the same?" Kishun said.
Chattree said a number of life and health insurance companies have each tried to build healthcare navigation services. In his conversations with them, he said, the intent is strong, while reaching the patient inside the system is very challenging. Coordination among the carriers and the wider ecosystem has been minimal, and doing it as a single organization brings many hurdles, he said.
"This is not about competing for business," Chattree said.
Kishun said the first goal is relationships. Members of the advisory committee, many of whom have worked in the industry for a long time, often do not know each other, she said.
"You never want to collaborate with someone you don't know," Kishun said.
The second goal is awareness of the issues, including capital, and the third is hope, she said.
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"There are 1,000 reasons for which might never work, but you need to find that one reason to keep pushing through," Kishun said.
Chattree said the return he wants is concrete. The group would pick one or two issues, such as moving private capital into the public system, product innovation or longevity, and leave with a commitment to have done some of the hard work together by the time it meets again in a year. He called that aspirational, given how much there is to navigate, but said the hope is "ultimately better care and better access to protections from our insurers, from our public system."
"I cannot fix the system, but what I can do is bring the right people in the room to have the conversations about how we can all work together," Kishun said.
