President's Message

Posted on: 4/12/24

Next week, I will be in Washington, D.C., at the annual meeting of the American Hospital Association. And I will be joined by a number of our OHA members when we meet with our Congressional delegation next Tuesday. We’ll be talking about some of the issues that are important to us such as the impacts that site neutral payments would have on our hospitals, the impact of 340B on our communities, and the impact that Medicare Advantage is having on a number of our organizations, especially our critical access hospitals. 

Here at OHA, we’re also working on some new insurance products through our OHA Insurance Agency. The first one that we launched earlier this year is our Cyber Insurance Captive. I'm excited to report that the numbers came back from Tokio Marine, the underwriter, and they're very favorable for our members. Watch for additional communications on the Fortress Cyber Protection Program. If you responded to our initial survey with interest in the cybersecurity captive, we have your information. If you didn’t respond and you're interested, I believe there's still an opportunity for you to participate. This is a joint venture with the Texas and New Mexico hospital associations. 

That’s our first foray into delivering captive services to our members. Our second is on employee benefits. When I had the opportunity to travel around the state, one of the recurring themes that I heard, in addition to the impact Medicare Advantage is having, is around how our smaller hospitals that are fully insured are looking for other options to provide health insurance benefits to their employees. So, OHA is in the process of developing that. I want to remind you that in this week's Hotline, there is the opportunity to register for an upcoming meeting on our employee benefits captive on April 25 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. At that meeting, we will share with you all the benefits of a captive and what it means to your organization, how it gives you additional control over the services that are delivered and the opportunity to participate in savings. Remember, if you’re fully insured, you’re paying your insurance premium and that’s going to the insurance company. Our model gives you the opportunity to be able to benefit from savings if you don't have expenses for health benefits in your organization. We encourage you to participate. 

Why are we doing all of these things on the insurance side and advocating in D.C.? Because as an association, when we can come together and we can be unified in our approaches on how we work with our congressional delegation or how we try to address problems that impact each of our organizations locally, we are doing great work that allows us to continue to invest in improving health and healthcare in Oklahoma.


Rich Rasmussen
President & CEO